The Proof is in for the Cause of Poor Ivy Bridge Overclocking Temps

After a ton of speculation, a bit of denial, and a ton of testing we finally have our answer. The thermal interface material change made by Intel when it went from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge is indeed the cause of the excessive temperatures we’ve observed while overclocking. The first accusation was made in late-April by Overclockers.com, however proving it wasn’t easy. The Japanese division of PC Watch somehow managed to remove the integrated heat spreader from a Core i7 3770k, along with the stock binding and grease. They then proceed to replace it with aftermarket alternatives, and the results speak for themselves.

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Maximum PC | The Proof is in

Well this is what happens when the competition is squeezed out and it's a game of one. To me this is really sad and very telling. There's a lesson in here for all of us.

@GeneO: I think that you might be onto something with respect to their being a reason that they went with one paste over the other. I'm almost surprised that they haven't come out with a statement explaining the decision. Or perhaps they don't feel compelled to do so as overclocking is optional and potentially dangerous and not done on the vast majority of PC's out there (enthusiast PC's excluded). The IB CPU's are plenty fast and good on power consumption. They can outperform SB at stock speeds and aren't having a heat issue at stock. That's well within spec. The fact that we can "overclock" some chips, and some very well (SB), doesn't necessarily mean it's a given that each and every chip will overclock great.

^ True enough. But it's cases like these that reinforce why tech nerds should always wait for the new technology to hit and ensure that it works as intended before they plunk down their own hard earned money for their upgrades.

Remember the initial batches of Sandy Bridge motherboards which had issues? Or the new AMD Bulldozer chip that was going to absolutely demolish anything made by Intel, but then fell flat and came out around the mid-line of what Intel had well over a year before?

I would think anybody who currently owned a SB wouldn't benefit much at all by upgrading to IB. Shoot, I'm still torn on whether the upgrade is beneficial and I'm on a C2Q :)

bobby carrizal said:

Fail bridge!!!!!!

Only if great performance, out of the box, with low power consumption is a fail.

In the weeks since Ivy Bridge launched, it’s come out that Intel used thermal paste between the CPU’s heat spreader and the actual die, rather than the fluxless solder it debuted with Prescott and adopted for subsequent CPUs. This, combined with evidence that IVB heats up very quickly when overclocked, has given rise to much wailing and gnashing of teeth from certain parts of the enthusiast community, despite conflicting evidence on whether or not removing the heat spreader actually makes a difference.

Source

A Guy

This information doesn't really bother me. At the end of the day, if we have lower power consumption chips that run great, I can live without overclocking it. And while I too have overclocked in the past, and am doing it currently, I'm unsure how beneficial the real-world gains really are. Sure, benchmarks look great, but real world performance changes aren't anywhere near as impressive.