Der8auer Rants About Misleading W/mK Marketing (Thermal Conductivity) 

(And because we didn't expand on it here: Under identical test conditions or for base material properties, thermal conductivity is of course a real thing and is useful -- say comparing aluminum to copper -- but it's when you start making pastes and tuning the properties just for a marketing number that Der8auer needs an anger translator!) Check out our previous video with Der8auer speaking on this topic here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-CCqxE-5Ct3w.html And check out Der8auer on RU-vid (auf Deutsch): ru-vid.com Und auf Englisch: www.youtube.com/@der8auer-en

when a German and American tech nerd have a playdate, this is what they talk about

Yo! Thank you for being so kind after I ran into you at the airport and said hello. I appreciate the welcoming hello.

Steve - "we talked long enough to need to split them" The audience - "No, you didn't."

Roman: "If I turn this into dust, and add a little bit of silicon oil..." Steve: "What're you, a f**in' alchemist?" You guys have the best conversations, always such a great blend of tech information and relaxed humor. Thanks GN & der8auer!

Props to GN for featuring a lot of other channels/creators during computer.

"Community voted bromance of the show" 5 seconds in and I'm already dead!!! 😂🤣😂

Kinda like how NVIDIA misleads people with stuff like the 4070 ti being "3x faster than a 3090 ti"

“Anyway... temperature’s fake and uh... energy doesn’t exist.” I knew it!

"der8auer spelled mit Acht" This is very important and we should only call him like this from now on

Coming from the audio industry, don't get me started on the lack of standards. Great talk. 👍

Der8auer's channel has some fantastic content, especially for higher-level enthusiasts. He's also an actual engineer, so some of his commentary can get pretty involved and nuanced (as you see here) so prepare to have a second window open for WIkipedia~

Wow that ended so fast, I feel like I need the uncut 50 minutes. Good to know that thermal conductivity numbers are about as useful as TDP numbers. Just make everything up to get numbers you like!

can't say it enough, these 2 need more content together.

THANKS STEVE! Thanks Roman!

Misleading and marketing go hand in hand.

"Der Bauer mit Acht" i lol'd heartily

You guys have such good chemistry. Always a joy to watch you guys.

Thermal conductivity has a very common standard using astm D5470 which is similar to the use case. The supplier should note the standard used. Laser flash and other metroligies are basically random number generators. Also, the number that matters is thermal impedance. Thermal conductivity is better number for heat spreaders while impedence tells you how good of a tim the material is.

Met Der8auer few years ago at Gamescon and he gave me a signed delidded 7700k chain, free ifixit kit and a hug, super nice guy. After I got a new CPU I tried to put that IHS on my old 7600k because reasons, didn't go to well.

Two of my favourite tech channels right there! The amount of amazing knowledge that you two (and your teams) have shared with the community is just incredible. Thank you for helping to make me an informed consumer. Just 3 years ago I had never built my own PC, but then I started watching tech channels like GN, Der8auer, LTT, and Level One Techs, and now I’ve built two with my own hands! Learned so much about form factors, platforms and their chipsets, CPU and GPU architecture, PSUs and their safety features/certifications, basic wiring of connectors, PCIE generations and specs, and even how TIMs work. I can’t overstate just how much I’ve learned from you two. Thanks so much Steve and Roman! Back to you Steve!

I hope you will upload full conversation. It’s always good to hear two enthusiast talking.

you 2 are my favourite tech youtubers!

Holy Moly! Did Der8auer just take a dump on Thermal Grizzly? Dude's got balls.

Steve, you are an amazing person, with a goodwill, the amount of work you make for us is outstanding. Best wishes for you, thanks for everything you're doing!

-Thermal conductivity values will tend to decrease with increasing operational temperature. Though in ranges of 20-100 C they may increase before decreasing at higher temperatures (this can be somewhat material dependent however) -High thermal conductivity values are reported for solid sheet based TIMs usually because they are composed of graphene or graphene-based materials. The issue with this value is that graphene has exceptional thermal conductivity IN THE PLANE of the 2D graphene lattice. But thermal conductivity NORMAL to the graphene plane is significantly lower. -The reason that the solid piece of copper interfaced with the heat source has approximately the same thermal conductivity as the heat source is based on the heat transport. You can think of the system as a multi-compartment system with a rate of heat flux for the thermal paste and another rate of heat flux for the copper sink, the reason the SYSTEM has the same heat flux rate as the paste is that it is the rate determining portion of the heat transport process. Like comparing flow rates of water through chicken wire fence versus a fine mesh. -The thermal conductivity of the copper in silicone oil paste being low is based on, once again the rate-limiting process, which is heat transport through the silicone oil (silicone oil has a much lower thermal conductivity than copper). Increasing particle size of the dispersed metal increases thermal conductivity by increasing interfacial contact area between the heat source and metal, and sink and metal, and will be dominated by the high thermal conductivity of copper. Past a certain particle size however, you will see a decrease in interfacial contact area between the TIM and the surfaces of the parts (since the larger particulate will not easily fill the micro voids and imperfections in each surface). -I'm not sure what they meant by the delta between the cooler and die, if its the separation distance though, thermal conductivity is a measure of Watts per Meter * Kelvin. The meter refers to the thickness of the material through which heat transports. So it follows that if you are transporting heat through a greater thickness of the same material, that the thermal conductivity will decrease.

I bought Thermal Grizzly paste with the thought of “If it’s good enough for overclocking it’s good enough for me”It was also part of the preparations for a planned Pc upgrade that never ended up happening.

love derbauer! great content

This is a great video and shows the real issue with current marketing and listed performance specs used by manufacturers and resellers. Even within a manufacturer's product line, they are all over the place. Other times there are apparent manufacturers which are actually just resellers and rebrand products as their own, sometimes claiming a different w/mk rating than that actual manufacturer without using any more additives. I no longer trust w/mk ratings at all and rely on testing to tell the truth. A good example of ratings not being accurate within a manufacturers product line would be T-Globals TG-PP10 thermal Putty (rated at 10w/mk) vs *TG-NSP80 (Rated at 8.3w/mk, *NOT SAFE for electronics as it conducts electricity). In this comparison the TG-PP10 conducts heat almost as well as Gelid GP Extreme pads, where as *TG-NSP80 would theoretically beat all currently available thermal pads (with the exception of 3D Graphite pads). Luckily we now have some extremely high performing Thermal Putties that don't conduct electricity and can effectively be used to replace Thermal pads on VRAM, VRM, etc. For anyone interested in Thermal Putties I currently recommend Upsiren UX Pro as the best performing, although that may change as we discover/test more putties in the future.

4:15 I was actually wondering exactly this when I was shopping these, why some products didn't have thermal conductivity numbers. Glad you covered it!

Here they are! I was waiting for this video :D Now I hope there's a video with Gordon too!

I love watching stuff like this, getting the little bit of understanding from the people engineering something. Can't wait for the other parts.

I like Der8auer, a smart young fellow, I am subscribed to his channel. He is spot on about manufacturers picking a sweet spot for their products out of the minimum to maximum 'Curve' , to make it look like it's the best. Cool discussion / video . Cheers

I love the collaboration You have with all the other RU-vidrs! It's always a treat to see you get together for a video!

I want to thank you guys for the absolute work, knowledge, dedication, and integrity you put into your testing and reviews for all of us to enjoy and benefit of off. Best of the bunch right here on show~

Thanks Steve.

Fantastic! I keep ordering based on this rating they slap on pastes and this has taught me a lot

yeah...we gonna need to see that whole convo bro. in advance Thanks Steve!

Computex 2023 was what was needed! So glad to see many of my tech reviewers able to share space and ideas. Especially after the last few years on this planet.

Love it when Roman do piece discussion with you, guys! Wish it was a more common thing! But, well, distance is a biatch! Now, on about the testing: On die application Pump-out effect is the biggest issue and the one that should be focused the most when testing pastes. A lot of "high" end pastes perform between a few degrees of each other when applied on a IHS, but, when it comes to die application, few passes the test after some thermal cicles because of pump out effect. Id love to see you guys do a huge round up on this subject with the most popular pastes.

Dude at the end i was no way this video is ending it has only just begun. Can't wait for pt.2

If u guys made a podcast, i will listen to it all day

Two things: 1) I get what he's saying in terms of how you can "game" the number for marketing purposes which may or may not have any "real" value for an end user/customer when the product is used/deployed in their specific application. There's the mantra that "numbers don't lie", but as an engineer, there's also the mantra of "we can make the test tell you what you want it to tell you as well". But that's also where discussions about the methodology becomes critical, and very few people ever spend time, talking about the test/simulation methodology and/or data collection methodology (to see whether there are glaring issues with it or not). Thermal testing of this kind is actually impossible to do, physically, because the physical thermal couples have their own physical properties (size/dimension, material properties, etc.) to contend with. You can literally get a Ph.D. just by studying the testing methodology and how to try and minimise the influence or the impact that the physical test itself imparts on the test that you're trying to run. 2) Thermal conductivity IS required though, for my CFD simulations. But what he said about thermal conductivity being a function of temperature -- there aren't very many CFD codes that I am aware of, that is actually able to accept k(T).

Very interesting talk, i loved the video. A little different but also very useful!

love love love Der 8Auer, should only been shown in soft focus and slow motion

I still have a Prolimatech PK-1 Thermal Compound. I once build a Pc for my aunt it was an AMD Athlon 4850e (Dual core). When I bought it, it was relatively new. So could have been mid 2009. Summer 2022 I took the Pc apart that was used till then. I demounted the cooler and the paste was still like day one. It was not dryed out, it was still thick and sticky. I could have remount the cooler directly back on and it would have worked flawlessly I'm sure. Really impressed with the longevity. Just a little shutout to Prolimatech.

I feel like we should have a graph of thermal conductivity showing the results at say 5 or 10 degree intervals between idle temps and thermal throttling (maybe 115C for the top end) to give a reliable, relatable and comparable results table

Respect is earned. der8auer is famous for good reason. This was an excellent video and needs further explanation with GN styled charts. 😀

i love it too see you two guys work together..... RESPEKT to BOOTH !!!

derbauer the guy who recently tried to flame AMD over energy efficiency...... so professional

Gotta say, I love Der8auer's sleeve, he's clearly a man of culture!

The thumbnail for this video is hilarious! It looks like Steve is disgusted at the amount of thermal paste used and Der8auer is amused by it.

Thanks for that, that must be the reason why I've never really noticed any difference between different pastes. In the future I will put more weight into reviews when buying paste.

Been using Arctic Silver FOREVER... No plains to spend any more.

I LIKE long form, in-depth, content. 50 minutes I've stood on street corners intensely conversing twice as long! A LOT of us like longform; my favourite English tech tuber used to regularly go 60 minutes + and I loved that; now thirty minutes is not a regular thing. Shorts? Go away! We WANT in depth and we want our content creators bouncing of one another! My favourite content has been when y'all invade one anothers content and we get something impromptu and when y'all decide that since we are here, lets do something longer and more specific together. I know we wrag you pair, but it is rather marvelous and very entertaining! Successful enthusiasts with serious cashflow and turnover! Hot damn; we are so lucky to have you! All the best and onwards and upwards, guys.

I would love to see more TIM benchmarks. *nudge nudge* This talk just shows how much they are needed.

(insert "thanks Steve" meme here) I love these collaborations, specially this way, chill and comfy, even more, as friends, making the videos very enjoyable, beyond the informative content. Thank you guys! Successes and blessings!

Roman is such a cool and honest guy. When he says it doesn't really make sense to buy the extreme paste...instant respect and trust! Great interview Steve.

Awesome discussion and very helpful for people coming into pc building new. Cheers.

Ok. 1:22 during the 0Dark ad roll, the cooler is sitting on top of a cpu. Is that a k6 AMD chip? That’s pretty sweet. Throw back to my very first pc build Christmas 1998.

The amount of physical mirroring with how y’all touch your hair and hold your arms is adorable

That ending 😂😂😂😂. Thank you so much for this video. It was vert educational.

I need a der8auer and Steve podcast.

Der Bauer spelled with eight is just so funny, thanks Steve, back to you, Steve! One Love! Always forward, never ever backward!! ☀️☀️☀️ 💚💛❤️ 🙏🏿🙏🙏🏼

I love Roman's choice of tattoos! Stargate AND Doctor Who!

Always great content! You guys cant tell me if Der8auer had red hair he wouldn't look like the Shermantator! (American Pie)

Awesome video. Best one in a long time

Had a chuckle to myself. If you didn't know the protagonists of this video, one would assume the ranting Derbauer was on the right in the thumbnail.

Great to see Germans and Americas Hardware and OCs #1 👍

I never noticed that Der8auer has a Stargate tattoo, that's pretty cool

I have been waiting the entire Computex for this!!! BEST BROMANCE ON RU-vid!

Roman definitely identifies the problem with thermal conductivity numbers. They are meaningless without temperature. I've worked in several chemical labs, some in drinking water treatment. I've seen pH's reported with no temperature association, tried to explain, to everyone. "Nope we don't report temperature!" One operator actually let a sample sit around and warm up to lab temp, in order to raise the pH number to get in spec so they wouldn't have to adjust anything. (Why write the temp? Hahaa! Not so funny on the drinking water end!) So this point hits home for me. On a side note, I came into position where I could correct this, at least in one town!

I work in the R&D field. We just recently started evaluating high conductivity PCBs. It's exactly the same in that market. The numbers don't matter. We have our own standardized test board to test XY as well as Zup and Zdown thermal conductivity, dielectric breakdown, inductive coupling and foil adhesion strength. We've tested the gambit from the aluminum backed PCBs from JLCPcb to a company that charges many hundreds of dollars for the same 10 dollar board. The cheap ones are not as bad as the datasheets make them look. Layout is more important than substrate to an extent. Once you get into high frequency applications, then the more expensive boards start to shine, but that's 10's or megahertz in a power board. Not very common.

I remember when I changed the alphacool Sub Zero thermal paste, that was very good and I had perfect temperatures, for the Alphacool Apex thermal paste, I had a great improvement because of the better thermal conductivity. Made the same (really I did here first) in the Gpu, where everything was a good, a perfect starting point, and I had 5, 6 degrees more of improvement. Thermal conductivity of thermal paste and thermal pads was more important of what I thought in a first time. Liquid metal I will try in the future. Great meeting!

It's always good to have Broman onboard. And twice the ranting, oh my.

Thanks for the education on the conductivity numbers. I always go for Artic MX, price-performance-endurance ... it strikes a good balance for me i'd say. But ofc i like the ThermalGrizzly stuff, everything enthusiast is just cool.

Love you guys! :D

You are so nice guys! The video title is clickbait for sure... I have never seen Der8auer ranting (in a video) - it would have been the first one. Unfortunately, I can only like it once, would love to like it twice! Like-Like!

Thanks, Mr Steve.

Well that was very interesting. As someone with training in engineering, I'd latched on hard to the thermal conductivity number - that's a thing I'm aware of and, when it's measured properly and reported accurately, it's ...an actual physical property of material that exists as much as its tensile strength and resistivity and such. Y'know, things that tell you literally exactly how it performs in that way. Theoretically it could be the single most solid number we talk about in computing short of things like the physical transistor count and such. Good to know that, as reported, it's just marketing BS. And yes, if you're reading this, Der8auer, I would very much be interested in a paste that performs well and can maintain its properties long term. Even if it's not up to your top-of-the-line stuff, endurance is a huge factor for me (and I suspect many other users) as I want something that will last for several years with as little maintenance as I can get away with. I'd love to swap out parts every generation or two, but the cost of major upgrades like that is just beyond what my income (and saving habits, granted) make possible, so my computers tend to go several years without the cooler being pulled off the CPU.

you guys are awesome doing a video together!

awesome honest talk 👌👌👌

Fantastic video. Props to Roman for explaining the topic so well and being honest about it.

For me, MX4 is king. Marketing says it last 8 years. I had MX4 for more than 2 years on an air cooled FX 8320 OC to 4.8GHz, thermals didnt change from first to last day. After that I got a FX 9590 and installed with the arctic gooey with the same air heatsink, excellent temps until I upgraded to ryzen. I have machines using MX4 for 5 or 6 years doing the same thermals than the first day. -It is cheap, got a 20g tube for 10 bucks. - It performs, No problem with an air cooled FX 9590. -Easy to apply, Like hot butter. -Last long time. Like a lot

This is so friggin awesome! Deep dive content like this with experts is awesome.

At least from my perspective, I find "all of these things perform basically identically so you should just buy whichever one is cheapest" to be a useful conclusion from a review. I'd totally be up for GN testing things where that would be the likely conclusion.

"Don't go chasing thermal values, Listen to the Reviewers that you're use to" - Der8auer. in tune of Waterfalls - TLC

two legends of the scene. hell yes.

Thanks Steve!

Der Achtauer ist ein richtiger Held! 😊 Love these vids by Gamer Ne10us, keep it up!

Somebody at the show saw them and said get a room.....so they did and we got broke back motherboard.

I've used Arctic paste for years. Currently using MX-4, since I can get as much as I want by driving up the road 5 minutes to my local PC parts place. I am curious about the Thermal Grizzly Cryosheets.

"Number one community voted bromance of the show" is something I didn't expect to hear lol

Something something cooling this and that but wait... Stargate tattoo?? Awesome. But in all seriousness, love this content, looking forward to the rest of it!

6:35 my immediate thought upon hearing the particle sizes was "Do you prefer creamy thermal paste? Or chunky thermal paste?"

Great combo . 😌😌👏👏👍🏻👍🏻

We can rant if we want to We can leave your friends behind 'Cause your friends don't rant And if they don't rant Well, they're no friends of mine -- The Safety Rant

Just built my new machine, 7950X with an ASUS X670E-A (I know, I bought it before the current issues) and a RTX4090. I used hydronaut as my TIM but to be honest I don't think it would matter what I chose. That 7950X runs so bloody hot (at load) due to it's IHS, if I want it any cooler my only option would be a delid and direct die which I'm not 100% comfortable in doing. Was an interesting build, 128GB of 6400 DDR5 that can NEVER run at 6400, the best I got was 4800 (5000 with occational boot failures.) I do like the 011D Dynamic XL case though. Just don't buy a shift version of a PSU though, you'll have to remove a drivebay, LOL. I was waiting for the new 011D Evo XL which now won't be out until October so got fed up waiting for it.

My newest build is with the Der8auer Lian Li011 dynamic Evo. Perfectly happy with it would recommend it to everyone I know.

"And number one bromance of the show" had be start laughing in like the first 4 seconds. That's a record. Thanks Steve.