Right here we go
Here are a series of blocks I tested for ICD Ceo a while back.
First up this post is not to tell you WHICH block is the best performing block overall as that would be unfair. All I am saying is (judging by the pressure tests) which blocks seems to have the best overall contact and pressure.
Testing equipment
MSI XPOWER 1 BIG BANG (1366 X58)
Intel core i7 950 cpu
Sensorpod pressure sensitive paper
Blocks on test larkcooler i300, larkcooler wb 500, swiftech apogee hd, ek supremecy full nickel, Koolance 370 and the XSPC RASA.
Please note the same pressure (as best as i could determine by the amount of turns per corner to corner) was used per test. The same motherboard and cpu was employed at all tests. PC was NOT switched on and no TIM was used as this is pressure testing only not heat/performance results.
On most of these tests two mounts were made. First with holes (inlet and outlet) Along
the board and then another mounting placing the same across the motherboard.
key..: WHITE no contact light/spotted pink some contact little pressure, darker the pink more contact until red great contact/pressure
First up EK supremecy Full Nickel
though the photo is poor quality we can see that though there is lots of contact and pressure on the outer edges we can see little of the same in the centre. This suggests right away that we have a CONCAVE IHS.
Outer edges we have around 60lbs of pressure whilst the centre around 10
Swiftech Apogee HD
Here we see similar results to that of the EK model but with even less contact at the centre.
Lark cooler I300
Sorry for the single test on this one, as I lost the 2nd results
Here we see only 20lbs of pressure and very little contact through out.
Larkcooler WB 500
here we see only contact at the centre (very good contact and pressure around 60lbs) but no contact anywhere else (this block has a round rather than rectangle base)
XSPC Rasa (this is a very old block anyway and is EOL)
Finally the Koolance 370
On the second mounting this seems to have the overall best contact (around 70%) and around 60lbs of pressure at the edges and 40-50lbs in the centre
That is it for now, so what have we learned. No matter what TIM one may choose, it is not a 'magic bullet' to get a perfectly flat IHS and shows that water blocks on the whole do not make good contact with IHS.
Lapping the cpu will of course address these issues, however many do not do that and when testing blocks or TIM one most have a flat IHS in order to record accurate results.
I admit there could be holes in my testing, that I have not used a pressure gauge to measure things (when testing the pressure on each mounting post) however one thinks that this does however portray an accurate picture on the overall power contact of water blocks on an unlapped CPU.
If anyone wishes i can add more blocks to test, however i no longer have this motherboard and cpu as I have upgraded to a 3960x CPU and a MSI GD65 8D x79a motherboard. However I am happy to do all these tests again using the same blocks and with any additional product that anyone wishes for me to test.
Kindest regards
Frost dragon.
) this heats up the IC-Diamond TIM nicely.
