What Metal CPU Surface IHS? Own Thermal Paste.

[video_magic]

I have searched on the internet but couldn't find the answer.

I have a computer which has a Core2 Duo E6420, I would like to know what metal the surface of the CPU (which has the CPU info printed on it) is made of. Couldn't find that out despite exhaustive Google searches and reading Wikipedia pages.

The reason I want to know is because I am going to make some thermal paste and the ingredients must not react badly to the metal of the 'Integrated Heat Spreader' as I understand the metal surface of the CPU is named; For example Graphite should
not be used with Aluminium, so I hope it's not made from Aluminium as I hope to use ultrafine Graphite powder with a dab of Copper-grease (aka Copaslip). My passive heatsink is copperbased.

I know one can buy diamond thermal paste but I don't like the damage it can do to the CPU surface markings - this is my next best 'Carbon-based' solution.

[namaiki]

Um. Please don't spill any graphite onto your MB.

[video_magic]

I'm aware graphite as electrically very conductive :) thanks for the warning anyway.

The dab of copper grease should bond and contain all the graphite very stabily - I have reasearched that it will not run nor bleed, as well as it will be quite thermally conductive its' self as a medium along with the Graphite.


---
If my thermal compound is successful I will let everyone know and post some details. I imagine in our video-encoding community that solutions for CPU heating problems are to be welcomed.

[namaiki]

Does this article say it's made of copper? http://www.legitreviews.com/article/402/1/

edit: nickel, then copper maybe?

edit2: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=56892

[video_magic]

Good search results - thanks! Thinking about it, I guess you must have searched for CPU lapping.

So the material is Copper with a plating of nickel - I thought it looked silver-coloured. Now I'll go and check the properties of Nickel.

Thankyou again.

[mr soft]

Are you having temp issues or is this just for fun ?
I´ve found that there is little difference in playing with thermal pastes and a lot of temp problems can be resolved with better case airflow, or lapping , or pressure mods. Too much or too little thermal paste will also give undesired temps.
Either way, good luck with your project.

[CWR03]

You can actually purchase thermal paste that is copper/graphite. I have some, and I don't recall on the packaging any warnings about it possibly reacting to metals in processors or heat sinks.

[video_magic]

Are you having temp issues or is this just for fun ?
I´ve found that there is little difference in playing with thermal pastes and a lot of temp problems can be resolved with better case airflow, or lapping , or pressure mods. Too much or too little thermal paste will also give undesired temps.
Either way, good luck with your project.

Thanks for that. I am not having major temperature issues, except that after a few minutes of running full load the 56C is getting a bit close to my max of 60.1C - I want to increase this safety margin. I don't want to lap my IHS nor my passive copper heatsink.
http://processorfinder.intel.com/Details.aspx?sSpec=SLA4T

I'm using white silicon cheap grease. Rather than pay out for diamond paste (which may damage my CPU surface markings) I thought I would pay out for some ingredients for my own better thermal paste concoction (better than white silicon I mean). There is also an exciting fun element to this as well.


You can actually purchase thermal paste that is copper/graphite. I have some, and I don't recall on the packaging any warnings about it possibly reacting to metals in processors or heat sinks.

Please would you tell me something about that copper/graphite paste and I will look to track some down? What were your observations or experience with that paste? Thanks. I am just hoping for maybe a 5C drop.

[AnonCrow]

For one of my CPUs , I used plain automotive coppergrease / copper paste ( http://www.google.com/images?q=coppergrease ) , years before the thread on coppergrease at overclockers.com (first hit on google for 'coppergrease cpu') : a ceramic 68040@25MHz overclocked to 33Mhz. No shorts so far.

[mariush]

That CPU will run just fine at up to 70-75 C. Changing thermal paste will give you at best 3-5 C.

Just change the stock cooler with a better one. I personally have this model, Zerotherm FZ 120 (http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16835887016), which keeps my Q6600 (quad 2.4 Ghz) at 32C idle and about 45C while encoding movies.

Sure, it costs more than probably the 10$ you're going to spend working on paste and whatever, but maybe your time is also worth something - not to mention risking short circuits or damaging your CPU. 20-35$ spent on a better cooler may be a better investment.

Very good thermal pastes are also cheap, about 5-10$...

[video_magic]

mariush:
The max Thermal Specification is quoted as 60.1C on Intels page which I linked to, it says for 'Thermal Specification':
Thermal Specification: The thermal specification shown is the maximum case temperature at the maximum Thermal Design Power (TDP) value for that processor. It is measured at the geometric center on the topside of the processor integrated heat spreader.

As I say also, I am using a (heavy duty) passive copperbased heatsink, not a stock on. I've plenty of airflow through my case, but I am using white siliconpaste which seems to be the thing I need to upgrade to see my temps. go down.

I know I can buy better paste - & probably will if this fails, I don't wan't to buy another heatsink & especially not one with a fan. I just want to spend a few quid and try my own idea (which should work) but be safe about it.

I've got my greases now (no need to buy Coppergrease as I only need a dab, got that from a friend), I've also got general purpose Lithium grease. Now for ultrafine natural graphite powder.
Thanks all :)

[CWR03]

I couldn't find the copper/graphite stuff I have (maybe discontinued because of its extremely high electrical conductivity) but I found this:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3829121&CatId=503

[burfadel]

The differences between cpu coolers is bigger than the differences between good thermal pastes. Note I did say good thermal pastes, not just any thermal paste!

Here a great site for info on cpu coolers:
http://www.frostytech.com

Top 5 heatsinks listed here:
http://www.frostytech.com/top5heatsinks.cfm

They also have a comparison test showing the temperature above ambient temperature the cooler performs at. They show the list each time a review is done, adding the latest cooler. The list as part of the latest review is listed here:
http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2521&page=5

My point being, if the difference using a graphite/copper grease paste only gives a 1 degree benefit over that of a really good thermal paste, one that is safe and non conductive, its really non-beneficial. It won't make a difference overclockability wise, if you do manage to get an extra mhz or two out of it, if the room warms up a degree or two then you're back to where you started!

[video_magic]

Indeed, the summer is coming & with using a passive heatsink I have taken this into account - recently redoing the fans in that pc.

I am happy with my passive heatsink which is quite a chunky well-made item copperbased & quite some weight. It is well seated with four screws to a base plate.

Thanks for the info above, all concerns appreciated and noted. I have ordered my (natural) graphite powder today. Expense on this project so far is £5 - for the powder.

I must say the 'Coppergrease' looks quite black although this is not through contaminants - and coppergrease pictures I have looked at on the 'net look quite coppery in colour. Slight concern there as I know some brands will have different copper ratio amounts - obviously I want a high ratio of copper.

[video_magic]

One more quick post for some 'cooling info' which many of you may not know - indeed, I did not until last month! :D

Many new Intel CPUs have EIST which you could enable in the BIOS. The idea is that when your CPU is not under load (does not require much processing power for tasks) you would want it to slow down so that it draws less current which translates into less heat emitted.

But did you know, it seems under Windows XP to actually use EIST you need to go into your Power Options and then Power Schemes and choose Portable/Laptop? You can find this out easily on the internet if you search, but until last month I did not know this. I changed to it as soon as I found out, and many people I've asked didn't know to do that either. I'm talking about if you are running a normal desktop pc here, doesn't have to be a portable.

Probably save on your electric bills too! Through Control Panel - System - General tab it should indicate your rated and current CPU speed. Mine drops to 1.6ghz when I am not encoding or doing much.

[namaiki]

Yup. Vista and Windows 7 will do it under the Balanced and Power Saver power profile. (Power Saver - Vista: throttle CPU always. 7: CPU clock speed switches slower and tries to stay down more) For Balanced, it will switch as usual.

[video_magic]

Good info, I have stayed with XP thus far and did not like Vista when I tried it on other peoples' computers. Pointless bloatware most of it. I have not heard anything much to bother with Windows 7 , I like to keep everything running 'light' yet functional for my needs.

Anyway, while I await my graphite powder to arrive, and actually my new E6700 which I managed to get cheap (might as well upgrade the CPU at the same time! :) ), here is an interesting link about carbon thermal paste - PDF is only about 520kb. Seems Carbon Black powder is even better if one can get the right stuff.
http://wings.buffalo.edu/eng/mae/cmrl/Electrically%20nonconductive%20published.pdf

[burfadel]

Upgrading on an older computer to Windows 7 is probably unnecessary, but definitely with a new computer Win 7 x64 is the way to go. Either way, a heatsink comes in to play when you are using the cpu at 100 percent. An idle temp of 20C and an idle temp of 25C won't make any difference, its when its working that counts!

[video_magic]

Okay, I have my paste on, with my new E6700 (upgrading from an E6420). Results not that good - after about 20 minutes both nearly idle cores are hovering around 39C-40C. Have seen it flicker for half a minute up to 45C even though nothing special was happening that I know about - I run a pretty light and clean XP SP2 system. Anyway, I made an intial 'blob' using (by volume) about 1/5 copper grease 1/5 lithium grease (because I read that is a softer, more fluid metal) and 3/5 graphite powder. The blob was about the size of a normal cooked garden pea. I did not apply this blob - I had second thoughts and made another using just lithium grease. This is what I am running with now, I think there is a settling-in persiod with my paste, it has decreased a little now back down to 38-39.
My GPU (asus 8400gs silent 512mb) has an aluminium passive heatsink and I have that now using just a slight even dab-smear of the Lithium grease - that has gone up to a steady 46C running almost idle - it used to run at 42C.

So far then, I have not experienced success, but I may well fork out another 5 or 6 quid for some carbon-black. The graphite powder particles look bigger like very small flakes rather than the 'silky dust' I had expected - I suspect that smaller particles should give me better results.

The below picture shows the blob of copper-grease (quite thick stuff) I got from a friend in a little white pot, the blue tub of lithium-based grease (from a motoring shop), and the white tub of Graphite powder which I got from Ebay.

The spoon has the first mixed blob of copper grease, lithium grease and graphite powder.

http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/7630/imag0533.jpg

[burfadel]

Grease is a little tricky as I'd presume it would act as a partial insulator against heat, not a conductor. You need to use as little as possible that still achieves the purpose of using the grease in the first place. You don't want the grease to be the main effective conductive medium, its purpose is to fill in the microscopic imperfections on both the heatsink and the cpu. Having the two surfaces together, even though it might look like they're flush in reality the actual contact points between the surfaces is relatively low, Thernal grease fills in the gaps allowing a much greater contact surface, which leads to greater cooling efficiency. For this to work, the grease needs to be an excellent thermal conductor, as well as be fine enough to fill these gaps. The reason why you want to use as little as possible but still effective is simple, it allows greater efficiency. Picture the hypothetical situation of having the cpu, then 10cm (4 inches) of thermal grease/paste, then the cooler. How well do you think the cpu will keep cool? not very well!

A very quick look up of thermal conductivity for graphite put it at:
Thermal conductivity (W/m.K) 25-470

Another quick search let me to this thread:
http://www.overclock.net/cooling-experiments/497445-pyrolytic-carbon.html

I think the problem you have is the graphite used, and the binder! The graphite used may be suitable for most purposes, just not for what you need it for?...

[video_magic]

Thanks Burfadel. I have done a new test. I very thoroughly cleaned off all the previously used grease and paste using Isopropanol alcohol.

This time I have used standard white silicon thermal paste and graphite powder for the CPU, and just a thin smear of standard white silicon thermal paste for the GPU.

After over an hour of fairly idle load (just surfing the internet and reading), the 'idle' temperatures are now as follows:

37-38 CPU cores.

44C GPU

A little better than when I used Copper grease. I think the Graphite powder has a too large particle size and is too crystally.

[video_magic]

I have now had my E6700 two cores running 'idle' (just webbrowsing) consistently throughout the day and night, in sessions of usage of several hours at only:

29C 30C (as reported by Real Temp version 3.40)!

24C 25C (as reported by Core Temp version 0.9.9.6)!

This is just by using basic cheap white silicon grease like I was using originally!
I found, however, that I had to use more than twice as much around the centre of my CPU top surface than before, which then of course flattens out when the passive-heatsink is put on and screwed down - too little (just a rice-grain smear like some guides said) had not been enough for me.

I also redid my fans - I now have 3 case fans strategically placed and a little more noise, but in the summer it is probably better to have extra airflow in case one fails, but this extra fan will cancel out the higher ambient case temperature from the hot weather we have had since the weekend, in my reported temperatures above.

I am still going to try carbon-black, thinking of getting something like this, which is quite cheap:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140390226927

[swaaye]

http://www.dansdata.com/goop.htm :D