[ocpokey]

I know most responses will be "reseat and reapply", but I'm going to ask anyway.

I have an A70 in push/pull, on my sigrig, I recently swapped out mobos from the gigabyte UD7 to the Asus P8P67 Pro, and so I thought to myself "well I've been using this AS ceramique, but I have this shin etsu that came in, so let's try it out." Since I'd heard that shin etsu was the bomb, I'd picked up some G751.

So the three changes I'd made were: Shin Etsu G751, Asus P8P67Pro and swapping my A70 from vertical cooling to horizontal cooling (was too used to my AMD set up). On the old board I had the 2600k running at 5GHz @ 1.5V (briefly, for benching only) and it tested Prime95 Large FFT stable for 15 minutes, peeking over 80C briefly before I ended the test to lower settings.

On this board I popped in the chip and ran @ 4.5 @ 1.4V for benching, and almost instantly the temps shoot up from 39C @ idle (already crazy hot) to 77C in the first refresh. Within about 30 seconds its over 80C and I have to kill the test. The second I kill Prime95 the temps drop back to idle levels within the first 1 - 2 monitor refreshes (so like 3 seconds or so).

So, I've reseated and reapplied about 5 times now (used one syringe already), tried the line method using what I think was too much, then much less, then even less. Then I tried spotting and smearing, then I taped off the area that makes contact with the CPU, and spread the TIM thinly across the surface. Each time yields almost precisely the same results. Huge temp spike followed by huge temp drop.

So, does the shin etsu need time to cure? (I read that it doesn't)
Should I go back to vertical cooling mounting?
Do I really have to just "reseat and reapply" until I run out of TIM?
Is the motherboard just not as quality so it's busting tons of heat on my chip?

I will try the AS again in a few minutes, but I need a break from re-applying, so I thought I'd see what you guys had to say.

Thanks

P.S. I'll be getting an H50 soon, but I wanted the Shin Etsu to replace the thermal pad it comes with, which is why I was testing it. So, I hope it's not that I got ripped off with a tube of random grey goo.

 

[EpicPie]

Turn off hyper threading and you'll get better temps.

 

[Imglidinhere]

You bought the 2600K for the Hyperthreading. Why would you turn it off? That's throwing $100 away right there. XD

 

[KBcobra]

All tims have a cure time imo. As5 is just really long. With shin I do a line between the letters down the middle. I also give the heatsink a little twist.

 

[ocpokey]

Oh yeah, 4th change I made was to drop in Ripjaws and OC them to 8-8-8-20 @ 1600. Would that produce a lot more heat?

 

[frankth3frizz]

i get max 55-60's on mine. but idk if a core2quad runs cooler than a 2600k(i sure hope the 2600k is better) using as5 too. but then you do have it @4.5

 

[rsfkevski]

With your case, do you have the top fans set up and running as exhaust? If so...there's your reason. With that fan setup..you'll want to keep the horizontal mounting

 

[ocpokey]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rsfkevski;13019718
With your case, do you have the top fans set up and running as exhaust? If so...there's your reason. With that fan setup..you'll want to keep the horizontal mounting

I do have them set as exhaust, but I could certainly flip them to intakes, I hadn't even really thought about that! Do you think that'd help with the horizontal mounting?

That stupid AMD mounting has my set up all mixed up lol. (not looking forward to flipping my fans for the billionth time)

 

[ocpokey]

I think I worked out the problem, and it's a semi-unfortunate one. The way the A70 is constructed is with the heatpipes making direct contact with the CPU instead of via a heatspreader.

Now with the way the CPU cores are lined up on the i7, when mounted vertically 2 of the heatpipes make long contact with the cores directly like this: ||
But when mounted horizontally the contact point is much smaller like this: =

So less direct heatpipe contact means less efficient absorption of heat, and thus a spike in temperatures. I will try remounting it vertically again (*sigh*) to test, but I'm pretty sure that's it.

 

[ocpokey]

Yep, what a crazy difference positioning can make. I was getting 75C on prime blend with the cooler horizontal using Shin Etsu grease @ 4.4GHz 1.3V

Swapped to vertical position using some crap Fry's Artic Silver ceramique, getting 61C Prime Blend @ 4.5GHz 1.3V.

Well, that makes me doubly glad that I'm switching from the A70 to the H50 soon. Seems like the A70 is really not designed to be an optimal i7 cooler.