Now I'm happy - IC Diamond 7's help

At first I was a bit septic regarding the gain I could get if I changed my standard AS5 replacement paste for some IC Diamond 7, and was expecting 2 to 3°c max gain !
...but after carefully repasting and also changing a couple of pads, I just noticed a 5 to 9°c gain depending on the benchmark used, on both cpu and gpu

On idle the gain might not be really noticeable - hardly 1 to 2°c as fans are not kicking anyway - but on Furmark I'm now at 72°c stabilized without even having to lift the back of the beast, this to be compared to the original 81°c with back lifted ( no ac here, ambient temperatures are around 22/24°c !!).

I guess the guys with gtx580m could really give it a try as it would probably allow them to avoid being in the throttle gap crap

Now I can start to really enjoy this beast .
Cya

ps : be careful while changing the pads, I screwed up once when I first changed the Dell paste for the AS5 plus one pad at the end of the graphic card as it was not really making contact with the card components
I screwed up somehow and had temperatures going by +8°c on gpu Temp #3 sensor in gpuz...

 

IC Diamond 24 is even better. I get 66C max on Furmark Extreme Burn-In stock clocks with my 580m.

 

Did you guys apply this on your own?

 

Yep, it is fairly easy. I've done this for every computer I own.

 

I bet it was about applying the paste better than it had been done the last time around which provided the gains.

 

Where can I find a video that shows how to do this in the m17 r3

 

This is the best one I've seen

Alienware M17X R3 Re-pasting Guide and 6970 re-pasting guide - Newegg Promo Code - YouTube

Edit: Except I wouldn't use a card to spread the thermal paste. I'd just apply the paste and let the heatsink do the spreading.

 

Could be, but I did just like every time when I change the thermal paste on my computers - I'm used to tweak/mod my systems since I was 19 ...and now I'm over 46, unfortunatly...!!
I stopped counting the repasting I do a while ago
The thermal pad problem is another story as I probably didn't pay enough attention and used a thicker one than the oem.

Btw I own no share in their company
I was only a bit more cautious to make sure everything was alright from 1st time as I read IC Diamond paste is a bit of a pain to remove. So I heated the syringe a bit before and applied the same amount of paste as usual.

@widezu69 : I thought they were the same, only the size of the syringe was different ! Anyway it is Diamond 24 that I used (4.8g syringe).
By lifting the back of the beast I get 3°c less in Furmark

I was about to return my rig - again - and go back to Clevo's P170HM (a bit more performance but much more noisy, no switchable igp, poor audio and no backlit keyboard, all these apart from poor design ) but now I have a beast that really fits my needs and eyes

 

How long do you run Furmark when you took your temp reading? Can you run it for 10 mins and then take a screen shot and post it here? Do you run it in full screen or windowed mode?

I'm wondering how changing pads affects GPU temp since they are cooling RAM not the GPU itself. My understanding is that GPU temp reading is coming from the core itself and there are no pads involved there.

 

On ATi cards, more than one section of the GPU can be monitored using GPUz. Thus the effect of changing the thermal pads will be shown. We can't see this on our nvidia cards.

 

I thought the difference between 24 and 7 was quantity, not quality.

 

If ATI GPU has multiple heat sensors, I would assume they are still on GPU itself. Heatsink sits on top of GPU so I still don't understand how thermal pads have any effect on GPU temps.

I'm just trying to understand this as I have not tried to replace thermal pads on my GPU, mainly becasue I don't see the benefits of doing so. As far as I can tell, thermal pads are there to cool down the memory and any other circuitry on the dauther board, that's it.

 

ATI's have 1 sensor in the GPU, and the others are for voltage regulators, which use thermal pads.

 

I'm just trying to share my experience, not selling anything here !
I'm the first one impressed as until now my favorite paste was AS5.

Both Furmark tests, before with AS5 and after with IC Diamond 7, were done with the following : stability test, windowed 1280x1024, 15mns duration.
The gain was 9°c but should be counted 12°c as the 1st test was with rig's back lifted while it was not in the second ( -3°c in addition in my case when I lifted the back during short 3rd test ).

To confirm my experience I just repasted my old desktop rig that was already with AS5 : [email protected] on Rampage Formula and HD6970rev1@950/1400 with musashi rad.

For the cpu it's a 5 to 6°c gain on all cores (max is now 69°c on core 0).
For the gpu, 4°c gain in idle and 6°c gain full load (max is now 84°c, to be compared to 115°c with +10% power control ...but that was with oem rad and paste ).

For a few bucks and a bit of time I think it's worth giving the try.

 

does repasting void warranty ? also is there any risk of damage while repasting ?

 

No it does not void the warranty.

Yes there is a risk of damage if you aren't careful, but it isn't that hard. Follow the repasting guide in this forum and you should be good.

 

Repasting does not void warranty but changing pad does I think.
It's always a good idea to keep the old pads in a safe place, just in case.
As I travel a bit I always have my original ram and hdd in my bag ...just in case

 

Changing pads does not void your warranty either, unless you straight-up remove them (not replace) or otherwise mess it up in a big way. I've read multiple reports of people who have done repads/repastes having warranty repairs done and none had issues. One even said the tech complimented the job he did since it's common knowledge that the stock paste/pads are not very effective (though they generally do the job well enough for stock settings).

The "pads" they have in there are little more than silly putty and do very little to conduct heat. It would be irresponsible not to replace them when repasting.

Like you said, you should definitely keep the original hardware for anything you replace (HDD, RAM, etc...) so you can swap it out in case you need to send it in for replacement.

 

Thanks for the VID!! I was looking just about to do the repasting.

Did you keep the stock thermal pads or did you put new ones in?

 

I strongly recommend this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/561599-m17x-r3-cpu-gpu-re-pasting-guide-w-pics.html

This is what I followed. It uses some different techniques than that video, has more explanation, and does full repadding.

 

soon as i get my R2 back from repair i will be repasting myself with IC diamond 7 paste