Deep Cool Z3, Z5, and Z9 Review

Intro

This is the fifth installment of many of the Skinnee Labs TIM Comparison 2011.  For most of the installments, results will be released in two or three TIM sets roughly every two or three weeks and today we have three TIMs to show.

Deep Cool is a pretty new company that didn’t enter the market with a bang.  There was no new killer product they introduced with their debut; a year ago I probably hadn’t even heard of them, and I’m guess that even today a lot of people still haven’t heard of them.  They have three pastes on the market, Z3, Z5, and Z9.  Z3 is the lowest priced of the three, with Z9 being the highest, but in terms of cost per gram, Z5 is oddly the lowest.

Another oddity they have with their TIMs is they instruct the user to spread the TIM.  It’s one thing to include a small spreader for those who want it, but application instructions saying to do it is a little confusing.  Why is this confusing?  Spreading TIM isn’t the most effective way of applying it. It readily introduces air bubbles into the TIM joint–air is what TIM is trying to displace–and also requires applying more to get ‘full’ coverage of the IHS.  With a bead or line application, every bit you apply either is used or displaced…with spreading, every bit you apply gets used, displaced, or remains on the spreader.  What remains on the spreader can sometimes be significant quantity, depending what kind of spreader you use, and what remains on the spreader is wasted.  So with instructions to manually spread the TIM, they’re increasing upfront cost by including a spreader, telling the user to worsen the performance of the TIM, and telling the user to use the quantity supplied at a faster rate than what’s necessary.

After today, we’ll have fourteen TIMs completed in the 2011 Comparison, but we still have over 25 more on the docket.  Lots of testing left to do!

The TIMs

Deep Cool Z3 is Deep Cool’s most basic offering.  It’s a thin, liquidy, gray paste.  The only size it comes in is 1.5g for $5, which is not that great of a value in terms of price per gram or in terms of entry cost (cost of the smallest possible quantity).  It comes with a thin cardboard card for spreading and it does spread very easily.  I was only able to get ~6 uses per syringe.  Overall, it’s pretty unremarkable.

Deep Cool Z5 is Deep Cool’s mid-range offering.  It’s also liquidy and gray, but it is a bit thicker than Z3.  It comes with an chisel tip mini-spatula for spreading–not the easiest tool to use for spreading.  To top it off, the paste itself isn’t as easy to spread as Z3.  It comes in only one size: 3g for $6, which is only a dollar more than Z3 and also a much better per-gram value.  I was able to get 10-11 uses per syringe.

Deep Cool Z9 is Deep Cool’s high-end offering.  It’s dark gray and much thicker than Z3 or Z5.  It also comes with a chisel tip mini-spatula for spreading and when combined with the paste’s thickness, it’s almost impossible to spread without using (and wasting) a lot of it to the process of spreading.  Spreading was so difficult that I didn’t do it for testing.  It also only comes in one size: 3g for $9, but I have to dispute the 3g claim.  Unless it’s significantly more dense than Z5, there’s no way they’re both 3g.  With Z9, I was only able to get 5-7 mounts out of a syringe (and that was without spreading and the wasted paste it entails), compared to the 10-11 (with spreading) I was able to get from the Z5 syringes.

The Blocks

For all three contact “settings” I use a Koolance CPU-360.  I’ve chosen the CPU-360 due to its great mounting system (although I’ve modified all three blocks’ mounting systems) and because it’s pretty easy to add slight modifications.

At the “Poor” end of the spectrum, I have a stock CPU-360r1.2 with extremely low mounting pressure; the stock CPU360r1.2 has a somewhat irregular base and when paired with low pressure, TIM does not spread into a thin layer particularly well.

For the “Moderate” contact setting, I’ve taken a CPU-360r1.1 and reduced some of the internal structure so that there’s absolutely no bow.  With pressure in the center of the base the block can actually become slightly concave as the o-ring compresses, but with only moderate mounting pressure the base seems to stay perfectly flat.

As for “Great” contact, I might have gone a little overboard; no block on the market has contact this great.  I’ve modified a CPU-360r1.2 to have a thicker midplate with a compressible layer and the result is a pretty extreme bow that flattens with mounting pressure.  And there’s a lot of mounting pressure.  The result is impressive; with low viscosity pastes, it looks like there isn’t even any TIM on the center of the CPU when taking the mount apart.  Even with viscous pastes the resulting layer is extremely thin.