Diamond Cooling

V-PV-P State College, PA Member
in Hardware
So I've been reading about people using diamond thermal paste which seems like it works really well. I also so that initially it started out as sort of a homebrew thermal paste and I'm just wondering, what if you mixed ultra fine diamond powder with something that would evaporate really fast (like 99% isopropyl) just to spread on the CPU/heatsink. Once you spread, you let the alcohol evaporate and you're left with a fine surface of diamond particles. Would that work (theoretically) better than using diamond powder in tandem with silicon grease?

Comments

  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    I do not think that pure diamond paste would be more beneficial and without data showing it's benefits, i would doubt people claiming diamonds in it were better at all.
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    The objective of thermal grease is to replace the air bubbles between contacting surfaces with something that has better thermal conductivity than air. You don't want your thermal paste medium to evaporate; anywhere it was will be filled with vapor.
  • V-PV-P State College, PA Member
    Drasnor, what I mean was to let it evaporate before you put on the heatsink. That way the vapors are completely gone and you'd dealing with only a fine layer of diamond powder. Basically it comes down to whether or not you think the diamond particles themselves would be small enough to fill the crevices and cracks in the materials on either side.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    A powder, by nature, includes many pockets of air in between particles. It sounds terrible to me, and I'm no scientist.
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    V-P said:

    Drasnor, what I mean was to let it evaporate before you put on the heatsink. That way the vapors are completely gone and you'd dealing with only a fine layer of diamond powder. Basically it comes down to whether or not you think the diamond particles themselves would be small enough to fill the crevices and cracks in the materials on either side.

    They wont
  • JokkeJokke Bergen, Norway Icrontian
    edited January 2013
    I'm no scientist either, but diamond powder sounds pretty abrasive to me.. Not to mention expensive.
  • RootWyrmRootWyrm Icrontian
    Industrial diamonds are actually terribly cheap. Because 90% of the price of diamonds is marketing hype to convince you they're valuable.
    "Diamond paste" has long been debunked as the pure hype it is. It tends to perform no better than standard thermal grease, largely because, hey guess what it's standard thermal grease with an overstated amount of "diamonds" in it. (7 carats for $7? Yeah, no, not even with industrial diamonds.) The only 'reviews' of the Innovation Cooling "diamond" compound? Are from Innovation Cooling. This review of Antec's "Compound 7" diamond thermal paste showed less than 0.5C difference from Noctua NT-H1 and 0.6C from good old AS5.

    Anyhow, back on topic: air gapping, which is what you're doing with an evaporative compound, is bad. Air gapping is an insulation method. That's why most homes out here have storm doors and then entry doors. That's why double pane windows lose less heat than single pane. List goes on. To see any benefit, you would need a solid diamond layer which takes you right back to no thermal compound essentially.
  • V-PV-P State College, PA Member
    Makes sense. Unfortunately I had already ordered the IC diamond compound before I posted this so I'll just go ahead and apply it, it HAS to be better than the stock ceramic stuff my laptop came with.
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