Improved heatsink material
 

Was surfing today, found an interesting site, http://www.heathru.com/
What do you think of this. Assuming we can get some, assuming it's already in production, etc...
I think this could give us some very interesting new waterblock and heatsink designs. Much bigger heat bloom within the block, more surface area to circulate with. I emailed the company, asking for a sample, if I get it, I'll pass it on.

Excelent find there DigitalPirate

I live in Kimberley South africa. The diamond capitol of SA, which means that its easy to get industrial diamond powder. A friend of mine has a small furnace... I wonder what one would get if you mixed diamond powder with copper or even better; silver!?

The mixture would have to be runny enough to still cast as I would hate to try and machine this stuff!

Imagine making a cascade out of that!

"SAMPLES AVAILABLE, INQUIRE USING OUR CONTACT FORM"

Wouldn't that be the cue to people like Cathar and BillA to get samples to verify these claims?-) The idea sounds good but only future will show is this another carbon black thermal paste or something valid =)...

Been discussed elsewhere, (on another site) a diamond plate which are talking about costs about $1000 and you'll need a laser to cut into it.

Plus mixing metals/componants for better thermal conductivity gnerally results in a worse material than one you started out with.

Hardly a viable comercial solution.

~ Boli

I havn't seen a composite of diamond and copper before. Heard plenty of yapping about plating and a solid diamond, but nothing like this.

They claim:

Which is not good for water blocks nore heat sinks. 3mm thick is useless for CPU heatsinks and near usless for water blocks. I don;t see anything saying it can be milled easily? And what is the "real" cost of it? Surely not cheap...

Also:
Maybe AMD and Intel could use this for a heat spreader! :D

I have a Cascade prototype here made out of 3mm thick copper (started off as 1/8" thick, but fly-cut and lapped back to 3mm).

It works pretty well considering, being in-between a White Water and regular Cascade. Makes for a very light water-block.

Wouldn't to go much thinner though as base-flex may become a real issue.

Yeah, I could make a Cascade out of it (3mm thick). I'd be surprised though if the thinness and the penalties associated with that (more to do with jet stand-off distances), coupled with the benefit of increased thermal conductivity resulted in something was better than an SS though.

jaydee is correct is that score I guess. While one could still make a block with it, it would be hard to make a block with it that's good enough to show the material in its best light.

That's why I said "near" usless for water blocks. I made some 1/8" bases and they work ok but I don't see anything in terms of strength from this product. Is is brittle? Is it strong? etc.... Also still see nothing in terms of machinability. If it has diamond in it I imagine it will eat up and spit out endmills. Everything I see on that site indicates it is ment to be a "heat spreader" not a heat sink. Thats what my comment about AMD and Intel using it for a heat spreader was about as they say it can be bonded to IC's (which I think means it can be bonded to the die of the cpu?).

Also note they seem to be making quick advances with this technology. This could just be the tip of the iceburg. I wonder if in the future this stuff could be molded in to shapes?!?!?

Wow, I didn't expect this much response when I posted. I just threw the address out and expected to see one "Gee, isn't that nice..." Still, If one could bond a pillar or some predesigned shape directly to the die, and maybe drop a few C off the chip temps, one might be able to design waterblocks to take advantage of this extra heat spreading. Or Intel could give their chips a three-dimensional shape, allowing more heat dissipation by the inclusion of 4 more sides. I for one would rather see that than a 0.06% size reduction in die size. I'd bet this material could be press-molded into the desired shape, if it's merely a suspension of diamond in copper. Metals are generally disordered molecularly, aren't they? I can never remember.

From the PDF brochure:
Sintered means a powder compressed into solid state, a process suitable for molding. :) This stuff seems promising, only drawback is that not very practical on a DIY level. :(

Good input. Also not very practicle for DIY now, but in the future this may take off or something like it and be much more common and much more used which means MUCH lower prices. :) Going to be an interesting next 50 years...

Heh, that smells like two old mans speaking in their youth about the possibilities of aluminium. :p

machining the stuff would be a total nightmare. The only concievable thing that I could think of would be a cascade style block...EDM'ing the holes.

As I said before there have been some attempt to make water blocks with a diamond composite baseplate but they needed to use a high powered laser to actually cut the thing... here is the link I talked about, might be relavent:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...hlight=diamond

~ Boli

High powered lasers are going to be pretty common soon. Will not be a big deal. Hell there is 2 places in this small city with metal cutting lasers already. Not like this stuff will be very available to DIY anytime soon anyway. By the time it is there will be tools to deal with it.

I'm no expert on the bonding technology used for these materials, but the plate they spoke of is actually bonded carbide, not diamond. The plate conductivity would have been weakened by the use of pure diamond, seeing as a crystalline structure invariably has gaps through which heat may not move. We've known that a highly compressed structure is best for transferring heat, what with the atoms being closer to one another. While copper is metallic, and thus really a frozen liquid at room temperature, with a jumbled up molecular structure; diamond is an ordered crystal, with intermolecular gaps. I spoke with a chemistry professor to get this info. He told me that just because the diamond was compressed carbon, did not mean that it would behave the same as carbon. I also asked about the bonding technology, but he couldn't explain it so I would understand.

http://www.heathru.com/products.asp

I like how they took a screenshot of excel to get that graph but managed to forget the fact that "DiaCu" isn't in the standard Microsoft dictionary...

I'd be very interested to speak to this chemistry teacher.

To say that;

"copper is metallic, and thus really a frozen liquid at room temperature, with a jumbled up molecular structure"

Is a bit off the mark.

Copper is crystalline and ordered. It follows a face centered cubic close packed pattern. The difference between copper and diamond is the type of bonding between adjacent atoms, as well as the crystal structure.

The reason diamond has a far superior conductivity is because the carbon atoms are bonded covalently. Covalent bonds are rigid and can transfer phonons (atomic scale vibrations) with great ease.

The reason why a copper diamond composite is used is to allow the formation of various shapes. It is also much easier to produce regular diamond particles than a large solid diamond with few flaws.

By sintering the diamond particles with powdered copper, it will form a suspension of diamond particles in a copper matrix. If the mixture is right, then the copper will be sufficient to fill the gaps between the particles, providing both strength and a thermal interface, while not separating the diamond particles to any great degree.

8-ball

sweet! thanx for the link and information! I really appreciate it, now to see if I can get ahold of some of this stuff:)

Luckily I can probably gain access to this lazer in town, it can cut 1" steel :drool: the thing is 64ft long and about 12ft wide :drool: I watched it cut some of that 1" steel, pretty freaking nuts!

In my request, I asked them about machinability. lets hope it can be milled, I bet by the time I get some of this stuff my cnc will be finished :eek:


Jon