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