Haven’t done any updates in a while, but I spent a few minutes tonight comparing this new IC Diamond thermal compound to the stuff that I already had on my Core i7 920 @ 3.8GHz on the Gigabyte EX58-EXTREME (Arctic Silver Ceramique that has been curing for a couple months). The results were not all that interesting. Using Intel Burn Test (basically Linpack) as a stress testing program with Prime95 small FFT to pick up the loose bits (IBT doesn’t seem to handle 8 threads at the settings I was using) my load temperatures were the same after remounting with IC Diamond compound, and a second mount gave me the same results again. There was a degree here or there, but given that the integrated sensor on the CPU is only accurate to +- 1 degree, that doesn’t really tell us anything useful.

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I’ve never really bought into the hype about high end thermal compounds, but I’ll continue to use this stuff. FWIW my initial testing was done using the grain of rice method, and my second mount was done by spreading out the compound. Neither made a lick of difference.

I’ll be moving from my Gigabyte to the DFI board in that picture over the next couple of days. Mostly I just need another USB header for the T-balancer I’ve got coming, but I also thought it might be fun to try something new. I’ve always wanted a (working) DFI…