Sprinkling Diamond Dust alongside Thermal Grease for Heatsink (Good or Bad?)

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hex1337

hex1337

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So I was researching heat sink materials and came to the realization Diamond would be the best material to use because of it's excellent thermal conductivity which exceeds copper five-fold, immune to radio frequencies, magnetic fields and radiation (perfect for space).

Problem is, diamond is extremely expensive and constructing an entire heat sink from diamond would be extremely expensive. The second best thing I could think of is buying diamond dust which is the leftover material from cutting diamonds and lacing it with thermal grease between the processor and heatsink.

What do you think of this idea? Do you think it would be practical or not?
 
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getochkn
Thermal paste is not the only thing that makes a CPU hot, especially with just an air cooler. People get low temps by lapping heat sink, deliding the CPU, water cooling the Cpu, ram, chipsets. Thermal paste is a small part of that.

Not trying to dump on your parade, by all means experiment away. Just understand in the quest for wicked cool temps, thermal paste is a small part of it all.
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getochkn

getochkn

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They make a diamond compound that is used for this purpose but it's probably infused better than just sprinkling some on top. I don't see your way as doing anything but wasting diamond dust.

And even then, the stuff made doesn't really cool any better and is a pain to remove, has caused damage to components, etc. It just can be diamond sprinkles, it won't do anything. The way the one company has done is that it dries and fuses together in a few.
 
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RobCrezz

RobCrezz

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The point of thermal paste is just to fill the gaps between the heatsink and the heat spreader - the grease is just to make up for the imperfect contact (both surfaces are not exactly flat), so im not sure diamond dust would significantly help as you are still relying on the poorer conductivity of the heatspreader to heatsink...
 
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getochkn

getochkn

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In most thermal paste showdowns, they include some insane substance to show how well it cools and things like mayonnaise, nutella, toothpaste, all cool about the same as the top quality thermal pastes with in a few degrees. The only difference is mayo, nutella, toothpaste all eventually harden and burn off, but as you said, their ability to fill in small gaps is the same.
 
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hex1337

hex1337

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Diamond dust can be bought as small as 500 nanometers, which is enough to fill the gap between the processor and heatsink. No problem there! Another concept idea for a future heatsink material less expensive than diamond is dymalloy which is a metal matrix composite consisting of 20% copper and 80% silver alloy matrix with type I diamond.
 
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getochkn

getochkn

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If you read what I posted, it's been done and doesn't offer much difference over normal thermal paste. The problems of a CPU and heat aren't all related to thermal paste. All long as something is there, it's a few degree's difference. And as I said, Nutella, mayo, toothpaste have all been used with decent results in the short term.
 
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hex1337

hex1337

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Nutella, mayo, toothpaste and any high thermal conductive material is not worth anything if they hardened like clay under the sun and burn off. Thermal grease is just there to eliminate air gaps or space so that the heatsink (whatever it's made of) can do it's job efficiently and transfer heat from CPU to heatsink.

 
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getochkn

getochkn

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Your point was diamond's can conduct heat well, therefore diamond dust might work good mixed in with thermal paste.

I pointed out that thermal paste with diamonds dust has already been done, and it doesn't cool much better than normal thermal paste, and normal thermal paste doesn't cool much better than toothpaste.

Point is fancy diamond thermal paste has been done, and it's not better than anything else.
 
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hex1337

hex1337

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I googled some more on this topic, turns out majority of these companies producing these thermal compound pastes are using synthetic diamonds, abrassive diamond dust, or non-isotopically enriched diamonds with shitty pastes (probably to save production costs). Instead, I'm probably going to purchase an expensive carbon-based Thermal Compound and bake it with high-grade nano diamond dust on it. I'm pretty sure this would theoretically yield wicked cool temperatures on air and it'll cost a maximum of $35.
 
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getochkn

getochkn

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Jul 2, 2006
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Thermal paste is not the only thing that makes a CPU hot, especially with just an air cooler. People get low temps by lapping heat sink, deliding the CPU, water cooling the Cpu, ram, chipsets. Thermal paste is a small part of that.

Not trying to dump on your parade, by all means experiment away. Just understand in the quest for wicked cool temps, thermal paste is a small part of it all.
 
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