Thermal Paste vs. Reusable Graphite Thermal Pad Benchmarks (IC Diamond Pad)
13,431We're finally testing the IC Diamond Graphite Thermal Pad vs. thermal paste in a fully controlled bench, including torque pressure tests, 95W through 270W power loads, and more.
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If we do an article on this one, we'll delay it a bit and let you know in HW News (or via twitter) once it's up. Trying to catch up on content lately!
Our CPU cooler review methodology is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmTOJP4KOyk
Or written form here: https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3561-cpu-cooler-testing-methodology-most-tests-are-flawed
Find the IC Diamond Graphite Thermal Pad (40x40mm) on Amazon: https://geni.us/56kk27 (we used one size-appropriate for the Intel DT IHS)
Find Thermal Grizzly Hydronaut on Amazon: https://geni.us/Fsray
or Arctic MX-4 on Amazon: https://geni.us/k3kT6
Note that we have some additional methodological points made in this video that deviate from the norm, since the testing was different. We have some specific graphite thermal pad vs. thermal paste considerations we made. Coolers are declared in the charts or verbally. We also give a tour of the testing facilities and thermal room (which is kept at about 21C, but monitored every single second of testing and logged).
This testing looks at the IC Diamond Graphite Thermal Pad, specifically tested against Thermal Grizzly Hydronaut paste. A lot of the testing for graphite thermal pads has been within the enthusiast community from DIYers, so that has meant fairly limited sets of comparable data. To expand upon the great effort invested by the community, we ran the compound and pads through multiple mount/remount tests for endurance, varying torque settings, two different coolers (one was the Corsair A500, which is bad because of its unflat coldplate), and with heatloads ranging 95W, 150W, 200W, and 270W, establishing the thermal range against paste as the power increases. The dummy heater is a synthesis for the 9900K IHS and uses a monolithic source of heat. All we want is repeatable, reliable testing for the granularity required to see thermal interface differences. A "real" computer is simply too variable -- another discussion entirely, shown in our above methodology piece -- and so we would have neither the confidence nor accuracy to represent the interfaces correctly. With the dummy heater, we avoid those issues. This testing will theoretically scale similarly across AMD Ryzen CPUs, as it's ultimately just the efficacy with which heat is pulled away from the IHS. If you're looking for the best thermal paste for Intel or for AMD Ryzen CPUs, the end result is the same: Get heat into the cooler efficiently, and this test starts to establish a baseline for our future thermal paste tests.
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TIMESTAMPS
00:00 - Graphite, Carbon, & Paste Thermal Interfaces
05:59 - Testing Basics, Torque, & Wattage
06:23 - Thermal Paste vs. IC Diamond Graphite Pad CLC 360
07:35 - Surface Flatness & Contact Issues Explained
09:30 - Corsair A500 Unflat Surface - Pad vs. Paste
11:16 - Low Mounting Pressure & Torque vs. Thermal Paste & Pad
14:00 - Thermal Testing Room Walkthrough
19:10 - Conclusion
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Testing, Editorial: Steve Burke
Video: Keegan Gallick, Andrew Coleman