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33-Way Thermal Interface Material Comparison

@ 2008/03/04

Benchmark Reviews has seen a lot of products made for the purpose of delivering better performance. Some of these products exist for overclockers and enthusiasts, and often times help deliver performance out of otherwise tame hardware. Other products sometimes only deliver the empty marketing claim of improvements. Of all the products we have seen and tested, one particular category always stands out as the culprit for over-hyped promises: Thermal Interface Material (TIM). Of all the heatsink compounds and thermal pastes made and marketed, they must all only concentrate themselves to deliver the simple function of mating the CPU to the cooler with the highest thermal conductivity possible. Of course, some work better than others, and this is exactly what Benchmark Reviews intends to discover. Please join us for a comprehensive testing of 33 different TIM products.

Comment from Kougar @ 2008/03/05

Not to mention that is just wrong... Thermal output hasn't been "reduced", Intel simply fits "more" into the same TDP. For those that overclock even a dual-core will find the temps quickly climb up there.

My little Q6600 can consume over 200w by its lonesome, with temperatures to match. At 3.2GHz using 1.3v is to hot to operate with an Artic Freezer 7 Pro... But a WC loop lets me operate it stable at 3.2GHz using 1.2v with load temperatures that are better than the AF 7 Pro's IDLE temperatures at the same voltages...

Comment from wutske @ 2008/03/05

Quote:

There is good reason for the exclusion of liquid-cooled reference in this article, and that is because processors have reduced their thermal output to such a point to where air cooling today is more effective than liquid-cooling years ago.

They totaly miss the point, the best performing TIMs are usualy used by people who care a lot about temperatures. People that want a quiet computer or overclockers are the target group for those TIMs and this group tends to use watercooling, especialy if they are more enthousiast or have too much time and money

Comment from Rutar @ 2008/03/04

as much as I like things tested to find the best, the margin of error should be mentioned

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