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10-Aug-2015, 17:57
(This post was last modified: 10-Aug-2015, 18:07 by Manoet.)
Late last night I found what may be, at this point in time, the 'be all/end all' thermal transfer pad! After much research, at or near an hour a day for over a week, I've discovered the blue pads currently used in the Devialet to have a thermal efficiency of between .9 and 1 W/mk (watts per sq meter Kelvin) efficiency rating. The 'Phobya' pad I ordered from Amazon this weekend (and canceled late last night) had the highest rating I had found to-date at 5 W/mk. The latest material, made in Germany and named Alphacool Eisschicht (Ice Cap) is availabe in 11, 14 and 17 W/mk efficiencies!! You gotta know I had little-to-zero interest in 11 & 14 W/mk efficiencies once I knew 17 was available! I ordered 6 sheets of 1.5mm thick X 400mm square ($174.79 each) which with a US Customs fee of $62.92 total comes to a grand total of $1,111.66. Free UPS shipping from Germany to me is included.
If this material pans out it will provide on the order of at or over 17 times the thermal transfer efficiency/effectiveness at cooling the Devialet as the OEM blue thermal pads and 3.4 times better than the Phobya product I came close to ordering. Of course all this cooling goodness comes at a HUGE premium being the 17 W/mk Ice Cap product is over 7 X more expensive than the Phobya product and over 10 X more than blue pads of same size/thickness.
Below is a link to the site I ordered from and there is a Youtube video I found last night tho the young kid in it is a bit flakey. I'll post that here if I can find it again.
http://www.aquatuning.us/thermal-pads-und-paste/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pGOZmZ_R7w
Statements in my posts are opinion only, not to be construed as fact. Any projects I engage in are at my own risk! Their outcome cannot be assured and may result in success, small/no change or catastrophic failure. I encourage no one rely on anything I say or do as gospel and to realize your mileage may vary!
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11-Aug-2015, 11:21
(This post was last modified: 11-Aug-2015, 11:28 by Pim.)
When my wife read the header 'thermal pads' she wanted to know where to buy some... It's winter here
Do you think all that thermal efficiency will make a difference when it comes to dissipating into the body? I'm not going to ask you to do a test with different efficiency pads and find out where the threshold is (would cost a fortune and it's a LOT of work) but it would be interesting to know. You never know, someone from Devialet might be reading your report and next thing we have even flatter pizza boxes on the market.
Lifetime Roon, Mac mini, int. SSD, ext. HDD, tv as monitor, key board and track pad on bean bag as remote,Devialet 200, Od'A #097, Blue jeans speaker cable,
Dynaudio C1 MkII.
Jim Smith's GBS.
Northern NSW Australia.
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11-Aug-2015, 14:56
(This post was last modified: 11-Aug-2015, 15:15 by Manoet.)
I do think it will. Would be crazy for me to be doing things to this extent if I believed nothing could come from it. But until its all back together and powered up, I can't say how much of a difference. Of course its not 'just' better thermal pads as there will be air flow convection cooling thru-the-case that's lacking now and I expect that will contribute significantly as well. All insulating plating removed should nicely compliment things as will black anodizing the case inside & out then stripping all existing heat-retentive powder coat & paint from radiant and conductive heat dissipating components and anodizing them. Every little bit helps and effects are cumulative. What I'd like to see is near 30*C temps across the board when run wide open. If I sense or perceive it too cool for proper SQ I could always start to incrementally block-off inlets or outlets which would act like a thermostat internally. If I get REALLY lucky I might even be able to raise or lower temps selectively by 'zones' on digital & analog boards or PSU individually... but that could prove a pipe dream. I've almost no doubt there will be some improvement temp-wise. Just can't say where most will come from or how effective they'll be yet. But we're gonna find out!
Statements in my posts are opinion only, not to be construed as fact. Any projects I engage in are at my own risk! Their outcome cannot be assured and may result in success, small/no change or catastrophic failure. I encourage no one rely on anything I say or do as gospel and to realize your mileage may vary!
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Haha... I ain't hoping for even flatter pizza boxes - which means even slim iec plugs wont fit under the cover. I am hoping devialet will implement these better techniques and make better machines.
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Got to give kudos to Aquacool, the US Distributor and Alphacool the German manufacturer on keeping me totally up to speed on my order status of the highly anticipated Alphacool Eisschicht (Ice Cap) thermal pads. They sent emails when they received the order, when they picked the order, when it shipped followed a few hours later by its UPS tracking number. US UPS will pick up tracking responsibilities once it enters US territory. Goes a long way quelling insecurity when dealing 1st time with an unknowm company in another country for a substantial sum of money. Material was picked and shipped in Germany within 24 hours of order placement from the US. Seems to be a a class act operation!! Couldn't be happier (or more relieved). Until US UPS picks it up I won't know ETA but I'm guessing next week wouldn't be far off.
Statements in my posts are opinion only, not to be construed as fact. Any projects I engage in are at my own risk! Their outcome cannot be assured and may result in success, small/no change or catastrophic failure. I encourage no one rely on anything I say or do as gospel and to realize your mileage may vary!
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WOW!! The new thermal transfer pads UPS tracking shows; "On vehicle for delivery today!" Coulda knocked me over with a feather! Considering I ordered on Monday after business hours in Germany I'm a little gape-jawed but in a good way. I'll get a pic posted soon as possible after receipt.
Statements in my posts are opinion only, not to be construed as fact. Any projects I engage in are at my own risk! Their outcome cannot be assured and may result in success, small/no change or catastrophic failure. I encourage no one rely on anything I say or do as gospel and to realize your mileage may vary!
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15-Aug-2015, 01:14
(This post was last modified: 15-Aug-2015, 01:28 by Manoet.)
Got the thermal pads today. Most striking thing is weight! These guys are HEAVY! Still as soft, permeable and pliable as the OEM blues but a L-O-T heaver per sq inch! The blue pads are advertised as using ceramic particles suspended in the matrix. The ice caps don't say what they use for conductive transfer medium but judging from the gray coloring my bet is it will turn out to be aluminum powder, silver powder or a combination of aluminum/silver powder. Both great conductors tho silver is to be preferred by an overwhelmingly large margin... over twice the efficiency of aluminum! And due to weight (not to mention cost) of pads silver could easily be the sole medium as these pads are just simply far to heavy to only have aluminum be suspended in them. A solid sheet of 1.5mm thick aluminum 100mm square would weigh less than these. But I'll weigh em for sure as I remember embarrassing myself last time on the possibility of the Devialet case being brass as it felt too heavy to be aluminum.
Too late for me to do pics tonight as UPS only got here 15 minutes ago and I'm getting ready to go out to dinner. I want to do some comparative heat transfer speed testing tomorrow between these and the blue pads and report what I find here and I'll include some pics in that thread.
Till then...
Statements in my posts are opinion only, not to be construed as fact. Any projects I engage in are at my own risk! Their outcome cannot be assured and may result in success, small/no change or catastrophic failure. I encourage no one rely on anything I say or do as gospel and to realize your mileage may vary!
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15-Aug-2015, 18:08
(This post was last modified: 15-Aug-2015, 19:00 by Manoet.)
By my testing this pad is exactly 20X more thermally efficient than the blue pad its replacing. That differential between 'advertised/actual' numbers could be related to 3 distinct possibilities:
1. Blue pad is actually only .85 W/mk efficient instead of .9 to 1.0 W/mk advertised rating
2. Ice Cap pad is actually 17.1xx efficient instead of 17 W/mk advertised
3. My measuring tools and procedures are diningroom based rather than a controlled environment
Either way at the very small measured differences between actual/advertised numbers I'm picking black pepper out of fly poop. The new stuff is dramatically better and that's what matters.
After pondering the thermally conductive media in the new pad last evening it dawned on me just before falling asleep that silver or aluminum isn't a possibility as both are electrically conductive. That dog can't hunt in the Devialet for obvious reasons. I've relegated finding out thermal conductivity media to the analogy of a dog chasing a car. What would I do with it if I caught it!?! Knowing only satisfies a curiosity but offers nothing that's modification enhancing in any way to the project. I'm still curious but like the toys of my youth need to put it away and get on with things.
As to the weight of these pads 1.5mmT X 100mm X 100mm: 71.5 grams. T6061 aluminum plate same dimension; 60 grams. They are a hefty lot!
Statements in my posts are opinion only, not to be construed as fact. Any projects I engage in are at my own risk! Their outcome cannot be assured and may result in success, small/no change or catastrophic failure. I encourage no one rely on anything I say or do as gospel and to realize your mileage may vary!
