http://www.maximumpc.com/article/review ... _black_2tb

Check out the xfer rates. Stamps on a 300G velo.

Now this drive is priced ~50 higher. so lemme think, Get 2TB and a faster sustained xfer speed? Prolly the end of the best mechanical HDD.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/review ... _black_2tb

on an unrelated side note - me and a friend of mine at work were finding the best thermal compound if any. ( yes diamond dust compound is better- the compound its in is the issue )

Toothpaste beat out arctic silver. Now it wouldn't last more than a week maybe, but actually beat out arctic silver 3. This article is crazy.

http://www.dansdata.com/goop.htm

Results show that thermal compound really isnt a good thermal conductor. Its far better to lap it a little and use nothing.

And look how it gets stomped by an SSD

The best kind of thermal paste is your computer in a vat of chilled mineral oil!

I put AC5 on my 7750 yesterday and was sustaining about 13C all day and into the night.

That's pretty ridic...

The WD blacks are fast drives, but I doubt they'd put out a mass storage 7200rpm drive that kicked the ass of the flagship 10,000rpm drives (SATA land only) Somebody made a booboo.

Well I thru that up there for a general discuss.

But those numbers are very good and I found it very hard to believe. Apparently it has to do with the newer technology with the hdd platters and how much more they can get on one. So the drive doesnt have to spin up as fast to get the read write times. It also uses new actuator technology as well.

If those numbers are correct, I may have to get one of those instead of a rappy.


As for the 2nd link of tests on thermal compound. I dunno, as funny as some of it was it made me raise an eyebrow. I dont think I will be smearing on some colgate just yet tho

About 8 years ago I read a post on the SharkyExtreme forums of a guy who lapped and polished a CPU die and HSF and came to the same conclusion so I definitely believe this. I don't know if I'd be willing to try it with my own stuff though.

Back then I don't think heat spreaders were all that common. I remember cringing every time I put that HSF back on my Original 1GHz Athlon. Thermal goop is for the unwashed masses who don't have the time/patience/know-how to do a good lapping. I include myself in that catagory.

2TB black drives cost 400$ after tax (as opposed to the mere 300$ for a 300GB rappy). It all depends on what you want to use your hard drives for.

2TB black(s) would be a great hard drive for raw video editing.
Rappies (I love made-up words!) make great OS drives due to low seek times and "enterprise class" workmanship (never had or seen one break).
SSD's are fabulous for gaming and photoshop type applications, and smaller OS drives like for laptops.
"Green" style drives are perfect for storing all sorts of "stuff" and HTPC boxes.

I do lap my CPUs and heatsinks to get more direct surface to surface contact, but thermal conducting compounds must still be used.

I posted a link in the forum about thermal compounds and where this technolgy/materials are going (read carbon nano tubes). Seems the folks at the US Dept of Energy have a little higher budget than the guys at Dan's Data who used toothpaste and vegemite. Some of the industrial materials used most have never heard of; however they do have one or two pc market compounds for a comparison.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1617

In my next and much more progressive experiment since chilling the entire box to -100C, I am going to attempt to eliminate all thermal resistance between the IHS and cooler; thereby negating the need for lapping or high technology compounds that will eventually fail.

Ski - how do you plan on doing that exactly? At a microscopic level, both heat sink and cpu look like the andes mountains and they don't fit togther smoothly. Lapping takes that down alot but thermal paste is still needed as its better to have that than air pockets.

If they can make cue balls that when blown up to the size of the earth are smoother than the earth, then I'm sure it's possible to get a rediculoursly flat surface. Perhaps using something like mercury.

L2N baby!

I am not so sure mercury is a really good conductive element but the fact that its liquid would do the job for filling things in.

unless Ski wants to keep this quiet until its done - which is understandable

Somethink "like" mercury.

I need to ask tho out of ignorance to be honest, Why a box would need to be chilled to -100. Is there significant advantages to that effect? What I am really asking is what is the advantage of -100 over say -20?

do you have a photo of that past experiment? I would be really interested in seeing that setup as it does sound pretty extensive and how did ya do it?

Also, if what he's doing is so secretive, it's either because a) it's illegal, or b) other people/corporations would want to copy it (think flaming moe).

You can't just dip the entire computer into a vat of L2n without everything just going gonzo.

http://www.lenntech.com/periodic-chart-elements/melting-point.htm
http://www.lenntech.com/periodic-chart-elements/boiling-point.htm

Going off just the -100C bango, pure liquid chlorine would be the element of choice...Which uh would probably be uh quite against the Geneva convention.

In reply to the box going to -100c, you guys already know what I did.

Hali-Newf, you're correct about the surface of metals at microscopic magnification and which for the post part causes the thermal resistance across the interface. Filling these peaks and valleys is the job of compounds. The finer the compound, the further into the valley it can reach. One benefit of carbon nano tubes is the ability to reach to the valley floor but also with excellent thermal conductivity. I'm tired of having to use any of those products when this problem is much more easily solved.


Time to sit down in the thinking chair, that's for sure.