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Introduction

You can get chrome fan grills, glossy case paint and tinted side windows; in fact your computer can quite easily be pimped up to look like its straight out of the hood. On this note, Jetart have decided to join in the computer beautifying business and have made… diamond heatpaste. Read on for the full run down.

Specs

Nano-Silver CK4000
This high conductivity thermal compound is produced particularity for overclockers. It is made of silver material by nanometer production process. It’s other various materials are also with much better properties than regular thermal compounds. Spreading small amount thermal compound on chipset surface or heatsink bottom, it enhances heat dissipation performance tremendously.

Colour	Grey
Thermal conductivity	> 8.5 W/m .C
Thermal resistance	< 0.205 C – in / W
Specific gravity	> 2.5
Operation temperature	– 50 ~ 240 C
Net weight	3g

Nano-Diamond CK4800
CK4800 is an ultra conductive thermal compound which is specially blended for hi-performance heatsinks. The featured ingredient of CK4800 is Nano Diamond whose well-known characteristics are high thermal conductivity and complete insulation. It only takes a small amount for each application to greatly enhance the performance of heatsink. Besides, CK4800 is totally free from the possibly electric conduction of those metallic based thermal compound. CK4800 is an optimal choice for the best performance and safety purpose.

Colour	Grey
Thermal conductivity	> 4.8 W/m . C
Thermal impedance	< 0.065 C - in / W
Specific gravity	> 2.5
Operating temperature	– 50 ~ 240 C
Net weight	1.5g
Silicone compounds	50%
Carbon compounds	20%
Metal oxide compounds	20%
Diamond particles	10%

Your girlfriend wouldn’t want this on her finger

The diamond heatpaste was packaged in the usual blue livery that Jetart have used on products before. The clamshell packet is easily ripped open where you find the long and thin 1ml syringe and a small spatula.

The silver heatpaste was packed in a similar way but comes in a larger tube and no spatula.

The reason behind using crushed up diamonds in heatpaste rather than the usual metallic based paste, is that diamonds apparently have a much higher conductivity than silver or silicon. This would make sense as silicon is a great insulator and so this heat paste should perform at least on par with, say, Arctic Silver.

Another key benefit is that this diamond heatpaste (CK4800) does not require the rather inordinate 200 hours setting time, but is ‘instantly conductive’ as the box displays proudly. No waiting is great news for anyone who is looking to compare heatsinks or extreme cooling setups one after the other. The silver heatpaste (CK4000) doesn’t say that it’s instantly conductive however.

Included in the diamond heatpaste packet is a small spatula made out of slightly bendy plastic. This is designed to spread the paste around on your CPU core before you place the HSF on top. Usually you have to find a scrap of plastic, or an old credit card to do this job, but Jetart have kindly saved you the effort.

Installation

I used the following system to test the heatpaste:

AMD AM2 3800+
Asus MSN-E motherboard
1GB OCZ PC6400
OCZ Tempest CPU cooler

The two heatpastes CK4000 – silver and CK4800 – diamond will be pitted against Artic Silver 5 after over 200 hours curing, and Arctic Silver 5 after being on after 5 minutes.

After removing the OCZ heatsink and cleaning the 3800+ I was ready to put on the nano diamond pimp paste (sounds wrong).

The syringe is quite tight, and while trying to squeeze out a small quantity (rice grain sized) the syringe suddenly gave way and a massive glob of liquid diamond hit the core. After cleaning the core for the second time I managed to do it correctly.

While I’m on the topic of spilling this stuff, it’s completely non-conductive which means that you could cover your motherboard with the stuff without fear of that awful electrical burning smell.

Using the spatula was easy and I managed to completely cover the core rather than just putting a blob in the middle and using the headsink to squish it out. After playing plasterer for a few minutes, the cooler was back on and I was ready to test.

The silver heatpaste didn’t have the spatula, so I didn’t use one to make this test fair (using only what the manufacturer sends you). This syringe was similarly stiff and I didn’t learn my lesson from last time. On the back of the CK4000 packet it doesn’t say anything about its electrical conductivity but as it contains metallic particles, it’s not a good idea to spray it over your mobo.

As I was plucking heatsinks off for a good chunk of the day, small mercies are always nice. One of which was the viscosity. Usually when you remove a heatsink with baked on AS5 you end up yanking the CPU out of the locked socket; obviously not the healthiest thing to do (thankfully LGA doesn’t have this issue). The Jetart stuff (both of them) wasn’t as viscous and hence you can easily – and safely – remove the heatsink.

Testing

To test the conductivity of the paste, I ran Stress Prime with a side order of folding@home to make sure that the core was fully used. This was run for 30 minutes from boot and the mean temperature was recorded. The ambient temperature was also recorded. This testing procedure was the same for all of the heatpastes. Each test was repeated three times to ensure accuracy.

Please note: these results should be taken with a grain of salt. The heatpastes performance on one CPU in one PC isn’t the best test possible, although it should give you a rough impression of the performance these products can muster.

	Arctic Silver 5 – fresh / C	Artic Silver 5 – 200hrs / C	Jetart nano diamond CK4800 / C	Jetart nano silver CK4000 / C
Ambient	19	18	19	19
Core – load	43	41	42	43
Core – idle	29	31	30.5	32
Idle diff.	10	13	11.5	13
Load diff.	24	23	23	24

As you can see, the Jetart nano diamond heatpaste manages to match Artic Silver 5 even after the AS5 has had a 200+ hour headstart. The nano silver heatpaste doesn’t quite match up to the nano diamond paste, and this difference would probably become more and more noticeable if you had a hotter CPU.

The graph below shows the idle and load temperatures minus ambient temperature to allows comparison.

As you can see, the Jetart nano diamond mixture managed to equal cured Arctic Silver 5 performance in the load test. Unfortunately, when idling, the nano diamond paste wasn’t quite up to the record that AS5 set and lags behind by just over 1 degree. Interestingly, fresh AS5 was the best in the idle test yet worst in the load scenario and caused Stress Prime to crash twice while the CPU was at stock. The heatsink was reseated yet the problem continued.

The nano silver compound managed to be on par with ‘set’ AS5 and did pretty well in the tests. Baring in mind that you can buy one of these multi-application syringes for the meagre price of £2-3 or you could grab a smaller sized AS5 syringe for £3+ it might be an idea to use this stuff rather than A5 – especially due to the free spatula.

I couldn’t find a price for the CK4800 as it’s so new, but I’m sure that the price wouldn’t be that high. If Jetart manage to retail this stuff on par with Arctic Silver 5 then they are on to a winner. It got similar (sometimes better) temperatures than AS5 and it’s instantly conductive.

Conclusion

Jetart have cooked up two fantastic heatpastes that has give Arctic Silver 5 a run for its money. Using crushed diamonds sounds extreme but the temperatures back up this eccentric decision. Next time your building a PC, give Jetart a thought.

Pros	Cons
Great value for money	Hard to get hold of
Not sticky	Not record breaking performance
Free spatula (CK4800)

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I’d like to thank Jetart for providing us with the heatpaste.

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