OC3D Review: Battle of the Goooop!

  • Thread starter Thread starter JN
  • Start date Start date

JN

New member
"Today we take a look at 4 of the top thermal interface compounds from Arctic Silver, Shin-Etsu and Coollaboratory to find out if there are benefits to be had by switching your goop!"

Here
 
name='browney' said:
I didn’t think different TIC's made THAT much difference.

Up until recently i was of pretty much the same opinion.

The Coollabs stuff is pretty amazing if you've got the patience to put it on.
 
name='browney' said:
£5.50 would you say it was enough for the CPU, GPU and Chipset?

Yes deffo. Just be careful during application as it's quite conductive.

Might even be worth masking off any naked caps (like on the NB) before attempting application.
 
Great review and great pictures. That second picture on Liquid Pro - is that how it looks when it's spread? It looks very lumpy and uneven, but it could be just the picture due to different shades of metal.

It's just amazing to see that heat conductivity of Liquid Pro is so much better than the rest. This is like getting a $50 heatsink to replace the stock hsf.
 
Great review! I think there should have been some mention in the review about AS5 needing a proper amount of time to cure and perform at it's peak however. The cured results may have been a bit closer to the liquid coollabs compound.

I will definately be trying out the liquid metal compound on my next build though, for sure. Heck I should test it out on the MBP.
 
just some questions (I actually joined up for this one!)

what was the ambient temp, and how closely was the ambient and case temp controlled? Obviously the ambient temp has a massive bearing on a test like this! I would imagine that without a fairly strong climate control you would have some variance in temp over the week or more that it took you to record the results.

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, particularly when you are comparing a thin liquid like the coollaboratory to a thick one like the others.

And also while I am at it, did you by any chance try some of the white generic ones? I would be interested to know how they perform!
 
nice review deffinately gonna try the coollabs stuff

hope i don't make a mess though lol
 
KiTchMe said:
Great review and great pictures. That second picture on Liquid Pro - is that how it looks when it's spread? It looks very lumpy and uneven, but it could be just the picture due to different shades of metal.

It's just amazing to see that heat conductivity of Liquid Pro is so much better than the rest. This is like getting a $50 heatsink to replace the stock hsf.

The second picture of the CLP was actually partially spreaded over the surface so you could see the difference between the IHS colour and the compound colour.

CLP is quite a strange substance, as you spread it parts of it change colour. Some of it looks tarnished, while other parts remain bright silver. This is what gives it the bumpy appearance.
 
FragTek said:
Great review! I think there should have been some mention in the review about AS5 needing a proper amount of time to cure and perform at it's peak however. The cured results may have been a bit closer to the liquid coollabs compound.

I will definately be trying out the liquid metal compound on my next build though, for sure. Heck I should test it out on the MBP.

All of the compounds were given 24 hours to cure. Obviously this may not be enough time for some of the compounds, but any longer would have really been beyond the scope of this short review.
 
Techdomain.com.au said:
just some questions (I actually joined up for this one!)

what was the ambient temp, and how closely was the ambient and case temp controlled? Obviously the ambient temp has a massive bearing on a test like this! I would imagine that without a fairly strong climate control you would have some variance in temp over the week or more that it took you to record the results.

And also while I am at it, did you by any chance try some of the white generic ones? I would be interested to know how they perform!

Ambient temperature was 26oc on each occasion being set by the thermostat here and measured with thermometer. All tests were performed late evening so that temperature was much more controllable.

The tests were not performed inside a case so case temperature had no bearing.

I'm afraid i didn't test any generic goop as that was beyond the scope of the review requested by the retailer.
 
maybe outside their scope, but certainly interesting for everybody else;)

good work on the review nonetheless, although I wouldn't switch thermal compound for the small difference in CPU temperature you get. If your CPU has to be ~5°C cooler in order to work correctly, something else is wrong;)
 
XMS said:
The second picture of the CLP was actually partially spreaded over the surface so you could see the difference between the IHS colour and the compound colour.

CLP is quite a strange substance, as you spread it parts of it change colour. Some of it looks tarnished, while other parts remain bright silver. This is what gives it the bumpy appearance.

Yeah, I assumed that my eyes were playing tricks on me with that picture. Since your review, I found a bit more info on this magical 'liquid' and I'm just amazed of its thermal/heat conductive properties. I just ordered Freezer64 Pro and would love to try CLP with it. I wonder if the temp difference would even be that great with air-cooled setup (compared to your test done in water-cooled environment).

Edit: I just read your post that the test was performed outside the case. It answered some of the questions I wanted to ask...
 
name='KiTchMe' said:
Yeah, I assumed that my eyes were playing tricks on me with that picture. Since your review, I found a bit more info on this magical 'liquid' and I'm just amazed of its thermal/heat conductive properties. I just ordered Freezer64 Pro and would love to try CLP with it. I wonder if the temp difference would even be that great with air-cooled setup (compared to your test done in water-cooled environment).

I would imagine that as long as the heatsink has the capability to deal with the extra heat transferred then you will get similar results. :)
 
name='KiTchMe' said:
I just ordered Freezer64 Pro

definitely try the included MX-1 thermal paste, it's quite good, much better than standard goop, and for that HSF better than AS5 as well, and you get it free with the Freezer
 
Question... Will the CLP work with subzero cooling? I may test it with the cascade if it does. If not I'll stick with ceramique!
 
name='FragTek' said:
Question... Will the CLP work with subzero cooling? I may test it with the cascade if it does. If not I'll stick with ceramique!

It turns solid at around -20oc :(
 
jmke said:
maybe outside their scope, but certainly interesting for everybody else;)

good work on the review nonetheless, although I wouldn't switch thermal compound for the small difference in CPU temperature you get. If your CPU has to be ~5°C cooler in order to work correctly, something else is wrong;)

For an overclocker 5*C can be the difference between stability and a nice big system failure and depending on the cpu, 5*C could allow for another few MHz ;)
 
heard of this liquid metal some time ago from a crazy british, he liked it so much so he took apart a couple of computers and applied it everywhere it possibly could be used lmao and he liked it and as far as i know it has worked good for him for a couple of months now.
 
Back
Top