Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra vs Liquid Pro - Page 3

Nice! I do like the little brushes that Ultra comes with, those are better than the cotton swabs IMO. I don't like the syringe with no needle, I find it harder to get the exact amount of TIM you need. With the Pro if you accidently squeeze out too much you can suck it back up with the needle.

i posted in your anandtech thread. I'm always searching on this topic, glad someone finally tested it.

Can you not use the rice grain method with liquid ultra/pro? I know the company says use the spread method, but every time I've done the spread method, my temps were about 5*C+ over rice grain method, and that's with multiple spreads and mounts. I know the company says to do it one way, but Prolimatech says you should use the spread method too and it just completely messed up temps.

Rice grain is so much better, unless Liquid pro/ultra viscosity in some way prevents rice grain (maybe it's super liquidy? I mean i dont have any so i dont know how it acts) I can't see spread being better than rice grain. All you need is enough to cover the die (when put on the IHS), everytime I used enough paste using rice grain method to spread out to cover the entire IHS, it ended up being way too much thermal paste.

I think it was hardwaresecrets that did a spread method comparison (without even testing temps...) and they concluded certain methods being better than others based on how well it spread out and covering the underside of the heatsink block, but the optimal amount in my tests was always when the TIM just barely covered over the die, like a circle half the size of the total area of the IHS.

edit: some guy on spreading liquid ultra saying spread is better than ricegrain but... doesnt really sound like he knows what he's talking about:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2072263

edit2: sounds like he shorted out his system by lapping a piece of metal into his pins
Edited by Belial - 1/23/13 at 12:03pm

In the tests I did, you actually didn't want the paste spread across the entire IHS (if you used enough to do so, that would mean you used too much basically). But if you can't do the ricegrain method, then you can't do the ricegrain method.

Did you have any difficulty with either of the liquids staining or staying on permanently? That guy seemed to have an issue where he had to lap the ultra to get it off, that it was staining his heatsink and cpu ihs, ie it wasn't coming clean off like a normal paste would. the guy seemed half retarded (lapping his block and letting it fall into his cpu socket and frying out his chip? *** was he doing).

I don't think the grain of rice method will work with CL Pro or Ultra. It's not a paste, when you push some out of the syringe onto the die you get a liquid metal ball, kind of like a bead. To apply it you need to move it back and forth gently across the die and eventually you will break the surface tension and it will begin to spread, then you "paint" it onto the die. It is very runny, it is a very strange compound. Hard to describe, you will just have to see for yourself.

Putting TIM on a die is way different than putting TIM on an IHS. The entire die is active and generates heat, the entire die needs to be covered in TIM and make contact with the IHS. An IHS is just that, a heat spreader. It spreads the heat, the entire IHS is not active. That's why a small dot in the middle is ideal because the pressure of the block or cooler will spread the paste to cover, more often than not, the area of the die residing under it.

I would not recommend the grain of rice method on the die, especially with liquid pro/ultra. It would most likely stay in its bead like form and be pushed off the die. If you did somehow manage to set the IHS on the die perfectly level in all four corners instantaneously (which would be extremely difficult), it is likely that the compound would not cover the entire die unless you used way too much TIM, which is just as bad.

So you can be the guinea pig if you want, but I wouldn't do it.

Stained from ultra or pro or both cause staining?

I'm going to be delidding and such on a new build but going to hold off buying liquid over my pk-3 unless i need a bigger temp drop (for all i know my cpu just wont go above 4.5 no matter what).

Also if there was any confusion, i was talking about ihs spread. Now I see you can't use ricegrain on the liquids, but i would figure you gotta cover the entire die, unlike the ihs. Just like the ihs though, I'm sure it's important you use very little.

I mean it' s very easy to use too much paste, but it's near impossible to use too little.

I only got staining from the Ultra, I didn't let the pro touch the CPU cooler
Pretty sure the Pentium 4 IHS was stained too from the pro... I did use a lot of metho on it once I took it off though.
To add the SB-E is a mirror finish (Nickel Plated) cooler, so it may not stain copper as much or be as visible.. It definetly stained my SB-E's base though.

@Belial - when you gonna get this new build up and running?