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Temperature Curves & Delta Values
Cooling Nuclear Option: The Chiller
High Temperature Differences Challenge Cooling Performance
Kaby Lake-X suffers from Intel's use of thermal paste between the die and heat spreader. Solder would have been the way to go. The difference between the water block’s temperature, which is held at a constant 20°C, and the CPU temperature (according to its sensors) demonstrate this point nicely.
The curve below shows clearly that waste heat isn't dissipated quickly enough. Just as we did in our AMD Ryzen and Intel Core i9 launch articles, we used a very thin copper plate to measure the heat spreader's temperatures as well.
The next graph represents the temperature difference between the top of the CPU's heat spreader and cores.
Our cooling solution is one of the best you can buy. Nevertheless, we measure a 48°C difference between the top of the Core i7-7740X's heat spreader and its cores. This isn't a horrible result, but it could have been a lot better.
Leakage
Next, we measured power consumption at an identical load using different cooling solutions. The leakage currents were below our measurement equipment’s accuracy range. For this reason, we didn't bother with a graph. Kaby Lake-X doesn't have a problem with leakage currents that could increase power consumption in a meaningful way.
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