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Introduction.
Today we are going to be taking a look at another product from Innovation Cooling, the manufacturers of IC Diamond. It is another thermal compound, as you may have guessed, called IC Perihelion. Whilst it isn’t expected to perform quite as well as their IC Diamond compound, we have been informed that it retails for quite a bit less as it is ‘only’ a ceramic based compound. Having said this we do expect good results.
For those that were wondering “Perihelion” means, according to Keplar’s first law, it is the point in the orbit of a planet, asteroid or comet where it is nearest to the sun (and hottest?). With respect to this review you might say the Perihelion point, or hottest point, is the junction between the CPU and its cooler?
Company Background
Before taking a look at the IC Perihelion here is a little bit of information, regarding Innovation Cooling: -
Innovation cooling is a privately held company, established in 2007 with a an extensive background knowledge of electronics cooling disciplines related to air cooling, water cooling, phase change cooling, and materials and manufacturing. Innovation Cooling’s principle objective is to develop cost effective, competitive performance products and transition them from lab to market.
Packaging and Specifications.
As you can see, like 99% of all aftermarket thermal paste the IC Perihelion comes in a syringe, in this case containing 4g of paste, which should be good for quite a few applications.
With regards to specifications it doesn’t appear to be on Innovation Coolings website at the time of writing this review. So other than saying as its ceramic based and it should, therefore, be suitable for all types of applications from standard air cooling right through to sub zero cooling.
Testing.
To see how the IC Perihelion performs it will be compared to a few of its competitors and its stable mate IC Diamond.
The system it will be tested on is as follows: -
| Motherboard: - | Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3 H55. |
| CPU: - | Core i3 530 @ 4Ghz and 1.25v on the core. |
| CPU Cooler: - | Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro7 V2. |
| Memory: - | Patriot Sector 5 1600Mhz. |
| HDD: - | WD Scorpio Black 250GB 2.5”. |
| PSU: - | 400W SILVERPOWER SP-400P2C PSU. |
| Optical: - | Samsung SH-S223C. |
| Case: - | Cooler Master Elite 340. |
Not the most powerful system in the world, but even lower power systems deserve the best cooling possible.
To test the performance of the various compounds the above system will be run at full load using Prime95 with the temperatures being monitored using Coretemp, each test will be run for 30 minutes to an hour to allow temperatures to peak. Temperatures will be shown as an average of the two cores and given as the amount above ambient, ambient temperature at the time of testing was 20c.
The CPU fan was set to run at max speed during all tests.
Please note some thermal pastes actually require from a few to numerous heat up / cool down cycles before they achieve optimum performance, this maybe reflected in some of the results.
The other compounds that will be tested and compared to the Perihelion compound are as follows: -
The stock compound pre-applied to the AC Freezer Pro7 V2, which is Arctic Cooling MX2 from my research.
- Arctic Silver 5.
- Ceramique by Arctic Silver.
- Tuniq TX-2.
- Finally IC Diamond.
Results.
First to be tested was the “stock MX2” Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev2 paste. It did reasonably well peaking at 43.5 degrees Celsius above ambient.
Next to be tested were the Arctic Silver pastes, the staple paste of choice for many enthusiasts in the past with Arctic Silver 5 the paste to beat for many years.
First up the Arctic Silver Ceramique. To be honest the results were a little suprising. Either that or the pre-applied paste to the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev2 is a lot better than expected. Arctic Silver themselves say AS Ceramique could take 20+ hours and several heat cycles to reach optimum performance, improving by a few degrees once “bedded in”.
Arctic Silver 5. At first glance it may seem that AS5 hasn’t done that well, but as mentioned earlier it may well have improve given a few heat up / cool down cycles. Again Arctic Silver themselves say AS5 could take up to 200 hours and several heat cycles to reach optimum performance, possibly improving by up to 5c once “bedded in”.
Next up the Tuniq TX-2. A very slight improvement over the “stock” paste. There is no mention on Tuniqs website as to whether or not it needs to be bedded in, so presumably it doesn’t?
On to the Innovation Cooling products, first their top of the range compound IC Diamond.
No real surprises here, as expected the IC Diamond offers the best results so far.
Finally, the product on review, IC Perihelion. A lot thicker consistency than I expected as it almost resembles putty.
All in all a very good result, bettering some good competition.
Results in chart form demonstrate a clearer comparison.
Please note all results are shown as above ambient.
A slight increase in idle temp for the perihelion, this may or may not be some latent heat from the previous test?
An excellent result for the IC Perihelion, only beaten by its stablemate, which is considerably more expensive, by an average of 1c in my tests.
Chart to show the difference in idle to load temperatures, again this may have been affected by the slightly high “idle” temp of the Perihelion. It does however show the IC compounds are clearly better than most of the other pastes used.
Conclusion.
In a word EXCELLENT. No the Perihelion didn’t best its stable mate but in all honesty it was never expected to as it costs a fraction of the IC Diamond compound. It did however better some very tough competition and some long standing industy leaders and enthusiasts favourite thermal compound. It’s consistency is a little off putting to start with but it is apparently perfectly normal (it looked liked it had dried out). Once you get used to this and the application method you will be onto a winner.
The idle and idle to load delta was a little confusing but as mentioned maybe there was a little more latent heat in the cpu when the final test was conducted. The load temperatures do indeed speak for themselves though and the Perihelion has certainly excelled during this review.
All users from people just looking to improve on the cooling from their stock cpu (or graphics card or any other component for that matter) to extreme hardcore overclockers would no doubt be very happy with the results they get from using Innovation Cooling’s Perihelion compound, it is that flexible and that good.
Pros
- EXCELLENT results.
- Bested most of the competition.
- Suitable for all types of cooling.
- Reasonably priced.
Cons
- It’s good but not quite as good as its stable mate IC Diamond, but hey it is around the same price as Artic Silver Five so we cannot complain.
The thermal compound used in any given system, particularly an overclocked system, is sometimes overlooked and can be the difference between a stable system and an unstable one. Using the figures above the hottest was 46.5 celcius above ambient, had the ambient been a little higher it is feasable the system might have shut down, using the Perihelion which was some 5 degrees cooler could have meant the system, whilst running close to the edge, would have remained stable.
If you can’t quite stretch to buying ID Diamond then IC Perihelion is a must have, 9/10.
Author Mac124
