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Article about DIY diamond thermal paste

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Old Thrashbarg

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Sep 26, 2007
I saw this linked on Slashdot, and thought it was worth sharing here. Link to article. A guy made some DIY thermal paste out of diamond dust and silicon grease.

Now, I've never personally cared much about thermal goo, I still use a tube of zinc oxide sunscreen that I've had for about 15 years, and I always found it to be 'good enough'. And considering the materials cost involved in dude-man's project, I think I'll continue with my usual practice. But, for those so inclined to try it, you certainly can't argue with the temps he's getting. :eek:
 
WOW

Thanks for the read.

Going to go crush up some jewelry now!

jk

seriously though, might have to do this.

I tried IC7 diamond paste and it was no different than AS5 except was darn near impossible to apply.

Maybe making my own would be better :)
 
That's really cool!

If i ever have the cash i'm going to whip up a batch, i could use a 20*c drop :D
 
this would help with the xigmatek h.d.t. heat bottleneck, heat will transfer to the fins even faster. but can it beat that metal liquid pro stuff?
 
Just contacted local distributer, they are calling me back to see if they can get it that fine for me :)


Note: If calling, it is diamond powder not diamond dust. 60,000 Mesh is .5 micron and they weight by carats not grams. Was told min they could probably get is 100 carats, but not sure they can get it in .5 micron.

Will post back when I know for sure :)

Next step find that silicone grease :)


EDIT: Just reading up on IC7. Although it uses a large amount of diamond in hte paste, the particle size is up to 80 times larger than the DIY article. I suppose this was done to make the paste more affordable.

If I can get it, I will try a few different consistencies, and see what works best, and what works best compared to usability. These guys were using a 33% based set up (5grams diamond 5 grams each type of silicone, so... not hte 92% that IC7 is claiming, however as in the review, it was goey... not break your thumb trying to get it out of the syringe.
 
Last edited:
^ That seems cheap, probably enough to make a bit of thermal paste I bet. I would imagine inhaling diamond power is VERY dangerous though... Who knows what kind of testing they did and what control there was though, but assuming there was some level of care taken those are some impressive results.
 
It is, i imagine, like silica flower that way. Inhale it, and it starts dicing up your lungs. You don't want that :p
 
Well... that is some sexy thermal paste! I might just have to try it.
 
Polytetraflouroethylene
AKA "Teflon", might be easier to search Teflon grease rather than, Polytetraflouroethylene
 
I can imagine that the finer you go, the better it would be. The reason is obviously a smaller space between the cpu and heat sink and that small space would be filled with as much heat conducting material as possible.
 
I refuse to believe the temps improved by 16c load by just changing the paste. To make even a good comparison they should reapply the as5 or whatever 3 times and record the temps, and another 3 times for the diamond paste. I would like to see a couple different heatsinks too, but thats asking for a lot.

And 3dmark to load CPU? They should run core damage to really spit out the heat. Nothing will get a cpu hotter.

Was an interesting read though. Someone on the forums should try it. Where's silversinksam? I recall him being the official thermal paste tester a few years back.
 
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