jmke

Thanks to Arctic Silver and ANO Int we are able to bring you an extensive review of AS5.

I will be comparing it to:
- Arctic Silver 3
- Arctic Alumina
- Arctic Céramique
- CoolerMaster Premium (ShinEtsu)

Arctic Silver recommends that the AS5 is "burned" in during a period of ~200 Hours. During which the system needs to be powered down once in a while for the system to cool down and the thermal compound to settle in. AS also states that using good CPU cooling will speed up this process.

What I will be testing:
a) Effect of the "settling" in, when AS5 applied the "old way" (spreading out with bankcard)
b) Effect of the "settling" in, when AS5 applied the "new way", dropped a dot in the center of the CPU and letting the Heatsink spread the thermal compound by the pressure the HS generates on the CPU's die when mounting it.

What material will be used:
- Asus P4C800
- P4 2.4 "C" CPU
- Zalman CNPS7000A-Cu

The P4's heat spreader is lapped to a mirror finish, the Zalman is set to max speed.

The setup:

The system is installed without a case; during testing I'm recording the room temp + CPU temp every other minute to a log file using MBM5. The difference between room temp <> CPU temp is the info we are tracking.

The room temperature can rise high, since the setup is placed on a spot where there is no airflow at all.


Since this is a long-term project I will update this thread of irregular intervals to keep you up to date of my progress. If I had 5-10 identical test systems this article could be finished in less then one week, unfortunately, I do not (yet ) have those resources.

If you have any suggestion on the testing methods or what other compounds you want to see compared please don't hesitate to post a comment. Thanks in advance for your input; I hope the end-result will be something of value to you, the reader.

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jmke

The test-setup, don't mind the box of that Asus

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jmke

AS5

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The Senile Doctor

http://www.overclockers.com/articles885/

conclusion?

ceramique better then as5?

__________________
OC-2-the-death
Where the Reverend is doing his Magick, all mortals be silent
Doom over the world

jmke

he doesn't quite give concrete info, nor how long he "burned" them in. what was the difference between Ceramique and AS5?

if I can continue down the same road of "assumptions" I could now already state that AS5 performs 1°C better then AS Céramique... but that would be far from objective or even close to being "comparable"

look at this graph


check the HIGH fan zalman temp: 31.2°C
the room temp during that test was: 22°C
full article here.

My current room temp at the test setup is: 28°C
the current loaded CPU temp is: 36°C

if we add 6°C to the other room temp, we also get 28°C, if we also add it to the results: 37.2°C

But it would be a 5min hack&slash job to already make decisions and put the article online. it doesn't represent data acquired from the exactly the same surrounding, nor was it tested during several days to actually let the compound "settle in"

...

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The Senile Doctor

make you room 20°C please

__________________
OC-2-the-death
Where the Reverend is doing his Magick, all mortals be silent
Doom over the world

jmke

uhm.. why?

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The Senile Doctor

coz I think delta t is dependent of initial temp

but you're right in your conclusion, you cannot go and extrapolate results coz heatresistance can be different between both coolers

__________________
OC-2-the-death
Where the Reverend is doing his Magick, all mortals be silent
Doom over the world

jmke

My name is not Liquid3D ? I'm not going to freeze in my room just to have the temperature at 20°C.

As stated the system is set up in a corner, where thereis no airflow, you can compare it to a very big case, the room temp at that spot rises up to 27-28°C during benching. the rest of the room however is at a cosy 21°C. If I want a room/case temp of 20°C, I'll have to open all the windows and sit in a room where the temperature is 15°C.

*brrrr* the thought alone make me all chilly

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A-star

Or you can add a fan (a big one) blowing to that spot