Innovation Cooling's Diamond 7 TIM test results

[tastymannatees]

Putting together a nice library I have another couple of WB that Gilgamesh has tested which I will add later. Getting great contact not as easy as you would think. Most WB have terrible contact. Koolance below is OK

I am not sold on the bowed sink concept as IHS contact profiles vary from concave, convex, or some combination of the two and to match the varity of IHS profiles you are not going to get many ideal contact situations perhaps only 20% of the time, flat will trump bowed when faced with a spectrum of profiles with contact as a priority.

This is from a survey we did over at OCUK. Poor C/P homongenizes the temps between compounds.

I thought this was an Interesting breakout of the numbers Delta' between compounds on the Water Cooling shrink considerably about 2C on the MX2 and MX3 and 2.75C on the MX4.

The only one cooler that bucked the trend was the Corsair and perhaps the EK block with better mounting schemes.




Below is a data sort of the test results The blue bars are air cooling all others are water cooling.

The Corsair results are marked in green and follow the usual distribution

ThermalRightUltraExtreme120



LARKCOOLER ISKY WATER 300 CPU BLOCK



BigWater760i



Ultra120Extreme



xspcRASAWB



Heatkiller30CU



DTsniperWaterBlock



koolance37



AntecKHLER



ek full wb



CorsairH50



/DTSniper Water Block rotated



Larkcooler CPU WB 500



Corsairh100


EK Supremacy FULL NICKEL courtesy of Gilgamesh

[OldChap]

My 2600K and EK HF Full Copper gave me this before lapping:



Clear to see is the fact that the edges of the IHS are high and therefore not allowing good contact pressure where it is needed

Andrew's decision to use pressure film as part of this testing was a moment of pure inspiration.

I am liking that image of the Heatkiller30CU contact area

[tastymannatees]

From the testing I did with this I can say that you need a bowed heatsink or waterblock on 1155 and a less bowed version on 2011.

The reason being that the edges of the ihs are invariably higher than the center and it is the center that needs the contact most.

The normal springs one gets in a water block kit could do with being upgraded for stronger ones or if you feel you want to really get good contact pressure maybe consider torquing the nuts down onto bound springs.

Good advice here is a guy who used a precision torque wrench.

What's interesting is he got improved results on a re-torque after an initial warm up - My assumption is the screw height initialy was set by the thickness of the compound and as the system warmed up the compound continued to flow leaving a gap or light contact in the joint ,kind of like tightening the bolts on the old engine head gaskets after 1,000 mile break-in.

[OldChap]

Thanks for that link tasty. I have a small 1/4" drive torque wrench that I had plans to use in a sequence of tests but with a house move imminent it is something that has ended on the back burner

you maay be showing your age if you have experience of old engines like that

[tastymannatees]

My 2600K and EK HF Full Copper gave me this before lapping:


Clear to see is the fact that the edges of the IHS are high and therefore not allowing good contact pressure where it is needed

Andrew's decision to use pressure film as part of this testing was a moment of pure inspiration.

I am liking that image of the Heatkiller30CU contact area

Intuitively you would think so, in fact earlier in this thread we had 123bob lap his CPU to get that exact same profile as an experiment with a negative result.

My thinking on it is that at a macro level water blocks provide reduced temperatures but on the micro point you are at a threshold of thermal choking.

Key thing to remember - increased contact does not increase pressure, but generally increased pressure will increase contact. Pressure is the more dominant of the two.

Let's flip the problem, In engineering a common device used to limit heat flow to sensitive components in an assembly is a ?Heat Dam? shown here in figure #3 Where the heat flow is ?thermally choked? by reducing the contact area to material limitations. Restricted heat flows with misaligned contact, too little contact, too little pressure, too little compound anything that can restrict flow creates a heat dam.

Heat flows on a differential from hot to cold but if you are thermally choked at a point in the thermal cascade downstream improvements in thermal conductivity offers little difference in performance and shows up as reduced deltas of only a degree or so between compounds or what I sometimes refer to as homogenized test results. So water blocks or just poor contact in general is a poor vehicle for comparison testing thermal compound.

These are the thresholds or tipping points and all your ducks need to lined up in detail to squeeze the most out of your systems.

[tastymannatees]

Thanks for that link tasty. I have a small 1/4" drive torque wrench that I had plans to use in a sequence of tests but with a house move imminent it is something that has ended on the back burner

you maay be showing your age if you have experience of old engines like that

Back in the 80's I was looking at a Maserati Mistral for $6,000USD, the owner had died shortly after rebuilding the engine and the brother had driven it for a month or two before he started expericening engine problems so the family was selling it. I nearly bought it being 75% sure it was the head gasket but hesitated on the chance that I was buying into a bigger problem and it was sold out from under me before I could decide. Still kicking myself on that one.

Just noticed, I must be old my memory runs into the decades

[OldChap]

Hmmmm. You just described what happened to me around 1980 but for me it was a Lamborghini Espada.

They are so low I doubt I could get in and out of one now