phanbuey, did you read the article I posted? I'm not the one making the case for solder as the TIM being more prone to failure, the nice people at overclocking.guide are. I was just relaying what I read as it's a counterpoint to the author's position that Intel is only doing this for the money. Also, I did not use the XBOX 360 RROD fiasco as proof of why solder TIM is a bad idea, I gave it as an example of solder failing under thermal load. Before that post, the mood of this thread was derision at the mere thought that solder instead of paste could cause problems. You need to respect the difference between an example of general solder failure rather than a link in my argument. I know why everyone jumped on the 360 stuff though, that's a lot easier to argue against than the analysis in the article I posted, which is pretty solid.
To your point about thermal paste drying out, it won't dry out in a sealed environment like a heatspreader, or at least not for decades. Where is the moisture going to go?
Thanks for being civil while arguing against me, it's a lot easier to have a discussion when people aren't throwing "troll" and "ignore list" around.
I did go back and read the article - and I realized after i read your initial post what you actually meant.
My problem with the article was that his statements are unfounded: "Micro cracks in solder preforms
can damage the CPU permanently after a certain amount of thermal cycles and time. Conventional thermal paste doesn’t perform as good as the solder preform but it
should have a longer durability –
especially for small size DIE CPUs."
He is mainly implying that die size is a relevant factor, which is not true because Skylake-X are gigantic dies, and they are still TIM'ed - so that is already a warning that he is being pretty liberal with his assumptions. Also, solder cracks - but with a professional application, you won't have voids, and specially designed compounds
shouldn't crack if they are specc'd to handle the thermal load.
What this article says is "If you solder your CPU, which wasn't designed to be soldered, in your house using compounds designed for general purpose soldering and a heatspreader that is not properly spaced, it will probably crack and you will break your CPU" = which is 100% true. But the assertion that this also happens to professional grade sTIMs is iffy, and that when it does it actually breaks the chip is even iffier.
regarding the TIM:
Where is the moisture going to go?
- the fact that there is "moisture" coming off of the thermal paste would make me think that it is chemically separating (take with a grain of salt) - it won't leave the area of the heatspreader, but it may (or may not) find its way back to where it needs to be within the TIM and be re-absorbed into the compound.
Ultimately we just don't know why intel chose TIM, but if I was a betting man it would be cost / manufacturing constraints and not because sTIM are more or less reliable than TIMs. I do appreciate the counterpoint, that there is a +/- to any technique....
