Quote Originally Posted by Nickel020 View Post
In a PM to me you once mentioned that you weren't sure about the accuracy of AMD CPU's internal sensor. Has anything lifted your concern about that?
Yes and no. I can always 'remap' the output of the thermal sensor such that a 1C increase in water temps = 1C increase in CPU temps. If I measure a large enough range (to cover the entire spectrum of TIM performance), I'll know that when a thermal sensor says 31.3c, it really means 34.2c (or whatever). You pick one arbitrary temp sensor value to equal one arbitrary meaning and you collect enough corollary data and you have a full spectrum calibration.

It's a pain to do and a pain to convince the average reader to trust what's done, that's for sure

(although it is important to note that this process is still done as a validation step with every other processor used for testing, just there's no correction factor needed for an i7)

As for precision and repeatability, those are other variables that show their true nature over time. I don't think repeatability will be an issue with AMD processors and I don't think precision is any worse than an Intel processor (resolution of the temp sensors is actually higher.... 1/8th of a degree on a Deneb vs. 1/4th of a degree on a Bloomfield).

Quote Originally Posted by Nickel020 View Post
You could also test the IX vs a known paste on the AMD setup and then test all the other pastes on the i7 930; I think a lot of people would be happy if you were to do the testing on an i7 - I personally would be more than happy to donate the money for the i7 IX kits if that's all that's keeping you from testing on the i7 Seems like the least one can do considering all the awesome testing you've performed and are still performing...
Now that is an A+ idea....! I don't mind buying the i7 IX (I've already bought a 1055T, 790FXTA-UD4, EK GA AMD kit, etc for the AMD testing....nevermind the dozen or so other TIMs I have here), but I do like the idea of testing some on the AMD CPU (IX, MX-2, IceFusion me thinks) and then testing all of them back on the i7, where I have homefield advantage

I think I'm going to run with this, thank you!

Quote Originally Posted by Nickel020 View Post
As far as the Liquid Metal stuff altering the block/heatspreaders surface, I think this can be shown to be the case/not be the case by re-testing a paste that you tested before the Liquid Metal stuff.
Also a great idea....though my hope is that the nickel plating on the CPU-360 alleviates any diffusion issues with the Liquid Ultra and MetalPad. The full truth of the matter is that if either CLU or CLMP do alter the surface, then it'll show as soon as mount #2 on the respective TIMs. And if I clean MX-2 off between mounts, it's only fair I clean CLU/CLMP off--but if that cleaning requires surface alteration, I guess that's what I can investgate