so everyone knows that for a CPU to last longer and perform optimally it needs to
stay cool which makes it all the more confusing that Intel over the last few
generations at least according to comments from the
tech community has been using seemingly the worst possible thermal compound
between the dyes of their processors and the integrated heat spreaders that go on
top of them but the problem is that the only way to evaluate that thermal
compound that we have now is to take off the spreader replace it with something
else and check the results but we're actually changing a lot of variables
when we do that so we devised a test to find out once and
for all just how bad is Intel's thermal
paste alex here has got an entire bag of Intel cpus with
their junk thermal compound and we're going to be harvesting all of it and
then comparing it with the well-respected nth1 from Noctua a
premium thermal paste on a d-lidded liquid metaled extreme edition CPU
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to get a baseline we first needed to apply some nth1 thermal paste from
Noctua and mount the nhd15 cooler that we'd be using for our tests it performs
as well if not better than large aios
but is way easier to mount all of our testing was done in our conference room
to keep ambient temperatures locked at 24 degrees at stock speeds with
multi-core enhancement turned off and the CPU fan at full blast
30 minutes starting now while our control thermal test was running we had
some time to begin what we're calling the grand tim harvest
we aren't totally sure if these processors work but
we don't want to just destroy them like so many things d-litting is pretty
simple when you have the right tools place the CPU in the little vise tighten
until the top moves a bit and then remove the lid which normally you would
do by hand but these ones seemed pretty reluctant to let go and we wanted to get
this over with once all the cpus were opened we scraped off all the thermal
interface material we could get at with a guitar pick and then carefully placed
it on an esd bag now you might be thinking guys
those are third gen core series chips that came out six years ago
how can this be a fair comparison well the longevity of Intel's paste is one of
the main justifications that we have heard for them using it also it's a heck
of a lot easier to get a bag of third-gen chips than uh 8th gen
chips oh the savagery
look at this this is like they came in and
wrecked up the place well you don't have to do that to them
well that's a fair point okay so oh so this is it yeah that's
all of it right there don't blow on it i'm not gonna blow on it so this is our
harvested thermal interface material
from four cpus this looks like it should be more than enough for our 7980xe
after inspection we found that our first application of thermal paste was
excellent so these results should be perfect for our comparison do you think
there's like a good way to get this on there i think we're in uncharted waters here
right now i hadn't really given it a lot of thought to be perfectly honest with you
several methods of applying the old thermal goop were considered including
just placing it onto the CPU but without a way to spread it around we
were concerned that we wouldn't get adequate coverage
mashing it into a ball seemed promising but it just kind of
flaked out and turned into a weird powder finally we turned to what seemed like
the soberist idea soaking it in alcohol
is that doing anything i'm not sure yet alex although this
doesn't seem like the best of ideas it's actually not the worst ever either the
alcohol should allow what is currently thermal dust to turn back into more of a
paste for application and then quickly evaporate away
our spudger ended up being too fine of a tool so we swapped it out using the
allen key from the d-litting tool as a makeshift pestle for our bottle cap
mortar making a reconstituted thermal paste
here oh i don't miss it what's going on i
spilled the alcohol so ridiculous
this alcohol spill might have been a blessing in disguise
this may be one of the dumbest things we've ever done yeah i was trying to
think of dumber things but this is really up there
should we try to spread it out more or i mean we got the particle size pretty
small ish with the tim spread out to the best of
our abilities all we could do was wait for the alcohol to dry
like i guess we should just go for it now
this we have no choice but we've committed this much time and
energy to this now initial temperatures at idle had us at just over six degrees
over ambient meaning that our application worked at least to some
degree well it might just be more oddly now it was like 30 watts before outfit
like eight okay so you don't think it's the
material heating up and spreading out i think it's just Windows as all the way
started but we wouldn't know how well it worked until we hit it with an intense
load uh it didn't i mean it didn't instantly
overheat but this is probably a fair bit hotter
88.
now our earlier test gave us a maximum temperature of 60 degrees and an average
temperature across the course of 50 degrees while maintaining a CPU power of
about 150 watts with our reconstituted
Intel tim we almost immediately blew past that reaching a maximum of up to 89
degrees ouch before settling into an average of 75 degrees to be clear this
is a totally acceptable number that shouldn't harm the processor within its
expected lifespan but 25 degrees more than the enthusiast
solution still isn't great but
is the problem the paste or the application this is the real moment of
truth because we weren't expecting it to perform as well anyway right
did it spread actually it did i think if we described that as
sub-optimal but adequate it doesn't seem to have um
liquided up at all so with our decent enough application we
feel at this point that it's safe to say that the 25 degree difference was at
least largely due to the poor thermal conductivity of the paste that is inside
the CPU and supporting our theory is the
fact that this difference is actually pretty close to the temperature
difference that you can achieve after deleting a CPU and replacing that stock
thermal interface material so to answer our original question there are a number
of variables that you end up changing when swapping out thermal paste in your
delidded processor including mounting
pressure the thickness of the application the silicone seal the
flatness of the heat spreader but as everyone expected it's Intel's choice
of a longevity optimized tim rather than
a performance optimized one and their decision to eschew solder that
makes up the bulk of the difference
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