OCUK Official IC Diamond/ Perihelion Test Results

MikeTimbers said:
TO: IC Diamond.

I'm not having a go. I said that I believe your average. I cannot believe differences of 7C and suchlike can only be down to the TIM. Either the original TIM was no longer working properly, it was badly applied, the mount was poor or other environmental factors changed.

I'll stay out of this thread from now on.
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-7C why not? Not everybody is @ stock speeds. The compound thermal resistance @ 60W is the same @ 120W so for example you have a 2.5-3.5 C delta at the lower value you will have 5-7C at the higher value.

Alternatively often when I am testing I will switch from a 1' inch die to a 1 centimeter die when I want more resolution and the delta temp difference approx is 2X at the same power levels 6C . So IHS to bare die you can easily do it with increased watt density on a smaller surface area.

GPU data which I keep separate from CPU data has been running much higher averages with the increased power, what are the new cards running over-clocked? 300 W+? I don't keep up with this stuff but 5- 10C is common with maybe an average of -6 C improvement. It's all in the watt density.

Frequency chart below results are representative of end users temperature results, if you wanted to take the time to compare watts vs Delta C you will find a pretty good correlation on a number of tests. increase the average users power and the curve moves right.

Granted you have some whose before result may have had a poor sink mount but correspondingly you have some % that had a poor after mount.

Granted you have some paste failures but at the same time there were many reasonably fresh applications.

We did statistically analyze AS5 for compound failure and is about 30% of all our sample comparisons to date for compound failure and found nothing significant, now we do not know if that is because I think you guys change your sinks more often then you change you underwear generally having a fresher application or perhaps reliability was good, AS is silent of the issue so not much more to draw on. some other compounds only lasted a couple of weeks.

I have dropped the outliers from the calculation but out of 652 tests they comprise just a couple percent and change the final average a few hundredths of a degree

I have considered Varying the routine some by perhaps doing a giveaway with 100 tubes of competitive compounds, say a 100 tubes of AS5 and 100 tubes of ICD on a head to head basis with fresh apps all the way around to fine tune comparisons. But I think it would not make much difference(see AS5 chart, a good sample size) considering the above, but I may be wrong



Frequency%20test%20652%20user%20end%20tests.png



AS5multiforumresultsdec302010.png
 
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PROCESSOR: Intel C2D E6600
VOLTS/CLOCKS: 1.28v/2.4 GHz
HEAT SINK: Zalman CNPS9300 AT

Test Time: 30 minutes

Before Compound: MX3
Ambient Temp: 23
Idle Temp: 36
Load Temp: 55

ICD
Ambient Temp: 23
Idle Temp: 35
Load Temp: 51
 
PROCESSOR: AMD Phenom II x4 965be
VOLTS/CLOCKS: 1.35v/3.9 GHz
HEAT SINK: Corsair H50


Before Compound: Stock, it came with the H50
Ambient Temp: 18
Idle Temp: 32
Load Temp: 51

ICD
Ambient Temp: 18
Idle Temp: 32
Load Temp: 48

Pretty fantastic, I had no idea a TIM could make so much difference :D
 
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From the graph it seems that IC Diamond makes a difference at load temps. I am still waiting for mine:(. I don't know what happened as my post was no 33 in the give away thread yet some people who posted later on got it first:confused:.
 
Giving the IC diamond some time to cure then gonna test and check the application tomorrow, reapplying if it doesnt look right,.
 
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I applied the Diamond TIM earlier today but had to wait until this evening to test it so the ambient temp would be the same for both pastes.

Intel Q6600 @ 3.2Ghz (1.3v in BIOS) with a Titan Fenrir Evo cooler.

Before Compound: MX-3
Ambient Temp: 22
Idle Temp: 36,36,31,31
Load Temp: 67,67,62,62

ICD
Ambient Temp: 22
Idle Temp: 38,38,33,36
Load Temp: 65,65,59,59


The Fenrir was a pain to clean as the gaps around the heatpipes are very inconsistent in size, which also made filling them a bit awkward but I did get it very clean using Akasa cleaning fluid.

The ICD was very similar in texture to the MX-3 but it felt easier to tighten the nuts on the Fenrir base. I wasn't expecting a massive drop due to the ambient room temperature and the lack of cool air flowing through the case, thanks to the 470 sitting there. I intend to mod the spare 5 1/42 bays to take a 120mm intake fan to help but that won't be happening for a few months.

Thanks again for the samples :).
 
Results/review as promised:

Introduction

Innovation Cooling have been around for a few years now and have added themselves to the already bloated list thermal paste manufacturers which while giving the consumer more choice, also makes it a little more difficult when it comes to buying (and determining) which is the the best paste.

Looking at their website HERE, there are some very optimistic claims that the IC Diamond paste averages a 4.12 reduction in temperatures compared to other thermal compounds. While I don't mean to be a cynic, I have never been one to put a lot of faith into manufacturers claims. Too many times have I bought fans on the manufacturers claim it was as powerfull as a jet yet silent as a mouse fart only to find it pushes as much air as a mouse fart and is as noisy as a jet! What IC are doing though is, like it's name, innovative. Instead of testing it just by themselves, they are giving the pastes away to people to post back with their own results. This is genius in that people get free paste, innovation cooling get free advertisement and the 'reviewer' will already be 'on-side' for getting some new, free paste. Win-Win?

Perhaps so, but looking at some of the methods people use to 'compare' pastes, it's hardly surprising that IC win in most of the submitted results. Most of the 'reviews' I have seen were rough and ready:

'I remounted my cooler with IC diamond and saw an immidiate 10c drop in temps'.
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Gimme a break please! If you are going to post results at least take the time to present some more info such as testing methodology and setup configuration.

Now I really am being cynical and perhaps biased AGAINST IC Diamond before I begin as comments such as these get my back up as they are misleading. You could replace thermal paste with toothpaste and see an immidate drop if your previous mount was not good or you had lower ambients! There's more to it than just swapping out the cpu cooler and where you stop is dependant on how anal you wnat to be with the details (see methodolgy).

This is going to be a brief comparison between the pastes I had to hand while conducting the review. I would have liked to compare against a wider range inc Indigo and AS5 but unfortunately didn't have any available.

IMG_0350.jpg


So, I will mainly be comparing the IC diamond to the MX3 paste as Arctic cooling is widely recognised as one of the most popular TIM's around and as such is a stalwart among overclockers. I'll also throw in some Prolimatech (PK1?) paste which comes packaged with their megalehems heatsink. For good measure I also had a little Shinetsu MicroSi MPU 3.7 left so will also use that for comparison too. I won't be using the cheaper Perihelion in comparison to the CPU pastes, instead this will be replacing the stock thermal gunk that Asus use on their graphics cards as a basis for comparison.

Methodology

Testing thermal pastes is never easy and regardless of what measures you take there will always be someone who says 'you don't wanna do it like that bla bla bla' (yes this includes me too) so I'll be using the three times lucky method by mounting with the same paste three times and taking a reading (idle/load), averaging the core temp across the cores and then finding the average of the three tests to give a final figure. By doing this I will reduce the impact of a bad mount affecting temperature readouts.

e.g Mount one 35/34/37/39 = 36.25 avg

Mount one avg = 36.25
Mount two avg = 37.50
Mount three avg = 35.75

Avg cpu temp = mount 1 + mount 2 + mount = 109.5 / 3 (avg) = 36.5c

I will be using the following CPU for my test:

CPU = Intel I7 920 (D0) @ 4Ghz 1.275 vcore, 1.275 QPI, 1.65 CPU PLL.
CPU Heatsink = Prolimatech Super Mega inc 2x 140mm Prolimatech Vortex (Push/Pull @ 1000rpm).

Temps will be monitored by RealTemp 3.60.

Ambient temp fluctuations can have a very big impact on temperatures so I will be conducting the test in an air conditioned room set to 21c.

Some pastes require a bedding in period. While I don't have time to bed each paste in I will do some quick heat runs (Prime small FFt's 30 mins then shut down for 30 mins with the test taken upon next boot). While I will confess this is not the best method, it will at least give the pastes some bedding in time.

Application

First off, cleaning the CPU and heatsink surface. For this I will be using Isopropyl Alcohol to ensure each surface is squeeky clean.

Applying the paste. Some people prefer the spreading method, some prefer the line or X method. IC however recommend the blob method which entails a recommended 5mm blob in the centre of the CPU IHS, relying on the pressure of the mount to evenly spread the paste.

Here's one I made earlier using MX3:

fallen010.jpg


While 5mm is slightly more than usual this is because of the high viscosity of the paste.

Here's a shot of the 'spreadability' of the pastes:

IMG_0344.jpg


The IC Diamond is a very 'thick' and dry paste in comparison to both the MX3 and Prolimatech pastes. Spreading this paste would be far from easy hence IC's recommendation for the blob method I would wager.The MicroSi paste was even 'drier' followed by IC Perihilion (not pictured) which was rediculously thick and very similar to pastes found on stock GPU's.

Luckily for me, the CPU heatsink I'll be using (Prolimatech Super Mega) comes with an additional spring set that allows a crushing 70 pounds of pressure!

The same method will be used for applying all of the pastes on test.

Results

First off, let's take a look at the idle temperatures:

Idle.jpg


The above figures were taken in Windows 7 using Realtemp 3.60 after 5 minutes of the system being booted up with only nominal background programs running.

Wow! Don't you just hate it when you're proven wrong? The idle temps of the IC Diamond were well below any of the other pastes on test, including the overclockers favourite, MX-3, bettering it by some 2c! As you can see, temperatures are definately affected by mounting, even using the same procedure, hence the three mount procedure.

Now for the important test - Load temps:

Load temps were taken after 30mins of Prime 95 26.5 (Hyperthreading enabled) All cores loaded 100% via Small fft test.

Load.jpg


Again we see the IC Diamond coming out on top, beating it's nearest competitor MX-3 by a clear margin once again. Amazingly it is some 7-8c better than the Prolimatech paste which is (was) highly regarded. It is interesting to note that temperatures were much more consistant between mounts using the thicker pastes than the thinner ones.

Let's look at things a little closer:

Comparison.jpg


Here's where things get a little interesting. While the idle + load temps fall in favour of the IC Diamond, bizarrely the worst performing combatent, the Prolimatech has the best idle/load difference (+16c) closely followed by the MicroSi paste with IC Diamond and MX-3 bringing up the rear in that order. So if the idle temps were reversed, the worst performing paste would actually be the best! Despite this, IC Diamond still maintains is lead over the other pastes with room to spare.


Conclusion

Without a doubt, the IC Diamond is the clear winner in this short test and by a clear margin. It beat it's nearest competitor, Arctic Coolings MX-3 by some 4c on average and stomped all over Prolimatech by 8c! It's extremely low idle temps gave it a headstart over the other pastes which resulted in the load temps being lower again still, compounded it's overall advantage. Put this down to the (extremely) thick paste, the diamond dust or the magicians at Innovation Cooling, either way they have created a Paste that will re-ignite the recently stagnent CPU TIM market. When folk ask me whats the best CPU paste I usually went with either MX-3 and previously, my old favourite Arctic Silver 5, my recommendations (and thus my opinions) have since changed.

IC Diamond does what it claims to do, drops temperatures by a clear amount when compared to other leading brands.

IC Diamond - Sorry for doubting you, I am now a believer, well done!

The Good
- Temperature drop

The Mediocre
- Excess pressure required to extrude the paste from the syringe
- VERY thick paste. Don't expect to be able to spread this easily.

The Bad
- Twice the price of it's nearest competitor but you do get what you pay for.

gold-medal.jpg

9/10

Innovation Cooling - Sorry for doubting you, I am now a believer, well done! Thanks for providing the paste for this review.
 
Hey,

Ok, so my first pc to receive the IC diamond treatment is my trusty D630 Laptop. This thing has seen its better days but still provides me use for Dungeon Keeper 2 and my degree work!

Room temperature is sat at 20 currently according to a digital and olde school mercury thermometer.

Results will be taken with the laptop allowed to reach windows and idle for twenty minutes and then with both the cores loaded with prime 95 for thirty minutes, and then furmark run for thirty minutes to heat up the GPU.

After the tests have been run the laptop will be taken apart and the heatsink compound changed on the cpu, gpu and chipset. This application will happen only once for obvious reasons - given its a laptop I'm only willing to take it to pieces once!

Results :




Finally a comparison chart to see the difference. I realise this isn't indicative of modern compounds but its just a FYI that changing laptop compound makes an unbelievable difference.



A major bonus to changing the interface material in a laptop such as mine - the gpu might live to see its third birthday as they are known to fail in these things. The gpu drop was most impressive though what I must add here is that I changed the way it was mounted by bending the heatsink more and using the IC diamond instead of a thermal pad.


More results to come from a core2duo, i5 760, amd x2 5000+ and i7 2600k. Bare with me!

_________________________________________________________________________________________

i5 760 @ 4.1Ghz previous compound AS5 - IC Diamond Replacement (voltage around 1.38)

 
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I always appreciate the extra effort as it is a non trivial task to remount sinks and take systems apart and put them back together so much thanks on this end.

w3bbo - Noticed you high mounting pressure of 70lbs so cure time would be minimal - Max 1/2 hour, so you you were probably close to optimum bond line thickness. Generally from sample testing we have done 80% are over +50 psi so adequate to get a positive result and at around +50 psi for the average user we recommend 2 hours to let settle before benching.

Also noted comments on difficulty in testing - Being able to make a link pressure wise 70lbs +/- to the thermal result vs a test where the user sees maybe only a degree or two diff but unknowingly is @ 40 lbs or some other random number is huge. Thermal compound is a mechanical function of pressure/contact/power applied/ amount etc. Define the dominate mechanical features and it goes a long way to qualifying the thermal result. Excellent job.

I do not know whether you had lapped your set up but @ 70lbs most contact issues get resolved, not all, but high pressure is the next best thing to lapping and sometimes as good as.

Again thanks for the thorough effort and your time to do so.

tommytinkle - A major bonus to changing the interface material in a laptop such as mine - the gpu might live to see its third birthday as they are known to fail in these things. The gpu drop was most


impressive though what I must add here is that I changed the way it was mounted by bending the heatsink more and using the IC diamond instead of a thermal pad.
Click to expand...

IC diamond excels in high stress thermal environments and is popular with the notebook and gaming people trending with re-pasting their systems to resolve thermal overheat/failure issues.

Some advantage in notebooks is probably evidenced by a failure in the previous compound. Fresh application to fresh application CPU probably is 5-8C depending on whether it is a stock compound or one of the more competitive TIM's. A number of end users experienced improvements of +30 C possibly/likely indicating severe compound failure and also as the MTBF for notebooks as somebody in the biz related to me recently is around 14 months(do not know whether it true or not but seems reasonable), life is reduced with high thermal stress.

GPU's Delta temps are typically much higher.

Notebooks are a PITA to take apart and nobody likes to do it more than once and if you are a novice you are less inspired to do it, here is where the longevity factor comes into play - longer life, fewer repairs, more stability under stress. Heat is the # 1 enemy of electronics.

Many complain about the compound's high viscosity most likely as it is just not what they are used to but it is an indicator of high reliability & durability (Quality) OEM's Spec this by recommending bulk loading above +90% for the simple reason High viscosity compounds (More solid) are harder to pump out than a low viscosity (more liquid) compound.

So if you are not changing your compound every week a high viscosity compound like IC Diamond or Shin Etsu would be the quality long term solution.

I like getting notebook samples outside the notebook community forums as I maybe get only 1 or 2 per overclock giveaway, exceptional effort for a sample test you got to be hardcore.

Thank you
 
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IC Diamond said:
I always appreciate the extra effort as it is a non trivial task to remount sinks and take systems apart and put them back together so much thanks on this end.

w3bbo - Noticed you high mounting pressure of 70lbs so cure time would be minimal - Max 1/2 hour, so you you were probably close to optimum bond line thickness. Generally from sample testing we have done 80% are over +50 psi so adequate to get a positive result and at around +50 psi for the average user we recommend 2 hours to let settle before benching.

Also noted comments on difficulty in testing - Being able to make a link pressure wise 70lbs +/- to the thermal result vs a test where the user sees maybe only a degree or two diff but unknowingly is @ 40 lbs or some other random number is huge. Thermal compound is a mechanical function of pressure/contact/power applied/ amount etc. Define the dominate mechanical features and it goes a long way to qualifying the thermal result. Excellent job.

I do not know whether you had lapped your set up but @ 70lbs most contact issues get resolved, not all, but high pressure is the next best thing to lapping and sometimes as good as.

Again thanks for the thorough effort and your time to do so.
Click to expand...

No worries, thanks for the paste.
 
IC Diamond said:
IC diamond excels in high stress thermal environments and is popular with the notebook and gaming people trending with re-pasting their systems to resolve thermal overheat/failure issues.

Some advantage in notebooks is probably evidenced by a failure in the previous compound. Fresh application to fresh application CPU probably is 5-8C depending on whether it is a stock compound or one of the more competitive TIM's. A number of end users experienced improvements of +30 C possibly/likely indicating severe compound failure and also as the MTBF for notebooks as somebody in the biz related to me recently is around 14 months(do not know whether it true or not but seems reasonable), life is reduced with high thermal stress.

GPU's Delta temps are typically much higher.

Notebooks are a PITA to take apart and nobody likes to do it more than once and if you are a novice you are less inspired to do it, here is where the longevity factor comes into play - longer life, fewer repairs, more stability under stress. Heat is the # 1 enemy of electronics.

Many complain about the compound's high viscosity most likely as it is just not what they are used to but it is an indicator of high reliability & durability (Quality) OEM's Spec this by recommending bulk loading above +90% for the simple reason High viscosity compounds (More solid) are harder to pump out than a low viscosity (more liquid) compound.

So if you are not changing your compound every week a high viscosity compound like IC Diamond or Shin Etsu would be the quality long term solution.

I like getting notebook samples outside the notebook community forums as I maybe get only 1 or 2 per overclock giveaway, exceptional effort for a sample test you got to be hardcore.

Thank you
Click to expand...

Hey IC,

You're welcome no need for thanks I appreciate the fact that you took the time to send your product all that way.

The compound on the cpu itself had turned into what can only be described as a lump of dried mud. It was brittle in appearance and behaviour and when I removed the heatsink it crumbled where it had become torn.

The gpu has had the biggest difference, these notebook / gpu's are known for graphics failure something that the intel gma version does not suffer with. I firmly believe by reducing the temperature like I have that it has a very good chance of a much longer life.

Thanks for being understanding about not wanting to take it apart again. If I had the confidence to do it more than once I'd have tried it with MX3 as well - however performance figures from my testing with my desktop suggest that this would only mirror the results.... the diamond is better.

As webbo said, the only thing with it is the price - but indeed you definately do, get what you pay for :)
 
Hey,

An interesting point from using this laptop today - when the laptops idle (basic web browsing / typing degree work) the cooling fan no longer comes on. I'm assuming this is because of the better heat transfer from cpu to cooling system? Major plus of this? Extended battery life :)
 
PROCESSOR: AMD Phenom II x4 965be
VOLTS/CLOCKS: 1.35v/3.7 GHz
HEAT SINK: Lapped and pressure modded TRUE

MX3
Ambient Temp: 24
Idle Temp: 29
Load Temp: 50

Perihelion;
Ambient Temp: 24
Idle Temp: 30
Load Temp : 50

ICD
Ambient Temp: 24
Idle Temp: 28
Load Temp: 48

Ambient taken off the mobo but it remained constant- I m confident ambient was the same throughout.

Thanks IC, great products.
 
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