ThermalPaste
Latest
Intel caught using cheap thermal paste in Ivy Bridge?
For all the good stuff it brings, Ivy Bridge has also been running a little hotter than reviewers and overclockers might have liked -- and that's putting it mildly. A few weeks back, Overclockers discovered a possible culprit: regular thermal paste that sits between the CPU die and the outwardly-visible heatspreader plate. By contrast, Intel splashed out on fluxless solder in this position in its Sandy Bridge processors, which is known have much greater thermal conductivity. Now, Japanese site PC Watch has taken the next logical step, by replacing the stock thermal paste in a Core i7-3770K with a pricier aftermarket alternative to see what would happen. Just like that, stock clock temperatures dropped by 18 percent, while overclocked temperatures (4GHz at 1.2V) fell by 23 percent. Better thermals allowed the chip to sustain higher core voltages and core clock speeds and thereby deliver greater performance. It goes to show, you can't cut corners -- even 22nm ones -- without someone noticing, but then Apple could have told you that.
IBM researchers unveil next-gen chip cooling technology
That clever Mr. Moore has his law proven correct on a regular basis, but we're not so sure he was accounting for the blistering byproduct a chip emits when speeds increase and efficiency doesn't. While CPUs and GPUs alike are kicking our kilowatt meters into overdrive, IBM researchers have been developing a newfangled method to cool processors down without the need for water. The technique, called "high thermal conductivity interface technology," allows a twofold improvement in heat removal over current methods -- a "highly viscous paste" is applied between the "chip cap and the hot chip" in order to decrease thermal resistance, while the "tree-like" architecture enables the goo to spread more uniformly and attain a thickness of "less than 10 micrometers." Although the concept seems to rely on carefully structured heatsinks and thinly applied thermal paste, the proposed results of this energy-free cooling contraption are indeed impressive, and if IBM's snazzy contrivance can honestly perform "ten times better" than current applications, maybe that leap in processor efficiency can just relocate to the back burner again after all.
MacBook Pros overheating due to thermal grease?
This isn't the first time the accusation's been leveled at a company: misapplication of thermal grease causing overheating hardware got a bunch of Xbox 360 fans in a furor over what turned out to be intentional manufacture. Well, a Something Awful forum poster by the name of Interrupting Moss was having (unintentional) thermal issues with his own overheating 129° F MacBook Pro, so he cracked it open and found a dearth of silvery paste. He generously reapplied his own and re-gauged the temperature at 103° -- a 26 degree drop, and that's only an IR reading of the keyboard area. Is this a cure-all for overheating MacBooks the world over? Hard to say, but if your MacBook is too hot to handle (certainly not too cold to hold), you might consider a more mano a la máquina approach before you wait in line to talk to a Genius just to have him/her whisk away your precious laptop for who knows how long. [Warning: link possibly NSFW][Via The Inq]
Microsoft crew pwns German heatsink video
After a video (and accompanying investigative post) showed up by German gaming site GameStore24.de purporting to show a severe oversight in the Xbox 360 production lines, the internet was ablaze with rumblings that the cause of the overheating 360s had been discovered: a small piece of foil placed over the thermal paste on the GPU's heatsink had failed to be removed. Apparently some 360s had the foil and some didn't. The assumption: that its presence was a result of a failure to be removed at the factory. The foil must have been some sort of protection to keep the paste from getting funky.Microsoft's John Porcaro got the straight poop right from the 360 manufacturing team. His response (and his double negative): "The video and photos posted by German blog GameStore24.de show thermal interface pads that are not installed incorrectly. They are installed per specification. This foil eliminates the need of a protective liner, which simplifies the final assembly process and minimizes shipping concerns and contamination issues." Yup, he has the charts and graphs and product names and everything to prove it. They used the wonderfully named THERMFLOW T558 which features the "conformal metal foil carrier." Porcaro doesn't explain why one of the 360s opened by GameStore24.de didn't contain the foil. Did it use the foil-less--but otherwise similar--THERMFLOW T557? Or is there a rogue factory worker on a misguided one-man mission to foil the 360's global gaming goals?[Thanks to everyone who sent this in... both parts of it.]
