IC Diamond24/Perihelion4gm Giveaway

IC Diamond

IC Diamond

IC Diamond

Associate
Joined
7 Dec 2010
Posts
223
Innovation Cooling (IC)will giveaway 100 syringes of ICD24 and 100 IC Perihelion syringes to OVERCLOCKERS UK forum members who have at least 50 posts and/or 3 months membership.

ALL POTENTIAL PARTICIPANTS MUST POST THEIR INTENT TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS THREAD IN ORDER TO RECEIVE THEIR FREE TIM
(BEFORE OR AFTER EMAILING ME).

PLEASE BE SURE TO BENCHMARK YOUR CPU TEMPS WITH YOUR CURRENT TIM AND RECORD YOUR RESULTS BEFORE USING IC24 OR ICP4gm FOR TESTING. WE NEED BEFORE AND AFTER PLEASE (Ambient, idle, load at the very least)!

Instructions and Qualifiers

1.)1 Syringe per responding forum member. Luck of the draw whether you receive ICD or ICP

2.)This is a on a first come basis. I will post notice on this forum when the giveaway ends

3.)Participating members are to post your test results on this forum within the first 30 days after receiving the sample. Gentleman's agreement.(THOSE WHO DO NOT HONOR THE AGREEMENT WILL BE FOREVER IMMORTALIZED ON THE WALL OF SHAME WHICH WILL BE POSTED AT THE COMPLETION OF THE SURVEY)

4.) OVERCLOCKERS UK forum members who have at least a minimum 50 posts.

5.) Or have been a forum member for at least 3 months

6.) Email me your mailing address in a format we can cut and paste easily for processing.

7.)Must agree to test the product and give feedback to the forum, and thus to Innovation Cooling (Current load/idle/ambient temps + fan speed then load/idle/ambient temps + fan speed with IC24)

The specifics will be posted in a separate Results Thread, we will be looking for simple data feedback, and looking forward to actual comparisons in application methods and comparing products from other manufacturers.

We would like to first get CPU, GPU's, , and Laptops results as a priority, then any you are free to apply/experiment on other components with remaining balance.

The TIM results thread is a continuation of the ongoing thread OCUK Official IC Diamond/ Perihelion Test Results and all results should be posted in this thread All personal information is kept entirely confidential and destroyed upon completion of giveaway. Please PM me if you have any questions.

Thanks everyone and I look forward to working with you all and hopefully learning something in the process.

Again to register for your survey sample post IN THIS THREAD "ON MY HONOR IN EXCHANGE FOR FREE COMPOUND I DO SOLEMNLY SWEAR TO TEST AND POST MY RESULTS"

After you have posted your registration Email to complete registration.

We are mailing from the USA so allow time for processing and shipping .

MAKE SURE YOUR OWN ADDRESS IS CORRECT - WE JUST CUT AND PASTE - IF IT IS NOT DELIVERED DUE TO REGISTRANT'S ERRORS WE DO NOT RE-MAIL SAMPLES


EMAIL ADDRESS FOR REGISTRATION -- [email protected]

All the best

Andrew
President
Innovation Cooling
 
JonJ678 said:
I'm really impressed that you guys are doing this, it shows great faith in your product. Given you're entering a rather saturated market, that's admirable.

I will not enter, as the liquid pro I'm using at the moment requires lapping each time one uses a different tim. I can't face lapping the cpu and waterblock again.

Good luck nonetheless

edit: If you'd be so kind, what is the thermal resistance you expect to be associated with the ihs : tim : heatsink interface? Assuming standard mounting pressure / tim applied as per instructions. It's really very difficult to find any data on this, and it would be useful to have a ballpark figure to work with.
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Only data I have readily available - ICD Standard data point is the comparison. I have been familiar with liquid metals as something of a lab curiosity for the last 20 years. Gives you thinnest possible joint but they are awkward for the general user to implement. I believe Intel spec is flat and // to .02 on the IHS? This I believe cause some inconsistencies with some users with unlapped sink/IHS having to do with filling the gap on less than optimal contact.

I have only a couple of comparisons, as you say it is awkward to clean ( I use 000 fine steel wool on my test dies as it wicks into the wool although I do not recommend using on anybody's system as the metal fibers will play havoc on the electronics) so hard to get people to try ICD on a survey like this.

I have a metal pad and a liquid pro comparison from a German giveaway we did just before Christmas I posted on the results thread here scroll down a bit. Inconclusive as the sample is small. I do believe the LM's work well when contact is good at low and high pressure but have a weakness if contact is light.

Common knowledge that the more liquid compounds have pump out reliability problems but I do not know whether this extends to the LM's as I never had experience or read anything on the reliability front.


In any event twenty years of thermal compound development have reduced the difference between using a solder joint to about 3 - 0.4 C above the die temp for the competitive compounds. Further development may reduce this difference by a few tenths of a degree, but for all practical purposes at the power levels we are operating at this is pretty much the end of the road. This is the brick wall and most likely in the near future the grouping will get tighter in this range with users maybe not focusing so much on performance but cost and reliability.

Would prefer IC24 to perihelion!
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Perihelion is a top competitor in user tests to date it is only second to ICD on performance at much lower cost than ICD or comparative competition compounds. It has the same viscosity as ICD for long term reliability minimizing pump/bake out failures so do not discount the advantages on the Perihelion.

We have $100's of thousands in test equipment and so proceed with some confidence that we have great compounds but... that's a lab result and academic, the proving ground is/are what the end user sees on hid desktop is what counts.


Sept30condensedmultiforum.PNG




PerihelionRetest.png
 
JonJ678 said:
You've provided data specifying wattage used and contact area. That puts you head and shoulders above the rest of the field in my view, even if your results weren't good. Thank you for the link and for the data.

1 And Pressure:D

2 You should see my data on the competition:eek:

Was the synthetic die copper or nickel plated copper?
Copper Had to use a blow torch with steel wool to clean and still had to re-lap with my diamond stones 400-800 grit to get it properly clean

Thank you for testing with the system soldered together, I've been trying to find the courage to solder my cpu to a waterblock for a while now, and that rather puts me off. I'm fairly sure that the liquid pro can perform better, simply as it will wick into the (clean) copper surfaces better than a grease has any realistic chance to. Cleaning up the surface of my waterblock took considerable effort though (I ended up flycutting it which isn't an option for most people), so I'm certain thermal grease will continue to dominate the market. There is a company that has an ignitable metal foil as an interface that when you set it off it burns for a few hundredths of a second and welds a nice joint.

0.5 K / 120W worse than solder isn't quite negligible, but I think I agree that further progress is going to qualify as diminishing returns. Nicely done regardless, I'll be buying paste from you next time around.
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JonJ678 said:
There's a graph in my thermodynamics lectures taken from an old, but unreferenced, textbook (it isn't recent enough to be using SI at least). It shows thermal resistance against mounting pressure for a range of materials in direct contact with each other, unsurprisingly resistance decreasing with mounting pressure. The unexpected result comes from electroplating copper with nickel; the result is a lower resistance than unplated copper. The porous surface deforms under pressure to give a greater contact fraction and the effect overwhelms the additional cu-ni boundary and increased thickness.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to source a reference that I can link to for this, and I keep forgetting to email my old lecturer to ask. It's stayed with me as an interesting counter argument to lapping, hence my curiosity as to your testing surface.
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Interesting about the nickel perhaps why Intel coats the IHS? I had always assumed it was for corrosion I will have to look into that some more.

Dead on target IMO with the pressure with all things being equal increased pressure will compensate or improve contact and reduce resistance most.

An often recognized problem is IHS/sink contact is so poor that pressure can not compensate and in many instances IHS edges will be higher than the inside area creating a too large gap that no reasonable pressure con compensate for.

We sampled some end user contact patterns over several forums and as can be noted at least from the samples recorded seems to be a common issue.

Technical/Troubleshooting Note:

As most experienced users understand that when troubleshooting thermal problems there are usually 3 areas of concern.

1.) Pressure
2.) Contact
3.) Application

Taking a thermal measurement on it's own is not enough without a relative basis of comparison. Application and use of thermal compound is a mechanical function though many electronically oriented people tend to attach little importance to mechanical measurements.

Every thermal compound has it's own unique ideal pressure/thermal performance curve. A highly liquid retail compound with great contact resistance will test well at low or moderate pressures as they hit their Bond line thickness (BLT) or average thickness relatively easily but since they are at optimum at these lower pressures adding more pressure fails to yield much of an improvement.

IC Diamond is of a much higher viscosity and has a very different pressure/ performance curve than a more liquid retail compound so at lower pressures and/or contact thermal results maybe equal or less. In paste reviews the major failure is in quantifying the mechanical aspects of what is being tested, are they @ 35lbs and 50% contact area? or 60lbs 60% contact? And how does that relate to multiple thermal/performance pressure curves of different compounds?

Note: 80% of sampled retail sinks were over 50lbs psi

Quantifying mechanical's is not realistic for the individual user but they get around that by observing multiple user results to mentally average a comparison unlike the individual anecdotal test they have a reference point(s) more or less like we are doing here providing samples for comparison.

We generated the attached charts Below from some forum user tests.

What they show is what most know already - that good C/P provides a good thermal result. What it also shows is that IC Diamond performance margins increase with over 50 psi force and with good contact margins are higher. Pressure is dominant and contact will increase with pressure.



Data point # 2 has weak pressure and poor contact resulting in a + 3.7C increase in temps over the liquid paste.

Data point # 10 with great contact and pressure shows a -5C improvement over the more liquid compound.

This is a nontrivial approx 9C spread and pretty well explains why people get different results.

Also observe Point # 6 it has a somewhat lower pressure but a higher contact hence the improved thermal

So to optimize your thermal result, apply enough compound, tighten your sink and do some lapping

CombinedchartCPvsthermalperformance.png


CombinedchartCPvsthermalperformance-2.png
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bainbridge said:
Is "bake out" when the TIM turns hard & crusty? I've had this with some thermal compounds & this is the reason why I have stuck with AS5 as it gives me consistent results over time rather than being amazingly cool for a few weeks then temps begin creeping up. My system does run quite warm (low 60s).
Click to expand...

We did some thermal stress testing on IC diamond (ICD) against the more popular retail compounds all failed except ICD in this test.

20hoursat150C.JPG
 
Yes samples are out - shipping from USA so be patient.

There is a change in the program as we have had no requests for a few days we are CLOSING DOWN THE GIVEAWAY PORTION OF THE PROGRAM This is a time crunch issue on our end as we have other giveaways scheduled and have to move on. In any event we have enough participants to run a successful survey here.

Those that have requested samples will receive One ICD24 and one Perihelion 4gm in place of one ICD24.

It is optional to the tester which sample he tests but one or the other must be posted, optionally they can test both and report both if they feel inclined.
 
Paste is very heavy off center

I spent some time with the TR people a couple of years ago and I think they are some of the best in the biz. I do not have that heat sink in house so have had not a close look at it.

So hard for me to second guess their designs and and how they line up with our paste.

The contact area is narrow but pressure will be high in area of contact so a 50 lb mount might yield 100 psi + in the contact area a big plus as far as any thermal compound goes.

But there will also a trade off with the diminished contact area, as to how much I can not say.

The two pole/point mount do sometimes come with a bias on one side or the other as I have seen in some water blocks.

I do some heat sink/thermosyphon design and generally find copper base should be .160 - .180 thick to adequately spread the heat, like I said from the pictures hard to tell but from the contact I would be worried about the heat spreading to the outside heat pipes.

For instance I can not test a heat pipe cooler on a one centimeter die as the heat will not flow to the outer pipes and will give a poor performance reading. On a 1 inch die they test very well, the design intent obviously is for a larger contact .

My own experience tells me that the more contact the better and I have seen recent contact/ pressure paper snapshots of similar result that when lapped improved the thermal performance.

Like I said the TR guys are good and have a different perspective if I had to speculate I would say the real reason they bowed the mount was to try and compensate for IHS contact irregularities, I think the Intel spec is Flat & // to within .002 but in that range you find IHS's with peak in the middle or a island in the lake with peaks in the middle and edges or some that are shaped like cup with higher edges all the way around and a depressed interior area.

These kind of contours are fine for the Joe six pack kind of computing guy they just gap it with the design intent of thermal compound.

For the more rarefied performance user getting everybody on the same page with these kind of contours as few go through the effort of lapping this may be a TR's stab at it.

So to answer your question - as a guess you will see -2 to -4 C if you get it balanced right and are not hung up on the edges - your pressure is great as the contact area is light but shows the paste as a thin layer having resolved down to the average particle size/thickness - and of course depends on the previous compound applied and applied power.

The contact images below show the variation in IHS/Sink contact for typical endusers

Some hang on the edges, the middle or both, some are balanced to one side or the other.

And some, just a couple have all around both great contact and pressure:D



samttl.jpg
 
I think that most of your results are people applying TIM better.
Click to expand...

We could test that - I have been considering changing the routine by taking a baseline compound like AS5 that everybody is familiar with and IC Diamond or perhaps Perihelion and giving away a couple hundred tubes of each and split the application method on the AS5 rice vs pea with fresh applications all the way around along with applicable ciuring times. I Have not really thought about competitors application method/recommendations. Just a thought, compounds that have more liquidity and that are rice sized in application are probably adequate for a lapped contact but amount may fall short bridging the gap on the native stock mounts with large contour issues.


So IC, you have a lot of facts and figures, this might shave a few degrees off, clearly the diamond wont evaporate, what is the score on degrading TIM's.
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Can you get together a hardcore of trusted users to gauge practical usage over time? I am talking review sites.
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As far as I know I am the only one in the retail trade that has longevity data available on site everybody is silent on the issue other than claims made. Longevity is a key factor more important than absolute performance IMO. i do have 2 and 3 year results from a limited number of end users.

The hobbyist market where everybody changes their sink every other week is not favorable to this kind of desired information - Maybe I will try the PS3 guys they only pull apart their systems with ylod and run under pretty stressful conditions. ICD has been getting some interest from that crowd on the problem.

If you really want to know about ICD's longevity you could buy a tube and check your temps monthly for 5 years or gfor as long as it lasts then you would have first hand experience;)

Intel does accelerated testing and you can do your own program - warm up your oven, take some glass slides apply some compound and bake until done - any review site could do that

Attached picture of test result was run for 20 hours at 150C, the center picture ICD is IC Diamond. The others are commonly used retail performance pastes. Not a drop dead test but it does highlight the stability of ICD7. The competition compounds feature the formation of voids, and span the range of initial failure to complete failure. IC diamond was observed to have no visible points of failure under these conditions. The picture is back lighted so the void formation is clearly visible

20hoursat150C.JPG


Additional Testing

ICD7 has been tested in a thermal cycling chamber - from -40 C to +85 C - for up to 250 cycles (with the copper block heated with 130 W of power (along with a fan heat sink) and found no change in thermal performance / thermal resistance of the grease

In another thermal test ICD7 was placed in a thermal chamber for a continuous 1000 hrs @125 C with no change in thermal performance.

In a separate test we pulled "full vacuum" on ICD7 with a mechanical pump for ca. 65 hours at room temperature. The resulting ... weight loss was almost immeasurable - 0.3 mg out of 6.2222 g. This works out to be 0.0048 wt %.


post pic above would be to my mind a convex base with inadequate and misplaced TIM? Referring to pic above is this your opinion IC?
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looks good to me as far as I can tell from the pictures
 
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el Kuarlos said:
You need to 'seat' it as in get it in place with screws on their first tightening, at this point some movement shouldnt be a big issue, it will happen with all sinks.

Key thing I agree with is that when you clamp it down the tim should be spread more as you add more pressure. Blob on the centre is the best way of achieving this- in reality its never gonna involve a perfect top bottom seating and perfect 360 degree spread.

So long as you dont wipe it about you should be fine- at the end of the day if you cant do any better...you cant.

And would my postie hurry up...I wants play.
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good answer - My answers/instructions are sometimes overly involved with why for's & subtle nuances and can muddle the idea on what is a simple process.

Thanks for the clear statement.

Mailing went out over 2 days so receipt will be a little more staggered as we have to fill out a hand written customs form for each so most will/should have by the weekend.
 
another 12 went went out today that were miss-filed for processing by my sample processing person. I am searching files for any others - I apologize for the delay
 
Just found another in the spam folder - we keep records, save all customs receipts, we manage 100% delivery on these giveaway's for those that qualify. Sometimes we misstep but everybody will get the samples. Again sorry to those that got delayed.
 
The Perihelion is pretty much the same mix as IC Diamond with aluminum oxide instead of diamond. Viscosity is more or less the same @25 C as noted in the attached chart the old version curve was a lower viscosity mix that we beta tested in one of our giveaways which proved to be unstable. The reformulation is very stable but might be a little less forgiving than the diamond to lighter pressures which is another reason we run these surveys to gather data, refine product application and marketing message, it's not all promotion.

Perihelion is an odd contrast to ICD when dealing with it physically you can roll it up in a ball and it's thick like a window glaze putty, place it on a table and come back in a few min and it's spread into a puddle, kind of like a silly putty it's very plasticine in nature. At 25 C it is like the diamond in viscosity at 20 C you can stick a spoon in it and it is nearly impossible to separate a piece out of it, a quick cut with a knife before it re flows back together is about the only way to do it. At 30 C it flows like honey and is a dream to work with, very clean. At room temps it locks up my 850 psi dispensing machine so I had to add heating tape to the system now at 30 C I can fill a tube every 0.8 seconds.

I never heat a tube before I use it as I am used to the thickness although in winter when room temps are down and people retrieve it from an exterior mailbox with sub zero temps you may want to warm it up a bit before use.


Perihelionvicositychange.png
 
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