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Thermal Pastes

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octopus41092

Golden Member
Which thermal paste is better Artic Silver 5 or Artic Cooling's MX-2. I know that the AS5 requires a burn-in time. So, I'm wondering which will perform better in the long run. I'm planning to use this on an Accelero S1 with the HD4850. I also have some AS3 and I'm wondering if thats a lot worse than AS5 or the MX-2 or if its only 1-2C because if it is I probably wouldn't bother with getting anything new.
So, is it worth it to buy either the AS5 or the MX-2 to use instead of my AS3, and which performs the best?
 
One thermal interface material in particular I wanted to test was Innovation Cooling's IC Diamond 7 Carat Thermal Compound which in theory has the ideal formula, and CooLaboratory LiquidMetal Pad different from their Liquid Metal Pro. After the holidays I will be repeating these tests including the products mentioned on both a simulated-die and on the Q6600.
Click to expand...

Now -- before I get into a p***ing contest with a certain person who's probably logged in here, I did NOT read the entire review, and only went to the "test results and conclusions" -- where I found the quoted remark.

From my own results and tests last summer -- CoreTemp readings under PRIME95-multicore "Small-FFT" run over at least an hour with temperatures sampled every 8-seconds -- the manufacturer's own evaluation, and those of someone who was a "principal" in the mfg organization, were correct for Innovation Cooling's 7-caret IC Diamond paste. Joe Citarella had tested the prototype mixture at OverClockers.com in January, 2007.

I would say that for a thermal wattage in the 100 to 150W range -- not unlikely for various "hang-yur-a**-over-the-edge" OC settings -- you could expect an improvement over AS5 by between 2C and 5C degrees. In this MadShrimps review, IC Diamond doesn't figure in the comparison. AS5 comes in second, and only short by a Celsius degree (if that).

I won't go back to anything else, and I won't use anything else -- until someone shows me a paste that has a lower thermal resistance (or higher thermal conductivity) than micronized synthetic diamond.

VinDSL called it "Winky-Twinky" -- but it's IC Diamond

Also -- they've produced a "24-carat" tube. The "7-carat" tube is $7. With the $20 item, you get four times more. But you only need about half of the $7 tube to do both the CPU and your graphics card.
 
Originally posted by: Quiksilver
Click Me For Answer

Short: They are very very very close, less than 3 degrees within each other at most.

I vote for MX-2 based on there isn't a burn-in time and it's not electrically conductive.
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For those test results is the AS5 tested after the burn-in period or is it just right away? Because I would suppose that if it isn't after the burn-in period then AS5 would be the best overall.
 
Originally posted by: octopus41092
Originally posted by: Quiksilver
Click Me For Answer

Short: They are very very very close, less than 3 degrees within each other at most.

I vote for MX-2 based on there isn't a burn-in time and it's not electrically conductive.
Click to expand...

For those test results is the AS5 tested after the burn-in period or is it just right away? Because I would suppose that if it isn't after the burn-in period then AS5 would be the best overall.
Click to expand...

Quiksilver can come back and throw in his two-cents-worth -- and it should be worth more than two-cents.

But I can tell you about my own comparison of AS5 and IC Diamond.

The AS5 had definitely been burned in for 200 hours. And here's the kicker: AS5 performance degrades slowly over its use -- a year or so. I can't explain the physics and chemistry behind it, but it was fairly commonly known here and at other forums.

On the other hand, the IC Diamond doesn't degrade. Nor does it require a burn-in period. And on top of that, although IC's own people were skeptical, it is "re-useable." Of course, the material would be all dried out, but I've heard from several sources that you can simply reapply it. I actually did so -- using JetARt CK-4800 (a formulation with only a 10% diamond loading as opposed to the 90+% touted by IC). I used this JetArt stuff to wet the IC diamond paste I'd scraped off the processor-cap and heatsink-base.

It worked. But anyone would prefer just spending another $7 on a new tube of it.

Anyway, I see that my responses don't precisely answer your question -- succinctly stated, you were only interested in an AS5 versus MX2 comparison. But I've thrown in here per the diamond paste -- in case you didn't know. Why not get the best-performing stuff?
 
Originally posted by: BonzaiDuck
Anyway, I see that my responses don't precisely answer your question -- succinctly stated, you were only interested in an AS5 versus MX2 comparison. But I've thrown in here per the diamond paste -- in case you didn't know. Why not get the best-performing stuff?
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:laugh:

Exactly why I didn't bring it up, sure it's one of the top performing thermal pastes on the market but OP only wanted MX-2 and AS5. Besides ICD7 might not be available where he is or is expensive after shipping.

In any case he wouldn't be to far off in performance if he didn't choose it.

Best thermal pastes on the market in my opinion:

1) ICD7
2) TX-2
3) Shin-Etsu
4) MX-2
5) AS5.

I've personally used 3 of those 5, the most recent being MX-2, and it definitely performs better than AS5 IMO.
 
Well, it really boils down to the effective thermal resistance/thermal conductivity of the particulates used in these pastes.

There has been some recent research -- for instance, an Asian-American lady-PhD was looking at carbon-black. Whatever it was, her "discoveries" were not presently feasible for practical application.

The only substance that profoundly trumps Silver (Ag) is micronized diamond. The thermal conductivity (inverse of resistance) is something between two and three times greater, whereas the comparison of copper and silver is proportionately much less significant.

I can only guarantee that I had a 3+C drop in temperatures from cured AS5 on an over-clocked system -- an E6600 with the VCORE pushed up to 1.44V. And I explained the sampling approach to measuring the temperature differences under "Small-FFT" PRIME95 load.

IC's folks, in PMs to me and in their web-page presentation, show something like a 5 to 6F (Fahrenheit) improvement for a thermal power just above 100W. That's pretty close to my result, but there are a lot of variables: how well the heatsink is secured; whether or not the base and IHS have been lapped. The lapping by itself can result in improvements from 5C to 10C.

With diamond, you'd actually expect a greater improvement, but this is the problem with just having a "thermal interface," and anyway, most heatsink bases are copper -- as is the IHS. In fact, the bases are often plated with nickel, as is the IHS (again why lapping offers a big improvement.)

 
Originally posted by: Quiksilver
Originally posted by: BonzaiDuck
Anyway, I see that my responses don't precisely answer your question -- succinctly stated, you were only interested in an AS5 versus MX2 comparison. But I've thrown in here per the diamond paste -- in case you didn't know. Why not get the best-performing stuff?
Click to expand...

:laugh:

Exactly why I didn't bring it up, sure it's one of the top performing thermal pastes on the market but OP only wanted MX-2 and AS5. Besides ICD7 might not be available where he is or is expensive after shipping.

In any case he wouldn't be to far off in performance if he didn't choose it.

Best thermal pastes on the market in my opinion:

1) ICD7
2) TX-2
3) Shin-Etsu
4) MX-2
5) AS5.

I've personally used 3 of those 5, the most recent being MX-2, and it definitely performs better than AS5 IMO.
Click to expand...

Im buying it from newegg and I can get TX-2, MX-2, and AS5. I'm probably going to go with TX-2 since its the cheapest and better than the others.
 
Well, I can see at HeatsinkFactory that the shipping on a $7 tube of IC Diamond is at least $6. I can also see that NewEgg doesn't offer it. I can tell you again that it'll trump all the others in the list. But you're gonna do . . . . what you're gonna do . . . .
 
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