Innovation Cooling's Diamond 7 TIM test results

[123bob]

Pressure and contact are both inextricably linked to TIM performance as well as being able to measure any result. So for me, the manufacturer to be able to provide guidance to those that can not observe a result is pretty valuable. People are constantly trying to add refinement to their equipment, so it's a benefit if you know what directions to focus energies rather than wasting energy on those things that have minimal impact.

Any one test is anecdotal with the current state of the art, reviews of paste (and cooling hardware) are for lack of a better word "squishy". Most buyers of products know this intuitively and read several reviews and consult the forums to see other user results and mentally average on their own to get a picture of performance. The whacks at it are pretty effective in the broader scope of averaging and trouble shooting.

Amen Tasty. I have bought CPU coolers on wonderful reviews only to find them not worth the powder to blow them you-know-where.

I think this entire experience has been very interesting. I know I've learned a lot. I just wish we could get Intel to properly calibrate parts and give us the missing specs. They would only help themselves out by doing so. I can't imagine it would be some kind of competitive disadvantage to do so. AMD already reverse engineers Intel stuff, and vice-versa.

I hope you have found this to be useful too. I've come to trust D7 after working with it. The mounts have all been very good, and consistent. I can't say that about other pastes I've used.

I'm now curious to see how my main rig performs on the D7 test. It has the consistent "sensor test" figures. It is also a dead flat lapped machine. I'm wondering how it will do pressure testing and with D7 temps.

Regards,
Bob

[tastymannatees]

I

'm now curious to see how my main rig performs on the D7 test. It has the consistent "sensor test" figures. It is also a dead flat lapped machine. I'm wondering how it will do pressure testing and with D7 temps.

I have been wading through all the documentation you supplied and then some.

The real temp stuff was interesting to me. One thing was room temp calibration. If you calibrate for room temp with a closed case seems to me you would 10-15C off from the start as the local "room" is now the case? and would be 30C + even on an open case recirculated air from a sink can raise the local ambient a few degrees unless you an extra fan removing the the exhaust air. So a calibration at ambient room with closed case is probably as good as no calibration at all.

http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/docs.php

That's great but I've found that when the DTS moves more than 35°C away from TjMax, the DTS data no longer changes at the exact same rate that the core temperature is changing at.

The chart he has would explain a lot as regards to a compression of results.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...Zw&hl=en&pli=1

This is the OCF. forum data.

What is interesting to me is that a wide delta spread at idle to load can converge to a zero result as well as a zero at idle can be zero at load. A 20 C increase in temps would normally be attributed to a 2C ICD7 and and a 4C to most the compounds tested with a 1-2 C reduction at idle.

This raises another question, Calibration @ idle there is the assumption that little or no power is being used. An adjustment of 6 or 7C implies even underclocked 30 or 40W is being used.

so with a good water system vs stock cooling that adjustment range that spread might be 2-3C water, 7-8 stock sink or more at 40 watts?. Just a guess on my part but in a box at idle I would guess the number is more like 40C? is that what is normally calibrated?

Some of the more exaggerated improvements are usually linked to a long term breakdown of the pre installed grease or sometimes a misfire on the original mount still some probably are neither so Ineed to put toghether a more complete sample

At the higher temps where the convergence on accuracy should be occurring at -35C of DTS I do not see it happening ?

[DDTUNG]

I'll ask again the question that I've put forward before.

Has anyone tested to see if the improvement in load temps translates into a noticeably higher overclock?

DDTUNG

[Bail_w]

I'll ask again the question that I've put forward before.

Has anyone tested to see if the improvement in load temps translates into a noticeably higher overclock?

DDTUNG

2-3 C less will not get your any higher overclock. So i must certain say not possible.

[Jaco]

I've one machine where I have a temp drop of 10-15°C .
But that's mainly because of a bad HS mount and crappy TIM spread method
maybe 3-4°C gain thanks to the D7 compound , not enough for a higher overclock.

[DDTUNG]

To be fair to the ID7 I can see how in some situations those 2-3 degrees would help achieve stability at a certain clock and voltage.

DDTUNG

[SiGfever]

As stated the Ambient, meaning "surrounding air" temp can be anything from the room air temp to the temp surrounding the CPU. When my free standing a/c was running the supply air temps effected the perceived ambient causing me to have to time the a/c units cycles before taking a temp reading. I was not saying this testing is all wasted just that since we can not control the variables precisely there can be a large room for error. A torture rack would make for a better test bed since there are no enclosures to trap air.

I know that diamonds transfer heat better than other compounds so the testing should have shown an improvement in every case but as with mine it did not so the other factors were preventing the TIM from excelling. The main advantage to this testing was to teach us about TIM application verses perceived techniques and to further validate how difficult it is to get a perfect mount each time. just my $.015

I would like to thank tasty for giving us this opportunity to explore these variables so we could try to fine tune our computer systems. I know the knowledge gained here will help all of us to achieve a better TIM/mount for each CPU.
John

[Martijn]

To be fair to the ID7 I can see how in some situations those 2-3 degrees would help achieve stability at a certain clock and voltage.

DDTUNG

Victor, I believe how you can get a higher overclock, simply because you can supply a little extra voltage if needed. However, for us crunchers, I don't think it'll make much of a difference, since we're never on the bleeding edge of stability.

[tastymannatees]

I'll ask again the question that I've put forward before.

Has anyone tested to see if the improvement in load temps translates into a noticeably higher overclock?

DDTUNG

The original review from AMDZone and some number tests from the giveaways had some marginal higher overclocks and better stability. The Overclocked test tends to muddy the water on the temperature results and it has not been a focus of our effort as is a little more subjective than raw temps alone.