IC Diamond -Performance v Quality and Reliability

Absent from most thermal compound reviews and discussions in the retail market are the ideas of quality and reliability, with the focus solely on the performance aspect. Equally or perhaps more importantly is how long will the the product function effectively in any given application. A simple analogy here would be which automotive tire would you buy, one that has a life expectancy of 5k miles or one with a life expectancy 50K miles? You most likely would purchase the quality 50K tire or perhaps the 5k if you were going to sell the car and wanted to limit your investment in a product you will no longer use.

An Important Issue Made Simple

If we take into consideration the chart below, there are 8760 hours in a year and factor into the equation that most thermal compound comparisons are made after the first couple of hours of break in. This represents only 0.02283105% of a one year window. However what if the comparison break in period was 400 hours or 4000 hours how would they fare at that point?

The Peanut Butter as a Interface Material Effect

This is a critical point as in the much overdone peanut butter and cheese comparisons in thermal compound roundups, if one was to look at the two hour data without knowing it would be the aforementioned it could be assumed that it was a typical compound unaware that it would likely fail in a few more hours. Thermal compounds are critically different and performance is inextricably linked with quality or durability over a span of time and not just the first moment of installation.

Nothing lasts forever and all compounds fail over time, first with an initial temperature increase of degree. Now if we factor in that the delta temperatures between compounds of being just a couple of degrees, would be become as large 4-5-6 or even 10C after a relatively short period. This would render the initial burn-in test comparison website review largely irrelevant.

IC Diamond -Performance v Quality and Reliability

The below photograph demonstrates a popular paste application of a popular retail compound. This example failed after 400 hours or lasted approximately 4.6% of the one year time window.

While as a practical matter a review site cannot test multiple compounds for months on end and so they avoid such cumbersome efforts. The alternative is through accelerated testing such as IntelTM does with with increased thermal loads to define durability/quality/reliability which is how they came to the conclusion that high viscosity or thick compounds with over 90% bulk loading last longer by virtue of it being harder to pump out a solid than a more liquid.

Accelerated Thermal Stress testing

Clear Evidence of a Myriad of Manufacturers Product Failure!

Shown below is an accelerated test demonstration of IC Diamond’s durability. The Thermalcompound test samples are sandwiched in between two 3X10 glass slides. With the test result being conducted for over twenty hours at 150c, the centre picture with moniker of ICD is IC Diamond whilst the others are top selling retail performance pastes.

Of the retail class of thermal compounds Innovation Cooling is the only one that we are aware of that provides this data.

Reliability In TRUE Battlefield Conditions!

A great real life model for accelerated stress testing can be found in the laptop market due to the knowledge that the average CPU temp runs 15C hotter than your similarly specified and overclocked overclocked PC and compound failure is a ONGOING problem!

Some examples:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gami...ml#post9804246

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alie...ting-days.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alie...ml#post9520969

Whilst the above are anecdotal and do not detail various conditions, as the contact and pressure which would impact longevity results and may perform better under other conditions. They do however highlight the important issue of reliability in a thermal compoundunder the high stress of today’s applications.

Websitehttp://innovationcooling.com/