Gadgetory

we're not asking intel to start using liquid metal in today's content that's not really viable not on mass but we hope that this testing will help prove the significant thermal detriment faced by Intel's high-end desktop CPUs for using low-end thermal compound we're focusing in part one of this testing on the 7900 X and will expand testing shortly here after Intel has all of the overclocking Headroom in the world on their CPUs but the usage of a poor thermal interface material means that much of this is lost to thermal limitations ignoring overclocking even mainstream users must also buy higher-end coolers often 280 millimeters or up just to keep temperatures reasonable within a case especially while still considering noise with better thermal media Intel could reduce the hidden cost of the cooler and allow users to operate at lower noise levels this video is brought to you by the be quiet dark bass pro 900 white Edition the DBP 900 marks a return to full tower cases equipped with ample harddrive support effective noise damping foam high performance fans and the option to be inverted into an alternative layout learn more at the link in the description below there are valid reasons for Intel to use the thermal interface they do they use stuff from Dow Corning it's pretty good for longevity it has a high durability to thermal cycling which is what you care about you care about making sure that when cycling temperatures rapidly or on-and-off over many years of use the interface isn't going to crack and leave you with a processor that is inoperable so it's a trade off straight off between that and something else solder has some arguments for and against it we don't have any actual data to back any of those up because Intel doesn't publish those AMD doesn't publish those no one talks about it but there are alternatives to what Intel uses now and either better thermal paste or a solder of some kind or something like that but ultimately the current method is limiting Intel CPUs in overclocking which is really unfortunate because they are strong overclockers and even beyond that if you look at the cooler requirements there's hidden cost with until high-end CPUs where if you want it to operate with relative silence you really have to start investing in coolers it more so than if you bought well more so than if you replace the compound with liquid metal like we did or just something better than the stuff that's on there now and two Intel's credit there may be reasons they've gone with Tim outside of just it's cheaper maybe there's some kind of engineering challenge maybe there's something to do with the various grants that are afforded by the governments for things like being environmentally friendly which Tim is going to be you're actually more environmentally friendly than solder maybe there's something there but from an enthusiasts perspective there's better performance that could be had out of the CPUs and there's better Tim out there so we're gonna explore that today walk through the steps of deleting the processor applying liquid metal and showing the differences and again we're not asking Intel to go and start applying liquid metal to their CPUs it's just it moves around too much it's not really good for shipping it kind of needs to be replaced every now and then but this is as a stand-in for an alternative like solder which is a lot more realistic is currently used on AMD CPUs has been used by Intel in the past and that's kind of what we're using as an analog today for a high-end interface so we walked in through that now deleting we use their Bauer's deal with dime 8x we are using that for some other upcoming content as well and it'll be part two of this exploration reusing a conductor not thermal grizzly material for the liquid metal and we'll have more information on the testing process in the article below but the big part is that we're using prime95 and blender prime95 thermal or power cycles rather so when it power cycles you'll see stepping where the thermal charts will kind of go like this then like that and then maybe back down and that's because they are cycling power loads it's pretty predictable you can tell it what to do so that's a good test or something intensive blender is a good workload that's constant power throughput the same power throughput the same workload type the same everything so blender is really consistent for that so we got a bit of each and we'll be exploring the thermals from each of those types of tests we're starting with the most abusive and exaggerated test and then we'll move on to blender and lower frequency testing with prime95 running at 4.5 gigahertz and with a one-point 175 voltage ID we end up throttling on the CPU that's cooled with Intel stock thermal paste some cores are hitting the t.j.maxx at 105 C causing power throttling that we can show on our current clamp and we will momentarily keep in mind that the thermal differences here would be shown to an even greater degree if we hadn't been thermal throttling with the Tim on the CPU still we're at 99 Celsius Peak steady state temperature with Tim and 85 to 86 degrees Celsius with liquid metal and again that's ignoring the fact that the Tim version is thermal throttling so the differences would be greater and either way this is a reduction of 15c now without the thermal throttling consideration and we'll show more on that later moving to a three hundred sixty millimeter thermal take flow radiator doesn't appear to help us much when using Tim as we're still throttling and hitting a hundred Celsius temperatures but the throttling isn't as bad and we'll show that in our frequency plot but still the CPU is at 100 degrees Celsius average the three hundred sixty millimeter radiator helps in other instances which will show more in part two of this content but that's just not enough here Prime is abusive and we can survive with blender sometimes but that's about it liquid temperatures are sort of a question mark for us our original hypothesis was that liquid temperatures would increase with greater thermal transfer ability between the IHS and die but we're not measuring that here there's only one of a dozen tests in this particular plot but we've got many more coming in part two and that has the liquid temperature is roughly matched and that's when the power load is a lower shown here the cpus are thermal stepping along with primes power cycling with each relatively aligned data alignment is handled prior to number averaging anyway but you can see the step in here the liquid temperature ramps faster on the 7900 acts with Tim as does the core temperature and when we look at the power chart we're showing severe throttling on the unit with Tim but applying liquid metal brought down our temperatures enough to avoid throttling as a result of thermals so we can see these boosts and power consumption figures as measured at the EPS 12-volt cables because of the limitation that existed with the Tim unit this frequency plot shows the severity of the problem we're able to achieve higher clocks and hold them with liquid metal which speaks to the uselessness of Intel's Tim when overclocking it's unfortunate too because intel has the best overclocking candidates right now and performance jumps as much as 30% when running our CPUs with high o C's and liquid metal and we can easily get another 200 megahertz out of the clock by switching thermal interfaces so it's a real shame to see Intel squandered their advantages in an increasingly competitive market this is something they're good at overclocking is one of their strengths and yet when AMD is competing fiercely in taos to has parts that are choking their own advantages and needlessly so so that's disappointing to see it's unfortunate that you need increasingly better coolers and louder outputs just to hold on to these higher clocks that are so easily attained it's not like we're doing liquid nitrogen overclocking here we're not doing anything exotic we're just increasing the multiplier and the VI D both to levels that are perfectly within reason but in order to sustain them you need loud or big liquid coolers and it's just not necessary and it's unfortunate the liquid metal shows that it's not necessary moving on to our 4.5 gigahertz overclock with a 1.17 5 voltage ID we couldn't reasonably pass the blender render without the help of maglev fans and a 360 millimeter cooler we otherwise entered throttled territory this is especially true if you consider that we're testing on an open-air bench at around 24 degrees Celsius that's like room temperature testing in a case you'd easily bring an internal ambient averages up to 40 C that's why this is important that's why we're trying to convey to Intel to use better interface whether it's Tim or something else the CPU has all the potential in it but it'll thermal throttle quickly if using the stock Tim its squandered and we're not sure why it could be processed or it could be money but Intel has done better materials in the past and they can do it again looking at the numbers we're at 63 degrees Celsius with liquid metal and a 280 millimeter cooler with NZXT stock fans they're not even very good fans with thermal paste the CPU was hitting 73 degrees Celsius on a 360 millimeter cooler with three corsair maglev fans at max rpm these are some of the best fans you can buy on what is approaching the unreasonably large cooler sizes and the cooler setup was nearing 60 DBA during testing even when it passes it's just unacceptably loud and that's a 10 degree difference that favors the liquid metal mod when using a worse cooler with worse fans that's what this is about Intel is creating a hidden cost to its CPUs more noise and more money to get things cooled under overclocks and it's awfully unfortunate it's just painful to see such a good overclocking CPU such a huge advantage thrown away the CPUs can overclock exceptionally well to the point that they get fiercely competitive more than they already are and it's just squandered just to prove a point let's lower the clocks closer to stock just so there's no argument from Intel's End or anywhere else that we're doing something unreasonable by overclocking so looking now at a locked frequency of 3.6 gigahertz all core and locking voltage to 1.15 VI D yes it's a little higher than necessary but it won't change and that's the point using auto testing for example you can see improvements but Auto moves voltages around based on need it moves a lot of things around based on need so fixing the voltage to 1.15 VI D means that we can completely control the environment that's what we're going for anyway with this chart we're showing that liquid metal dragging down temperatures to around 68 degrees yes with the liquid temperatures now more evenly matched so this makes a bit more sense we think that this liquid temperature difference in the original chart might have something to do with some sort of nonlinear tripping point for either the cooler or the CPU or CPU temperatures of more than a hundred degrees Celsius start to cause some sort of runaway scenario we're really not sure we've been talking to people we don't know why the liquid Delta was so great in some tests that were heavily overclocked but not in the others but either way that's something we'll explore more in part two of this content which is coming out within a few days regardless the difference here is eighty degrees Celsius on the Timm unit versus 68 degrees Celsius on the liquid metal unit and with the X 62 and that's without any overclock in mind you that's a reduction of 12 degrees Celsius again without overclocking without serious / volts and as we saw earlier the temperatures further scale with higher power through put liquid temperatures here are with a margin of test error and variance but as we begin the overclock and I / volt that starts to run away a little bit next is blender so this is another chart this one's continuing the lower clock 3.6 gigahertz fixed and 1.15 VI D test with blender where we see about a 10 degree celcius improvement on the liquid metal version liquid temperatures are again with an error so are effectively equal we're about 51 to 52 degrees Celsius measured on the liquid metal version of the CPU with a 70 900 X at about 61 degrees Celsius on the Tim version another 10 degree difference for a lower frequency lower voltage workload so even without overclocking you've got advantages that are significant here's a look at power consumption for this test we're consistently drawing 212 to 214 watts down the EPS 12 volt cables with Tim and running about 205 on the liquid metal mod we need to do more testing to understand if this is just normal variance and error or if this is more repeatable this could be a power leakage reduction like we saw the Vega Frontier Edition and an efficiency improvement or it could be within margin of error we're not sure right now here's the test over time results are consistent we're at about 50 to 52 degrees Celsius steady-state with liquid metal and 6262 Celsius steady-state with Tim and I hope I'm making my point clearly here I mean again Intel this isn't just about overclocking it's not just about appealing to your 1% of users who push these CPUs as far as we might or as far as someone more extreme like their Bower might or build Zoid might this is about doing something that makes your products better tap into its performance in a greater way and improves the brand credibility to throw a buzzword in there to a point where it stops some of the criticism and from a mainstream user perspective you can now reduce the requirement of the cooler down to something like a 240 or a high-end air cooler get rid of the high rpm loud fans that I mean I'll put a chart on the screen we do cooler testing the coolers I've highlighted now are the ones that would do best with these CPUs at the noise levels that were showing on this chart and it's just it's louder than necessary it's more expensive than necessary so now your parts that have been criticized for price even if it's a fair price perhaps have a hidden cost of an extra X dollars for a better cooler that's a serious consideration for mainstream non enthusiast users but a lot of buyers of these products are enthusiasts or a lot of buyers of these products are workstation users and they have either noise concerns or just why would you spend more than you should concerns so we're not asking Intel to do a liquid metal for their CPUs but it'd be nice to see either an improvement in the thermal interface to use maybe a different one from the Dow Corning stuff that sees now or a consideration of going back to solder which would solve all these problems you'd put there Bauer's dealin time eights out of business unfortunately but I mean I spoke with their Bower about that at Computex and even he was like hey man that would make my job a lot easier so I'm ok with that everyone wants to see better interface and Intel although our contacts say they listen and I appreciate that you know who you are thank you for listening it just doesn't get that far up the chain so we decided to try and prove a point here D lid stuff uses liquid metal as the analog to a better material and show the potential for improvement show where these CPAs can go I mean again I can't talk about all the data today but we're seeing at least 100 megahertz improvement across the board and over clocks and in a couple cases we were getting an extra 2 to 300 megahertz by going to liquid metal and we could even drop the cooler garment down so that's a big deal you're talking four point eight Giga Hertz which is four point five and yeah you can push the voltage a bit higher to because now you can go up to one point two five or one point two four but that increases the power throughput that increases the temperature that increases the the thermal requirements of the cooler in terms of what it can handle so that's what this comes down to is with a better interface like liquid metal you can overclock higher you can keep the CPU cooler than the lower overclock and it'll be quieter and the cooler will be cheaper so guys it's like you win in every category by doing this I don't know that's so yeah anyway obviously we're still traveling or at least traveling again and I should say I'll be back home soon and Andrew will be home soon he'll be editing videos soon we'll have a lot more on this topic so subscribe if you're not already you can go to patreon.com/scishow and access to helps out directly it's a it's a big help at this point because we do these types of videos and I mean again I'm not trying to like make enemies with these companies but this it just seems like such an easy thing to improve your product in significant ways even just on the media side think of the praise you would get think of the reviews with the higher overclocks people just over talk to the highest they can get benchmark it and review based on that clock and based on stock if suddenly you can go two or three hundred megahertz higher even 200 megahertz higher that's a big deal so especially when you have a competition now like real competition for the first time in years anyway yeah patreon.com slash game sexist helps that directly subscribe for more thank you for watching hopefully will not be shooting in a hotel room soon I'll see you all next time you