Jump to content

Arctic Cooling MX-4 vs IC Diamond vs Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra tested in M14x R1


Recommended Posts

I have tested the following thermal compounds in the M14x R1 since it has the biggest heat problems of all Alienware Laptops and is therefor good as a testing subject.

The specs are:

i7-2760qm | 6 GB Ram | 750 GB HDD | 1.5GB GT555M |

Turbo was on at all tests and the Notebook was lifted at the backside by about 3 cm. No VBIOS mods or Overclocking was used everything on stock speed. No external fan or cooler of any kind.

I have used 3dmark vantage for the stress test since this is the most real usage of this Notebook as a gaming Notebook and mirrors how the temperature is in everyday use.

To get average results i used alot of benchmark tests for each compound after different cure times and calculated the resulting temps i listed below. For every compound i ran about 5-6 tests after the declared cure time. Interesting was that the performance of the Liquid Ultra doesnt change no matter which cure time i tested it. The other pastes had different results after 1 day or more cure time.

post-3311-1449499335069_thumb.jpg

Here are some pics of the pastes on the CPU, GPU and heatsinks.

This is Liquid Ultra on the CPU and MX-4 on the GPU heatsinks:

post-3311-14494993351086_thumb.jpg

On this pic you can see how it looks on the CPU and GPU:

post-3311-14494993351179_thumb.jpg

Well i tried to add some more pics but it doesnt let me upload more at the moment i will try later.

However you can clearly see which paste wins and where the differences of them are.

MX-4:

+ best application

+ easy to remove

- worst performance compared

IC Diamond:

+ 2nd best performance

+ no need to repaste for years

- leaves scratches

- hard to remove

Liquid Ultra:

+ easy to apply

+ best performance of all tested

+ no need to repaste for years

- hard to remove from the heatsink (only by sanding it)

- electrical conductive

My conclusion is that of course the Liquid Ultra is the best compound for the M14x R1 since it has the best performance and has the most advantages when it comes to high temperatures. In idle there is not much difference to other high end pastes but at high work load it clearly outperforms the best pastes by up to 5 degrees.

  • Thumbs Up 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice! Can you re-upload the pocs? Something went wrong...

And one more point for the liquid ultra -> Don't ever put it on something made of aluminium, it will corrode almost instantly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice! Can you re-upload the pocs? Something went wrong...

And one more point for the liquid ultra -> Don't ever put it on something made of aluminium, it will corrode almost instantly.

Yeh youre right but i thought its not important since the M14x has only pure copper heatsinks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, the die area is copper, but if someone accidentally smears it on the aluminium... Some people manage to do incredible things when it comes to repasting, trust me... I've seen some horrible things :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Founder

Thanks for the tests and posting the results, very interesting findings! Our internal testing showed IC Diamond was the best but we hadn't used Liquid Ultra at the time. Since I'm about to repaste my M18x, I may give it a try and see how it fares. I guess with it being electrically conductive and difficult to remove, many users may still opt to use MX-4 although personally I think MX-4 loses its heat transfer properties far too soon (few months in my case). I was tempted to switch to IC Diamond but of course that scratches surfaces which makes me reticent to try it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the tests and posting the results, very interesting findings! Our internal testing showed IC Diamond was the best but we hadn't used Liquid Ultra at the time. Since I'm about to repaste my M18x, I may give it a try and see how it fares. I guess with it being electrically conductive and difficult to remove, many users may still opt to use MX-4 although personally I think MX-4 loses its heat transfer properties far too soon (few months in my case). I was tempted to switch to IC Diamond but of course that scratches surfaces which makes me reticent to try it.

Since svl7 was so helpful for me and the techi comm at all here i wanted to contribute something too. In my opinion its the most effective and productive forum cause of all the modders and competent people here.

IC Diamond has in my opinion now maybe the only advantage of longlivity vs MX-4. The few differences in temperature is not worth the scratches on the surfaces. Only the liquid ultra seems to have a real advantage over the standard TIMs (or any other liquid metal TIM). Sanding the copper heatsink surface to remove it was very easy and quick too. Ofc it leaves some scratches then but thats no prob. However since it needs no cure time and always performs the same it may be that it will really last for years but that needs some longer tests ^^.

I would not prefer IC Diamond over MX-4 but thats my personal opinion. The gain is too few specially under load. I would always use a liquid metal paste from now on and since the liquid ultra is the easiest to apply and remove (for a loss of maybe 1 degree compared to other liquids) i vote for this one.

Maybe i should ask them for some advertising money now but i guess its too late :P

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
+1 for avoiding IC diamond, on my desktop rigs I'm not the greatest fan of it

Thanks for the write up tho, your place of choice for the liquid is..?

Still not sure but if you mean where to put the liquid ultra on id only apply it on the cpu since 1) it needs most cooling efficiency and 2) you can remove the cpu and apply it safely away from the board. hope thats what you wanted to know.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

MX-4 is best performance on my m14x-r2 , idle below 33c , gaming 3-4hour 65c max. not sure if this stable temp for m14x-r2.

IC Diamond 7 don't work well somehow on GPU , not sure if my paste is wrong or whatever , overheat and blue screen sometimes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah... as stated in the rules, you need 5 posts in order to see attachments.

Liquid Ultra has a great performance, but you have to make absolutely sure that you don't spill a single drop on aluminium... it will corrode almost instantly.

A paste like MX-4 is much easier to handle.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah... as stated in the rules, you need 5 posts in order to see attachments.

Liquid Ultra has a great performance, but you have to make absolutely sure that you don't spill a single drop on aluminium... it will corrode almost instantly.

A paste like MX-4 is much easier to handle.

If you are not certain about doing it dont use the liquid but MX-4. The performance is very good too and its no risk. But if you want to risk it you should only use the liquid on the CPU when it is pulled out from the mainboard to exclude any risks.

Dont use it for the GPU since you cant remove it from the board.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Founder
Thanks a lot im thinking of contacting dell about my 100 C + before I do that but ill give it a try thanks a lot.

Dell will send a tech who still repaste it for you if you aren't comfortable doing so yourself. I would recommend you study the service manual for your system and repaste with mx 4.

Sent from my GT-N7000

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I would love to give the Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra a try but im just not ballsy enough to use it on my M14x R2. Call me a pansy but I can just see myself getting it on the top of the GPUs tiny components and frying the shit out of it.

Kaldon

I used MX4 for my repaste, I decided against IC Diamond due to its ability to scratch...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.