Ivy Bridge and changing the Thermal Interface Material

Now that the end is here what can we say about this whole scenario? Well – the rumours and murmurings are indeed true. By replacing Intel’s thermal interface material with something that is of better quality you can indeed reduce the temperatures. In our results we show 8 degrees was the maximum we were able to remove using Gelid GC Extreme thermal paste. However, is 8 degrees really worth it for you?

This is where we now want to discuss the viability of this kind of project. If you were to clock your Ivy Bridge processor even higher than we did, 4.6GHz or higher, then you’d probably see higher reductions in temperatures than 8 degrees making this kind of thing more worthwhile. But, on air cooling we were reaching temperatures of 70 degrees average with the modified IHS processor at 4.5GHz – which does not leave much more room for further overclocking.

Ivy Bridge processors all have a “voltage-brick-wall”, whereby increases in voltage do not correspond with increases in performance or clock speed. This comes at roughly 4.6GHz to 4.8GHz for most Ivy Bridge “K” processors. Even with reducing temperatures by 8 to 10 degrees there isn’t really any way around the “voltage-brick-wall”. An 8 to 10 degrees reduction might help you get from 4.6 to 4.7 or 4.7 to 4.8 but in most instances your processors ability to reach those highest clock speeds are determined more by the silicon lottery (aka how “good” your particular processor is) rather than the cooling performance.

This suggests to us that for the majority of users who will overclock their Ivy Bridge K processors won’t see much benefit from changing their Thermal Interface Material to a better quality paste. Yes you could reduce temperatures by 8 to 10 degrees and eek out an extra 0.1GHz on aircooling, but is it worth voiding your warranty and potentially breaking your £180 3570K or £260 3770K to achieve that? We think not.

As far as we can see this is only going to benefit one niche of computer user. The extreme enthusiast. If you’re watercooling your Ivy Bridge system, and you want to shave off some more heat so you can push your processor to its absolute stable maximum then yes this is definitely worthwhile for you. If you’re using LN2 cooling this might also help with stability, although its unlikely you’d need those extra 8-10 degrees when your processor is at sub 100 degree temperatures anyway.

But this does beg the question – if you have enough money to acquire a fully fledged water cooling system, which can cost multiple hundreds of pounds, then why didn’t you just go with Intel’s highest performance platform – LGA 2011? And that particular question is the justification for why we conducted our tests with the well priced Intel Core i5 3570K – and did it with affordable high performance air cooling – the Be Quiet! Dark Rock Advanced.

The bottom line is this: yes you can get lower temperatures by changing the TIM but they are not nearly enough to justify the risks associated with removing the IHS.