TechPowerUp! Official IC Diamond Test

[crazyeyesreaper]

hmmm interesting

[IC Diamond]

Originally Posted by cadaveca

What's curious to me is that the "new" pitting shows the copper of the base through quite obviously, while the "pre-pasting" pic does not.

Maybe plating is being removed somehow?


As mentioned before, I did not get a recent test sample, so my interest in this is purely as an intellectual exercise. It's quite curious, to me.

I have a Noctua cooler here, have used it for a couple of years now nearly in my review testing, which means multiple mounts per week, every week. I've used every paste on the market at this point, since actual cooling means little to me testing, and is more for checking fitment issues, but that said, my heatsink has a similar base to the original picture posted by Sneekypeet. I have now sent this cooler to another staff member here. He has a sample tube from you, I think, and I'll ask him to try the paste out and see what happens. Maybe it's some issue with the plating.



I just want to know what's causing the issue..specifically...the idea that it's contamination of some sort, doesn't help prevent the same from being repeated by other users in the future. Properly identifying exactly what causes the problem will go a long way to build consumer confidence, IMHO.

Looks to me from the last pic this had no plating.

Multiple pits are clear so I would assign no local contamination to it as he might have missed a large piece or two of grit but not a general sprinkling of fine sand.

what is clear is pits outside the contact area of same type and size which indicate it happened prior to his receipt/installation.

I asked for him to send the test sample along with the sink but he had already emptied the tube looking for oversized particles and found none.

In any event our compound like MX$ Shin Etsu etc. has grit of multiple sizes that are engineered or sized for full best contact. Thermal compounds are mixed for hours so when applied there are no groupings of material, that is if your mix is 1/3 1/3 1/3 any sample from anywhere in the compound will have the same equal 1/3 1/3 1/3 mix. Find a grouping of large particles would be like opening a can of freshly mixed blue paint and finding purple and yellow pigment particles floating on the top

So I took a sample of 20 grams from the batch over the holiday and washed it and found nothing out of spec.

So if you have problem send me the sink and sample I will scope the sink and wash out the compound or send it for independent analysis it is not a big deal to measure and map particle size.

As to the degree of the alleged problem out of 50 or so samples sent so far we have two complaints that are completely different.

One a single large pit that appears to large to even pass through the end of tube also does not conform to the shape of diamond so would have to be something other than diamond and unlike the multi pit example the entire IHS shows no evidence of damage which would be inconsistent with the multi pit example and with the physics of mixing.

That being if there was a problem it would the same problem not one and then the other.

Also being thoroughly mixed it would be universal throughout so 50 or more people would be reporting the problem.

I would like to resolve this definitively and would prefer no amateur investigations. I can arrange for anyone with a posted problem to send your sample directly at my expense to an independent lab for analysis as to particle size and we will post the result here.

[cadaveca]

Originally Posted by IC Diamond

I would like to resolve this definitively and would prefer no amateur investigations. I can arrange for anyone with a posted problem to send your sample directly at my expense to an independent lab for analysis as to particle size and we will post the result here.

Thanks, That's exactly the sort of response I was looking for from day one.


But again, I'll re-iterate.. I do not think you can blame this issue on particle size. I do not really think, at this point, that particle quality is the issue.

Either, there is some weird chemical reaction going on, causing excessive corrosion(like the pit on that copper CPU), or, this is an artifact of the paste removal, acting as a polishing compound.


I appreciate you not wanting amateur investigations, however, when I posed these same issues to you 5 years ago when you made your first public sampling on HWC, you ignored my problem(and my $950 of dead hardware), and here I sit, trying to make sure to solve the problem for others. I feel that I can safely say that had myself and others not raised any concern, you may have even gone this far.


So, to sum up, again, I think you are ignoring many possible factors here by simply assuming the problem is due to particle size, and secondly, thanks for sticking with this discussion, as unpleasant/unprofessional as it might be.



FYI, my posts here in this thread are my own, and have nothing to do with my position here @ TPU. I would have posed similar questions/etc no matter the forum. I hsven't spoken to W1zzard or any other staff here about this issue, and have taken my own initiative here.

[fullinfusion]

^
that sounds fair hey.

[sneekypeet]

Originally Posted by IC Diamond

You only can get rancid out of an organic that contains fats and lipids, this is synthetic and contains none. This has essentially the same base as a motor oil no difference and is pretty inert just not much it is going to react to.

As to acid you might see that in a car engine but it is a by product gas combustion and accumulates over time and can separated or filtered out but does cause the oil itself to be acidic.

Having just talked to a chemist at the company that produces the oil he tells me that there is no known combination of chemicals that could be introduced that would turn the base oil acidic

Actually you can find the damage in the fresh from factory pic posted, I did not post it as the connection was tenuous but for me provided a clue as to source to look for.

I can only say that in my experience running on test setups with pure copper test dies and sinks from 30W to 200W in time frames from several hours to several months I have never experienced any pitting or scratching on mirror finish contact surfaces.

I enlarged the original and changed brightness and contrast to highlight imperfections

http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/l...ps0d2f01a7.jpg

To test whether they were not dust on the camera lens or an artifact from the computer I then used the measuring tool in Gimp on the similarly sized pics I located one point then located the others at the appox. same angle and distance on the second picture from the original selected point and found 12 or 13 out of 18 that were on the original factory fresh sink. I am not counting the ones marked red and counting the one blue.

Better resolution on the factory fresh & I might have pulled out more but as it was I assumed due to the resolution only the grossest of imperfections would show up and so could be found on the second pic. There is some offset due to perspective angles of approx 20 px on the horizontal and some on the vertical but some good matches in the group.

But as I mentioned this exercise was more of a clue search and the other higher resolution has enough to indicate likely source and we are continuing to look into it.


http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/l...psb099b71c.jpg

Sorry to say this, but I told you the first image was a Brand New Base....it's dust! Now since I sent my cooler in, I think that is a bad idea since you don't know how to read, and are looking to make damages on a base that is dust. (If you want to be super technical, they are tiny white fibers from the photo-tent I use for images)

I have a strange feeling that you only accepted my cooler so you can have the final word to hush me up. IF you can't even do something as simple as reading, why would I expect you to know how to run a scientific exam of my cooler?

Oh and by the way, you added a magic white dot to the second image that isn't in the first image

[cadaveca]

Pics of my IC24:

Chunks:







Stretched:




Different colours in the paste:






If this is contamination, it was contaminated by the person who sent it to me. Just my experience with IC Diamond products. I'll see if I can find the pictures of the scratched GPUs. I have the GPUs somewhere in my garage still, just like I still have my tube of IC24.

[OneMoar]

ouch
hmm my tube is just fine tho

[IC Diamond]

Originally Posted by cadaveca

Thanks, That's exactly the sort of response I was looking for from day one.


But again, I'll re-iterate.. I do not think you can blame this issue on particle size. I do not really think, at this point, that particle quality is the issue.




Either, there is some weird chemical reaction going on, causing excessive corrosion(like the pit on that copper CPU), or, this is an artifact of the paste removal, acting as a polishing compound.


I can not get a chemical engineer to envision a scenario with with the materials in our compound that would do a chemical etch - if you can propose one fine but on a consult I even asked to speculate on the off beat chance it was something in the oil as everything else is inert diamond, carbon black, Polymeric binders oil is pretty inert stuff if you have a reasonable explanation of the chemical reaction required propose it but as it stands I am told it is impossible

I appreciate you not wanting amateur investigations, however, when I posed these same issues to you 5 years ago when you made your first public sampling on HWC, you ignored my problem(and my $950 of dead hardware), and here I sit, trying to make sure to solve the problem for others. I feel that I can safely say that had myself and others not raised any concern, you may have even gone this far.

Other than being conductive how would a paste kill a chip? Now it may have happened as you say iI do not know, but I have had no reports of dead systems prior to HWC or any afterwards it has been used for years on bare die in notebooks either from users or system builders like sager with no problem. If you can point me to your post on the problem I will take a look.

Do not take this the wrong way but unless I have a pattern that develops like 5 or 6 systems in week or a month or 6 months there is nothing to investigate and unless a user can point to something specific as to cause it's as likely to be anything, a bad component or solder joint that was on the edge that did not make it through the physicall uninstall, install process. How many times do you read on the forums when somebody does an upgrade there system will not boot and some component was dead?

We have a history of responding to identified problems, when our compound was first released it had an acetate mix and knowing this we spec'd to our packager what materials could be used and not used. Being Chinese something was lost in translation and after a couple of months I got a report that our paste was drying out. I did not pay any attention as we trying to educate people about the high viscosity of the compound and figured that they were just used to the more liquid retail compounds.

Next day I got three more so I pulled some from stock just to check and it came out of the tube OK but it was a little thick. I then took a pre production sample that had been around for a year and it was considerably less so. So I band sawed 10 more samples down the middle to see what was happening in the syringe. The packager had used a conflicting material in the rubber plunger (you will note our syringes have a solid plunger now) and the neoprene was absorbing the liquid.

I called my business partner and after a 5 min conversation we decided to recall all of our entire shipments that we had shipped to date and to compensate our resellers 2X as a gesture of goodwill for the problems incurred on their end. By 5 0'clock I had contacted all resellers told them what the situation was and instructed them to dump any remaining stock.

It was a very costly mistake on our part but we moved fast and we took the hit. So we do have a history of dealing with problems.


So, to sum up, again, I think you are ignoring many possible factors here by simply assuming the problem is due to particle size, and secondly, thanks for sticking with this discussion, as unpleasant/unprofessional as it might be.

Early in my career back in the '70's I worked in a research lab at a photovoltaic company and all processes were in the micron sub micron range form sorting silicon by crystal orientation, thickness of doped oxides, Vacuum thin metal film depositions with just a couple hundred angstroms, photolithograpy, anti reflective coatings, silver plating fine line etc. We made cells for satellites for JPL as one part of my job, in any event every process involved microscope work to measure results, trouble shoot problems for contamination, damage to surface texture in other words I do have some experience with stuff in the micro range. ( I also spent 3 years as a quality control manger for an avionics control systems company so I know some about QC)

So after consulting on the chemical issue and not finding an obvious cause I am looking at the mechanical side of the equation as there are no other obvious choices. If I see a pit or a scratch I can measure it and tell you what size particle made it and even the shape will sometimes indicate what types of particles could be involved and if somebody posts a picture of a unidirectional belt sanded looking IHS and claims it was IC Diamond that did it from just the vibration of the fan I think the author should publish a paper on the new previously undiscovered effect he has encountered.

Pits are new and the first I have seen so lets take a closer look - from my end if it works out in my favour I will add it our library of things that IC Diamond does not do and if it's otherwise we will deal with it.

I am very intimate with this compound as I probably wash a tube of 24 carat off my hand every day. I have hands so smooth and soft there is many a woman or safe cracker who would be jealous, in fact they are so smooth I sometimes have a problem turning a knob on a door. Point being here anything larger than a flour would be noticed by me as a piece of diamond or grit or anything larger I would notice immediately.

Now Just because I do not agree on the source of these reports does not mean I will not investigate them if for nothing else than to put the issue to bed. The only way to do that is to measure the problem, make rational observations and then formulate a reasonable argument as to cause considering the data and information at hand and put it out for everybody to view.






FYI, my posts here in this thread are my own, and have nothing to do with my position here @ TPU. I would have posed similar questions/etc no matter the forum. I hsven't spoken to W1zzard or any other staff here about this issue, and have taken my own initiative here.

ssssssss

[IC Diamond]

Originally Posted by cadaveca

Pics of my IC24:

Chunks:

http://img.techpowerup.org/130102/DSCF7759.jpg


http://img.techpowerup.org/130102/DSCF7760.jpg


Stretched:

http://img.techpowerup.org/130102/DSCF7761.jpg


Different colours in the paste:


http://img.techpowerup.org/130102/DSCF7762.jpg



If this is contamination, it was contaminated by the person who sent it to me. Just my experience with IC Diamond products. I'll see if I can find the pictures of the scratched GPUs. I have the GPUs somewhere in my garage still, just like I still have my tube of IC24.

Not our product

we do not sell a tube with a rubber plunger and we have not since 2007 as the compound reacted to or the liquid was absorbed by rubber and the paste hardened like a rock.

[OneMoar]

I just took the wrapper off my sample tube no rubber plunger but maby there is screwup someplace and he got some old stock

[IC Diamond]

No mistake on our end old stock was a light blue label vs today's black so no way mistakenly sent and besides all stock was destroyed and it was stone hard after 2 months and 5 years later it would not be getting better with age.

[fullinfusion]

Same here, I removed the wrapper of 2 of my tubes and used a 220 lumens light to check for any type of irregularities. No rubber plunger, no discoloration of any sort, even pulled the plunger back a few times to see what was what... nada! nice and clean.

Looking closer at Sneakypetes cooler I'm thinking the paste didn't cause the pitting. I'm thinking it's just shitty machine work that's gone bad. Who knows mabey the plating if the base has any didn't take during the build process? Seeing any type of lines on the base of any cooler from a lathe IMO is just poor craftmanship period!

I'm not sticking up nor bashing anybody here, but something has got to give. In Chads delema of the coolers base pitting, Could it mabey from poor electro static plating of the base? I mean once ICD cures it's fricken got a tight bond on the cpu... mabey it just pulled off particles from the base that didnt take well during the fabrication?! * You cant dismiss that theory * My AMD cpu was pulled straight from the socket a few different times from the adhesion.

[OneMoar]

time to put this one to bed
I have in front of me my 5750 thats had ic2 on it for 6 months I am gonna take it apart LIVE on webcam shortly and clean it and show the COPPER surfance
yall are free to watch

http://onemoar.dyndns.org:5000/

please use flash mode in the selection box I am gonna start in 5m


anyway its just as clean and shiney as it was when I pulled it apart 3 Months ago no pitting no discoloration aside from my failure to clean it good enough its great
and thats all she wrote surface was just as clean as It was when I put it on
and I am used acetone witch is far more reactive then iso and its what i used last time

texture is smooth like talc and no grit at all so that ends that (at least with my sample) it basicly turns to dry feeling poweder if you rub it like I am annnnnnnnd now my hands are covered in tim and as I stated the discoloration was there from the factory tim that I didn't properly clean

[fullinfusion]

Originally Posted by OneMoar

dont have any here lol

lol well get some hahahah... the wife gives me shit for using most of her's..

Originally Posted by OneMoar

time to put this one to bed
I have in front of me my 5750 thats had ic2 on it for 6 months I am gonna take it apart LIVE on webcam shortly and clean it and show the COPPER surfance
yall are free to watch

http://onemoar.dyndns.org:5000/

please use flash mode in the selection box I am gonna start in 5m

Cotton balls? really? You know the drug store sell quilted non lint make up remover pads..

And who cares about the copper being discolored?! for pete sake ever hear of OXIDATION? Really that's all it is...

[micropage7]

^
why dont you edit it than you post 3 times

[OneMoar]

annnnnnnnnd now I gotta go wash my hands lmao

[cadaveca]

Originally Posted by IC Diamond

Not our product

we do not sell a tube with a rubber plunger and we have not since 2007 as the compound reacted to or the liquid was absorbed by rubber and the paste hardened like a rock.

Exactly. My sample is from 5 years ago, as I have posted earlier in the thread.



And seemingly, not so rock hard...I hate to break it to you, but I might be the most honest person ever. Do you know what a boy scout is? The local troop is run out of my house. This is IC Diamond IC24 from 5 years ago, it is not rock hard, and it has chunks in it, which it had when I received the sample. In fact, it hasn't changed much in the 5 years I have had it.


Perhaps the rock-hard batches were contaminated?

IF it's not your product, then your rep purposely sent me something he concocted himself.

That's why I was pissed in the first place, and asked that this time, you send it to me directly. You refused. I was willing to give it another try.

[crazyeyesreaper]

Note i am cleaning the items better for install I 'am just to lazy to get in there and fine clean it at 1:40am regardless you can see the wear and tear from normal usage this is before IC Diamond 24, ill be running IC Diamond for the next week while playing with the 3960x test rig

cleaning before IC Diamond will be done with Artic Clean Arctic Silver Arcticlean Thermal material Remover ...

[theonedub]

Originally Posted by cadaveca

Exactly. My sample is from 5 years ago, as I have posted earlier in the thread.



And seemingly, not so rock hard...I hate to break it to you, but I might be the most honest person ever. Do you know what a boy scout is? The local troop is run out of my house. This is IC Diamond IC24 from 5 years ago, it is not rock hard, and it has chunks in it, which it had when I received the sample. In fact, it hasn't changed much in the 5 years I have had it.


Perhaps the rock-hard batches were contaminated?

IF it's not your product, then your rep purposely sent me something he concocted himself.

That's why I was pissed in the first place, and asked that this time, you send it to me directly. You refused. I was willing to give it another try.

Technically wouldn't that stuff be IC7?

In all seriousness I would like to see what's really going on here. I've refrained from using any additional IC24 until the issues are resolved.

[TRWOV]

IC7 and IC24 are the same. The difference is the amount.

[cadaveca]

Originally Posted by theonedub

Technically wouldn't that stuff be IC7?

No, they sent regular users ic7 on that test, but they sent staff IC24, which really, is just a larger tube.

[crazyeyesreaper]

anyway ill report back in a week on what i find.

[sneekypeet]

Originally Posted by crazyeyesreaper

anyway ill report back in a week on what i find.

Why bother, The comapany rep is just going to make things up, and then when called on his silliness he will just ignore his misguided attempts to be right while just making things up to make IC Diamond look like it doesn't cause the issue.

I gave before and after images, and as your Noctua base shows marks, he is going to blame Daves uses if the cooler shows damage anyway, just like he is blaming tiny white threads as causing the damage on mine

This guy is trolling us surely!

[DOM]

I stopped using it along time ago when it made the letters on the ihs fade and stained the cpu block then the smell was nasty

But I still have the tube some where on my desk

But not a product I'll recommend for other people to use

[IC Diamond]

Originally Posted by cadaveca

Exactly. My sample is from 5 years ago, as I have posted earlier in the thread.



And seemingly, not so rock hard...I hate to break it to you, but I might be the most honest person ever. Do you know what a boy scout is? The local troop is run out of my house. This is IC Diamond IC24 from 5 years ago, it is not rock hard, and it has chunks in it, which it had when I received the sample. In fact, it hasn't changed much in the 5 years I have had it.


Perhaps the rock-hard batches were contaminated?

IF it's not your product, then your rep purposely sent me something he concocted himself.

That's why I was pissed in the first place, and asked that this time, you send it to me directly. You refused. I was willing to give it another try.

I can definitively say the what your presenting is not our product there was only one batch and one 2.5 ml syringe. We launched the product in July 2007 and recalled on Aug. 29 2007 those were the one and only rubber piston syringes we have ever used after which we switched to to exclusively HSW with no rubber at all

What you posted has never seen the inside of an Innovation Cooling facility.

Totally different Piston plunger, different lettering, different gradient markings, we dropped the clear cap only last year totally so all together a different manufacturer.

Lucky for you my partner dropped off some old stock he had so we can do a comparison




Old vs new not easily confused




As you can see pistons do not match




Also the lettering is different



What we use now and only have used since Sept. 2007




All The “old batch” samples dried out, it was fast moving and took only 2 months, it was universal and there were no exceptions. The rubber had changed from semi hard to tacky and pliable and the source was more than obvious.

I cut open a few here




As it did not come from us only 2 possibilities exist.

1. It did not dry out after 5 years so can not possibly be IC Diamond and you some how acquired a fake.
2. It was filled by the spirit world only recently and has not had a chance to harden


Presenting a package that obviously did not come from us with the appearance of having been 'salted” does not help your case.

You say you got it from my “Rep” well I am the “Rep” and I sure did not send you that

I know what goes out out of our facility and nothing of that nature,manufacture, configuration has ever crossed our doors.