Ivy Bridge thermal grease

[Barcode]

I read a article in custom PC(cant remember issue) in which they replaced the thermal paste Intel used to make the contact between the core and the heatsink.

From what i understand Intel used solder for Sandy CPU's and then decided to cut costs and use thermal paste for Ivy chips, thats why Ivy doesn't run as cool as Sandy.

I get the impression that the thermal paste is not always consistently applied and thats why some Ivy chips run hotter than expected.

Some people and also the aforementioned article claims a reduction in temps of about 15 degrees under load.

After consulting with google, I came to the conslusion that some people seem to be getting a minor difference in temps, whereas others get the magic 15 degrees difference.

I myself am running a 3770k under a h80 and feel that the change in temps when oc'ing is not worthwhile and its more than fast enough at stock, but if it was running 15 degrees cooler, id be singing a different tune.

All things considered it does not look like a risk I'd be willing to take, as there is cutting involved, this will void your warranty and could possibly damage your chip beyond repair and the only thing thats good for is opening a thread so people can lol at your mishap and learn from your mistakes.

Has anyone here done this, thought about it, or know about anyone who has?

 

[NavZ]

What I can suggest is get some quality thermal paste & if applied perfectly you could see a huge improvement.
(assuming they/you messed up the application, which is often the case)
I don't see the need to OC a 3770 but it's always nice to have the option.
If you're only after gaming fps, I'd rather watercool an overclockable GPU

 

[Nospheratu]

I did read an article that mentioned it wasn't the actual thermal paste Intel is using that causes the temp increase but the actual adhesive they use to stick the heatspreader. (The bit that you cut through with a razor to remove the heatspreader). Its thicker than it should be which causes a larger gap between the die and the heatspreader.

They mentioned that was the reason why there are/were so many contrasting results as people concentrated on the paste rather than removing the adhesive properly. I'll try to find the link.

edit: Cant seem to find the article Closest I could find was this. Interesting read.

 

[Oj0]

What I can suggest is get some quality thermal paste & if applied perfectly you could see a huge improvement.
(assuming they/you messed up the application, which is often the case)
I don't see the need to OC a 3770 but it's always nice to have the option.
If you're only after gaming fps, I'd rather watercool an overclockable GPU

Water cooling a graphics card for any reason other than aesthetics is a silly idea. There are air coolers just as quite, almost as cool and a fraction of the price - unless you really want to spend a few thousand on a loop to gain an extra 20 to 30 MHz.

 

[Barcode]

I did read an article that mentioned it wasn't the actual thermal paste Intel is using that causes the temp increase but the actual adhesive they use to stick the heatspreader. (The bit that you cut through with a razor to remove the heatspreader). Its thicker than it should be which causes a larger gap between the die and the heatspreader.

They mentioned that was the reason why there are/were so many contrasting results as people concentrated on the paste rather than removing the adhesive properly. I'll try to find the link.

edit: Cant seem to find the article Closest I could find was this. Interesting read.

Wow this is a good read, so its entirely because of the reduction in gap height between the CPU silicon die and the underside of the IHS.

In the article in the custom PC they used some sort of arctic silver thermal adhesive to stick the IHS to the cpu silicon die, this must have closed the gap completely.

I'm a firm believer now, that if you are willing to take the risk, you can prepare yourself for some awesome temps, especially when overclocking.

 

[NavZ]

Water cooling a graphics card for any reason other than aesthetics is a silly idea. There are air coolers just as quite, almost as cool and a fraction of the price - unless you really want to spend a few thousand on a loop to gain an extra 20 to 30 MHz.

I meant DIY a closed loop to fit like the H100.
Read about some interesting results but I wouldn't go that far...
I just meant that a GPU is more NB. for gaming but I agree it would probably be more for bragging rights

 

[Squigly]

Im not sure I agree about water cooling of a GPU, a few more benefits than just aesthetics, from my experience I achieved a 40 degree drop in temps on standard clocks, significantly more than any after market air cooler I had seen. This allowed me to get an extra 170Mhz out of the gpu's and even with that overclock the temps were still 10 - 15 deg cooler than the stock cooler on stock clocks (gainward phantom gtx580 3gb) there was also a significant reduction in noise having everything under water.. Expensive.. HELL YES!! but there are some benefits there, and from what I have seen Nvidia's GPU boost 2.0 will play towards water cooling in the future.

 

[Oj0]

RPM for RPM, a 40'c drop with a stock cooler, all yours: ARCTIC Accelero Twin Turbo II & Accelero Xtreme III « Reviews « FlyingSuicide.Net. Auto speed on the stock cooler vs the maximum (which is still almost inaudible) speed on the ARCTIC cooler still yields nearly 30'c better temperatures. That is all yours for a bit less than half what it would cost to set up a water loop from scratch to cool your graphics card - meaning the first half knocks off about 30'c while the second half only knocks off another third of that. This confirms what I said, the extra will gain you 20 to 30 MHz - unless you think that the last 10'c is what gave you 170 MHz extra... It is also quiet enough not to be heard over the noise of 7,200 RPM hard drives.

GPU Boost 2.0 will still be limited by a power envelope.

 

[milkshakes]

All things considered it does not look like a risk I'd be willing to take, as there is cutting involved, this will void your warranty and could possibly damage your chip beyond repair and the only thing thats good for is opening a thread so people can lol at your mishap and learn from your mistakes.

why do i get the feeling this is a reference to me...
in any case its probably not worth it,as once you have butchered the ihs,if it doesnt go back right,you could crush your cpu in the process of putting the cooler back on.
i have heard of allot of chips dying when their ihs's were removed (either due to the removal process or the treatment of the cpu after that.)

 

[NavZ]

RPM for RPM, a 40'c drop with a stock cooler, all yours: ARCTIC Accelero Twin Turbo II & Accelero Xtreme III « Reviews « FlyingSuicide.Net. Auto speed on the stock cooler vs the maximum (which is still almost inaudible) speed on the ARCTIC cooler still yields nearly 30'c better temperatures. That is all yours for a bit less than half what it would cost to set up a water loop from scratch to cool your graphics card - meaning the first half knocks off about 30'c while the second half only knocks off another third of that. This confirms what I said, the extra will gain you 20 to 30 MHz - unless you think that the last 10'c is what gave you 170 MHz extra... It is also quiet enough not to be heard over the noise of 7,200 RPM hard drives.

GPU Boost 2.0 will still be limited by a power envelope.

That is an amazing cooler & def silent, but a DIY closed loop isn't too expensive...
I have minimal knowledge regarding OC & WC but from what I read, there is potential.
As I said, I doubt I'd go that route but I'd take my hat off to someone who pulls it off