OC3D Review: Battle of the Goooop!

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Techdomain.com.au said:
Finally, as a comment, thermal pastes set at a different rate, and as a minimum I would suggest that you would need at least 72 hours, for the shin-etsu in particular. The thicker the compound, the longer the set time seems to be, and I wonder if that might make a difference in testing
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It would have, this was a good review up until I read how the tester tested the thermal materials, with all due respect to the reviewer, the testing was flawed because you did not follow the manufacturers information. Also for whatever reason, did not allow enough time to go by, per the manufacturers specifications for maximum conductivity, nor did the reviewer allow for thermal cycling for maximum conductivity to occur.

Testing

Applying Thermal Compound can be a hit and miss affair, so to ensure our test results were as accurate as possible each of the compounds was applied several times. The application providing the lowest temperature was then allowed to 'settle in' for 24 hours before any measurements were taken.

The 'settle in' period consisted of the test machine being placed under heavy load for a total of 12 hours, and then left in an idle state for a further 12 hours.

Arctic Silver 5 requires a minimum of 200 hours and several thermal cycles to reach maximum conductivity.

The Shin Etsu pastes maximum conductivity time is difficult to find, my best estimate for that would be a minimum of 75 hours since it's a silicone based thermal interface material, 75 hours is a reasonable amount of time, with several thermal cycles, which means you need to let the processor heat up then cool down.

With Coollaboratory Liquid Pro, They don't list a maximum conductivity recommendation, but that product if your not careful, can be detrimental since it's both capacitive and conductive. Any migration of the TIM and your PC could be crippled or killed by this stuff (You listed that it eats aluminum, which was a good thing to see, many reviewers don't list this ;)

Have you ever read their product manual? It's absurd. Preparation: It is extremely important to clean both the CPU and the cooler - even if they are new. Use a clean cloth tissue and apply some organic solvent to it. Suitable are acetone or pure alcohol. Not suitable are scrubbing detergents, oil- or petroleum based detergents or any other substances leaving remains.

Then they go on about removing the TIM and recommend using Nigrin Metall Polish, talk about a contradiction...How much metal polish do you think will remain in the microscopic pits and valleys of the heatsink and IHS?

If you know who I am, you may or may not know that I may know a tiny bit about TIMS. :rolleyes:

If I may be so bold and offer a few recommendations for future thermal interface material reviews:

  • Apply the paste as directed by the manufacturer (this is not critical with some TIMS, but it's a good idea to do so)
  • Allow the appropriate amount of time for each TIM to reach maximum thermal conductivity, (This is a critical step)
  • While cross contamination of TIMS is a problem, clean the heatsink and IHS as well as you can between tests, Arcticlean is the best there is for this purpose
  • Try to conduct each test for each TIM around the same time of day or night to attempt to control the temperature differentials. If it's bright and sunny one day, don't test the next paste if it's raining. ;)

Testing TIM's outside a controlled environment is tough, that's why you will never see me doing a review like yours, but there are ways to attempt to do it as best as you can. Please don't take my advice as knocking your review, I enjoyed reading it, and in the future, I will enjoy reading it even more when you control a few factors that might help you out in future reviews.

Regards and stay cool~

Silversinksam
 
Hi Silverskinsam,

I'm glad you enjoyed reading the review and thanks for your comments which i will take into consideration if i ever perform a similar review again (probably not).

I fully understand what you are saying regarding allowing time for the compound to bed-in, however giving AS5 a full 8 days just wasn't feesable with our limited number of reviewers and backlog of products :)

Despite not giving some of the products time to fully bed-in, i'm quite confident that even with the temperatures maybe dropping slightly, the order of the results would have still been the same.

I also agree that Articlean is a great product, and it was actually used in this review (was certainly needed for removing the Shin-Etsu!!).

Thanks for popping over and taking the time to give us pointers for future TIM reviews :)
 
browney said:
I think you should have said that via PM

EDIT

New members cant PM
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No offense but that's absurd.

Constructive criticizing is not a bad thing, in the future it will help the reviewer to put out more accurate reviews. I told you, I enjoyed the article, but it had a few flaws. These facts could drastically change the conclusion and final temps achieved.

That's not something that should be kept behind closed doors my friend. I didn't come across the great pond to bash the reviewer, down the road as I stated, it may help him become a better reviewer.

Matter of fact, I noticed the reviewer in a post here mentioned he didn't have some thermal pastes to test or was beyond the scope of the short review, If the reviewer wants, I can provide him with a dozen different TIMs for him to test or review, I have a vast collection of TIMs, and I'm always willing to help out a fellow hardware enthusiast. :)
 
XMS said:
Hi Silverskinsam,

I'm glad you enjoyed reading the review and thanks for your comments which i will take into consideration if i ever perform a similar review again (probably not).

I fully understand what you are saying regarding allowing time for the compound to bed-in, however giving AS5 a full 8 days just wasn't feesable with our limited number of reviewers and backlog of products :)

Despite not giving some of the products time to fully bed-in, i'm quite confident that even with the temperatures maybe dropping slightly, the order of the results would have still been the same.

I also agree that Articlean is a great product, and it was actually used in this review (was certainly needed for removing the Shin-Etsu!!).

Thanks for popping over and taking the time to give us pointers for future TIM reviews :)
Click to expand...

Glad you have no hard feelings, send me your address via e-mail, and I'll send you some Articlean. :)
 
name='Silversinksam' said:
Glad you have no hard feelings, send me your address via e-mail, and I'll send you some Articlean. :)
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:) Will do mate, and don't be a stranger round these parts ;)
 
I will say that with the hectic review schedule that we have as reviewers you cannot and should not expect us to bed in each compound for 8 days. That's pretty ridiculous as all our test rigs are taken apart and rebuilt at least twice a week. We do also have "proper" jobs and this does not allow us to spend all day every day testing for one review.

Your comments are appreciated, however :)

I think the long and the short of this review is that the liquid metal solution is an excellent choice for a TIM, with AS5 coming a close second. we are an independent review website and so all our reviews are undertaken in 100% independence. Reviews of the "comparison" type are therefore undertaken to find the best product, not to suit one manufacturer or another. I hope you appreciate this too :)
 
Kempez said:
I will say that with the hectic review schedule that we have as reviewers you cannot and should not expect us to bed in each compound for 8 days. That's pretty ridiculous as all our test rigs are taken apart and rebuilt at least twice a week. We do also have "proper" jobs and this does not allow us to spend all day every day testing for one review.

Your comments are appreciated, however :)

I think the long and the short of this review is that the liquid metal solution is an excellent choice for a TIM, with AS5 coming a close second. we are an independent review website and so all our reviews are undertaken in 100% independence. Reviews of the "comparison" type are therefore undertaken to find the best product, not to suit one manufacturer or another. I hope you appreciate this too :)
Click to expand...

Independent or not has no bearing or relevance to anything.

If you can't test something properly, you shouldn't do it at all because the results will not be fair nor accurate. Been around awhile, been a moderator at Overclockers.com for more than half a decade as well as being a retired engineer. Seen my share of TIM reviews m8. I didn't come here to bash nor insinuate anything about the Independence of this site's reviews, I saw a flaw in the testing and commented about it. Nothing more and nothing less.
 
Nice work with that testing Silversinksam - and an apt name too really :worship:

The review here is quite well written, but in the end, based on that testing, I really couldnt recommend that people rush out and change their compound - particularly not to something that apparently is also conductive! and isnt that the point of a review? you want to be able to show people that things are conclusive, or not... but not that they are when in fact the testing is a little skewed. :nono:

I do like the OC3D articles/reviews, and I will keep posting them at TD :wavey: but i feel that this one could have done with a little more time.
 
Techdomain.com.au said:
Nice work with that testing Silversinksam - and an apt name too really :worship:

The review here is quite well written, but in the end, based on that testing, I really couldnt recommend that people rush out and change their compound - particularly not to something that apparently is also conductive! and isnt that the point of a review? you want to be able to show people that things are conclusive, or not... but not that they are when in fact the testing is a little skewed. :nono:

I do like the OC3D articles/reviews, and I will keep posting them at TD :wavey: but i feel that this one could have done with a little more time.
Click to expand...

People should use whatever paste they feel most comfortable with. You can't go wrong with Shin Etsu, Ceramique or Arctic Silver. Or even that white silicone paste that comes in those tiny envelopes if that floats your boat. One thing should be noted and most reviewers do not understand this, Shin Etsu Chemical makes many thermal materials, each designed for a specific purpose or platform, this is just and example, lets say G-751 performs amazing on an specific AMD processor, it might not perform the same on a small die, GPU or even a different AMD cpu, yet another Shin Etsu formula will perform amazing for that purpose.

Arctic Silver 5 is what's called an all purpose formula, engineered to perform reasonably well on all platforms. I guess that's why Nasa, US Dept. Of Defense and many other entities use Arctic Silver products. Bet you didn't know that. How do I know all this, I do what I can to find the facts. Am I affiliated with any of these companies, No.

But I can tell you for a fact, to do a review without reaching max thermal conductivity is like running a marathon on your hands and knees. To say what the results would be without testing it properly, is speculation at best. How the heck would you know, unless you actually do it. ;)

I've never mentioned this before, but one reason for that Silver paste article was that many review sites exalted how great OCZ Ultra II and Compusa's Silver paste was,(Just do a google search and see, these reviews are all nonsense, hype, BS or innacurate testing, every single one of them.) I was 99.99% sure I knew what it was and where it was made. I was and still am convinced it is Stars paste made in China. Stars is notorious for mislabeling their cr@p paste, (It is a basic run of the mill silicone based TIM, sometimes even today they claim it has ag in it, which it doesn't and never did) Stars then resells/sold it to Distributors like Compusa, OCZ(OCZ has stopped selling it and now is selling rebranded Arctic Silver 5, which was a good move after I exposed what they were selling, they weren't to happy with me since I forced a recall, they knew what they were selling, but I give them praise for moving quick when i caught them with their pants down) How many review sites mentioned that it was the best paste since sliced bread? More than a few, This is why it's important for a website's reputation to test things properly, if not, it just makes them look foolish and it will come back to haunt them.

Bottom line, use the paste that you feel comfortable with, this is the golden rule, sometimes the latest and greatest is nothing more than an short term illusion, but time always tells.
 
XMS said:
Despite not giving some of the products time to fully bed-in, i'm quite confident that even with the temperatures maybe dropping slightly, the order of the results would have still been the same.
Click to expand...
Agreed!!! Nice little review XMS, and some valuable feedback from our new members for future reference.:)
 
OK those posts have been undeleted but I do think they are covering the same ground as mentioned before.

Whilst I agree that AS5 does cure in over 200hours, the temperature drops after cure-in are not as significant as 6*C...more like 2*C

I've always used aS5 on all my builds so I know this is correct.

Thanks both of you for your replies :)
 
Lookie Here Kats and Kittens

for those of you looking to de-lid your Ivey bridge CPU and are looking for that
thermal interface a lot of members use.. here it is all the way from 2005.

as in the OP, the OC3D review is here--> LINKY
 
actually i am quite interested in the linky there, i use arctic silver 5 thermal paste mi was told it was good what is everyone else's view on there thermal paste?
 
as5 is out dated now there are better 1's available: phobya hegrease, prolimatech pk-1 and noctua nt-h1 but to name a few
 
all of the gooooop mentioned above is old skool now.
this thread should either be closed or edited

there are much better thermal pastes on the market now

deano - should know better - lol
 
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