Deepcool AM5 Thermal Guard

[TatamiMatt]

Just found this interesting bit of equipment, its a thermal paste guard much like thermalrights for AM5 however it is much less intrusive and made of copper

 

 

Seperate to the not needing to clean thermal paste as much when replacing etc etc that a thermal paste guard usually does, this seems to roughly match the profile of the contact plate of a cooler and the fact that it is solid copper, would the extra material allow extra heat spreading from around the sides of the IHS where the cooler doesnt touch and conduct it into the cooler, effectively upgrading the surface area of the IHS and allowing a greater heat conduction area into the cooler? Or is this redundant enough to not care (only about £8 or $10 where i live)

 

To further that thought, would this benefit coolers like the Phantom spirit or MA824 where there are enough heatpipes that some of the Heat pipes are actually far enough away from the IHS that they may not make much contact at all?

 

Whats peoples thoughts on this?

[DoctorNick]

13 minutes ago, TatamiMatt said:

Just found this interesting bit of equipment, its a thermal paste guard much like thermalrights for AM5 however it is much less intrusive and made of copper

 

 

 

Seperate to the not needing to clean thermal paste as much when replacing etc etc that a thermal paste guard usually does, this seems to roughly match the profile of the contact plate of a cooler and is made entirely from copper, would the extra material allow extra heat spreading from around the sides of the IHS where the cooler doesnt touch and conduct it into the cooler, effectively upgrading the surface area of the IHS and allowing a greater heat conduction area into the cooler? Or is this redundant enough to not care (only about £8 or $10 where i live)

 

To further that thought, would this benefit coolers like the Phantom spirit or MA824 where there are enough heatpipes that some of the Heat pipes are actually far enough away from the IHS that they may not make much contact at all?

 

Whats peoples thoughts on this?

Interesting. Alternatively you could get the contact frame as I would expect it to perform better.

Haven't seen any reviews on the deepcool frame /guard. Its more a guard than a frame. Look at the massive edge around the cpu vs contact frame:

 

[TatamiMatt]

4 minutes ago, DoctorNick said:

Interesting. Alternatively you could get the contact frame as I would expect it to perform better.

Haven't seen any reviews on the deepcool frame /guard. Its more a guard than a frame. Look at the massive edge around the cpu vs contact frame:

 

Yeah, honestly its less of the thermal paste situation, what piqued my interest is that its a lot more flush with the surface of the IHS and copper based, if i were to put a little paste on the copper itself and spread it around before mounting, would that increase the coldplate to IHS contact surface and improve thermals? As the other one wont touch no matter what you do, even a 1mm+ gap is too big, whereas with the deepcool one it looks maybe 0.3mm? much more doable to bridge with thermal paste and possibly increase cooling efficiency and heat dissipation from the IHS

[DoctorNick]

2 minutes ago, TatamiMatt said:

Yeah, honestly its less of the thermal paste situation, what piqued my interest is that its a lot more flush with the surface of the IHS and copper based, if i were to put a little paste on the copper itself and spread it around before mounting, would that increase the coldplate to IHS contact surface and improve thermals? As the other one wont touch no matter what you do, even a 1mm+ gap is too big, whereas with the deepcool one it looks maybe 0.3mm? much more doable to bridge with thermal paste and possibly increase cooling efficiency and heat dissipation from the IHS

Idk if that would be the case in reality. I see your point, but using a thicker layer of paste will result in higher temps than thinner layer. Also the copper plate is not directly connected with the CPU heatspreader apart from in the corners, so I would expect it being pure copper to just be marketing:

[GuiltySpark_]

All these prevent is thermal paste getting in between the edges of the CPU, at least to some extent. They serve no other purpose. Having owned two AM5 CPU's now I see no reason to bother. Noctua makes one too. 

 

https://noctua.at/en/noctua-presents-na-tpg1-thermal-paste-guard-for-amd-am5

 

Just more crap they can sell to people.

[filpo]

11 minutes ago, TatamiMatt said:

Just found this interesting bit of equipment, its a thermal paste guard much like thermalrights for AM5 however it is much less intrusive and made of copper

 

 

Seperate to the not needing to clean thermal paste as much when replacing etc etc that a thermal paste guard usually does, this seems to roughly match the profile of the contact plate of a cooler and is made entirely from copper, would the extra material allow extra heat spreading from around the sides of the IHS where the cooler doesnt touch and conduct it into the cooler, effectively upgrading the surface area of the IHS and allowing a greater heat conduction area into the cooler? Or is this redundant enough to not care (only about £8 or $10 where i live)

 

To further that thought, would this benefit coolers like the Phantom spirit or MA824 where there are enough heatpipes that some of the Heat pipes are actually far enough away from the IHS that they may not make much contact at all?

 

Whats peoples thoughts on this?

with a different thermalright mounting guard/frame (that doesn't seem to be copper) about 50 points were gained in R23 with a 7700X and temps were about 0.2 degrees lower. But this being copper, I think would make a larger difference, but I think it's still mostly for not excessive spreading into the sides of the CPU

12 minutes ago, TatamiMatt said:

To further that thought, would this benefit coolers like the Phantom spirit or MA824 where there are enough heatpipes that some of the Heat pipes are actually far enough away from the IHS that they may not make much contact at all?

it's possible, in the screenshot above an AIO was used and it couldn't reach the sides of the guard so with an air cooler that has heat pipes on the sides it should, even if it doesn't you're still protecting your CPU from getting thermal paste in places where it shouldn't be

 

Just now, DoctorNick said:

Interesting. Alternatively you could get the contact frame as I would expect it to perform better.

Haven't seen any reviews on the deepcool frame /guard. Its more a guard than a frame. Look at the massive edge around the cpu vs contact frame:

 

is this thermalright frame useful at all? in the picture the IHS is extending over the top of the contact frame so wouldn't the CPU Cooler just not touch that at all and just touch the IHS?

[Tan3l6]

I think the good old AM5 secure frame like this is a bit better:

https://www.thermalright.com/product/am5-secure-frame-red/

Though have to swap out all of the mounting mechanism.

 

More a matter of preference than performance though.

[Kilrah]

1 hour ago, filpo said:

is this thermalright frame useful at all? in the picture the IHS is extending over the top of the contact frame so wouldn't the CPU Cooler just not touch that at all and just touch the IHS?

The point of contact frames isn't for them to touch the cooler, it's to hold down the CPU evenly from all around instead of just from 2 tabs like the stock mounts and avoid bending the IHS. It'd be impossible to make something that touches the cooler perfectly without making the CPU-cooler contact worse with manufacturing tolerances.

It's been shown to be beneficial on LGA1700 so manufacturers probably figured they'd just make some for AM5 while they were at it and people will buy them even if AFAIK no benefit has been shown there.

 

The guards don't do anything about that or thermally.

[RevGAM]

1 hour ago, Tan3l6 said:

I think the good old AM5 secure frame like this is a bit better:

https://www.thermalright.com/product/am5-secure-frame-red/

Though have to swap out all of the mounting mechanism.

 

More a matter of preference than performance though.

Some reviewers have demonstrated that contact frames are important for your Intel CPUs, but not AMD. They are just an extra expense if your CPU doesn't get really hot much, as I learned when I tested the TR LGA1700 BCF with my very tame 12700k.

 

Now, the frame that is needed for AMD is the offset frame for coolers that were designed with Intel's centralized chips in mind instead of AMD's offset chiplets. 

[Tan3l6]

12 minutes ago, RevGAM said:

Some reviewers have demonstrated that contact frames are important for your Intel CPUs, but not AMD. They are just an extra expense if your CPU doesn't get really hot much, as I learned when I tested the TR LGA1700 BCF with my very tame 12700k.

 

Considering the goal being lower temps and better contact  between IHS and the cooler, then sure AM5 one hasn't got much point, but considering the reduction of thermal paste drippage it still performs good, I believe as good as the smaller frame pointed out by OP.

 

Has at least as much function as LED show in some cases, perhaps even more, as it has a physical function rather than aesthetical.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

1 hour ago, DoctorNick said:

Also the copper plate is not directly connected with the CPU heatspreader apart from in the corners, so I would expect it being pure copper to just be marketing

^^^

youd probably find more benifit glueing on a heatsink to the back of the board on the retention mechanism backplate and pointing a fan at it since the retention mechanism does have direct contact with the cpu and ive definitely felt these getting hot when running the cpu without a heatsink but probably not gonna be that big of a temp diff

 

1 hour ago, filpo said:

is this thermalright frame useful at all? in the picture the IHS is extending over the top of the contact frame so wouldn't the CPU Cooler just not touch that at all and just touch the IHS?

does it allow for lapping the cpu ihs thinner than the stock retention mechanism? if yes then it does have a use for ppl that dont wanna delid + direct die but still want lower temps and be able to use more powerful coolers whilst actually having an effect on temps and not just wasted cooling power that goes unused cause of garbage heat transfer from the cpu die -> cooler

[DoctorNick]

1 hour ago, filpo said:

with a different thermalright mounting guard/frame (that doesn't seem to be copper) about 50 points were gained in R23 with a 7700X and temps were about 0.2 degrees lower. But this being copper, I think would make a larger difference, but I think it's still mostly for not excessive spreading into the sides of the CPU

it's possible, in the screenshot above an AIO was used and it couldn't reach the sides of the guard so with an air cooler that has heat pipes on the sides it should, even if it doesn't you're still protecting your CPU from getting thermal paste in places where it shouldn't be

 

is this thermalright frame useful at all? in the picture the IHS is extending over the top of the contact frame so wouldn't the CPU Cooler just not touch that at all and just touch the IHS?

Yes that's the point. Having the cooler touching anything else don't yield anything cooling wise

[filpo]

6 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

does it allow for lapping the cpu ihs thinner than the stock retention mechanism? if yes then it does have a use for ppl that dont wanna delid + direct die but still want lower temps and be able to use more powerful coolers whilst actually having an effect on temps and not just wasted cooling power that goes unused cause of garbage heat transfer from the cpu die -> cooler

 

1 minute ago, DoctorNick said:

Yes that's the point. Having the cooler touching anything else don't yield anything cooling wise

 

23 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

The point of contact frames isn't for them to touch the cooler, it's to hold down the CPU evenly from all around instead of just from 2 tabs like the stock mounts and avoid bending the IHS. It'd be impossible to make something that touches the cooler perfectly without making the CPU-cooler contact worse with manufacturing tolerances.

It's been shown to be beneficial on LGA1700 so manufacturers probably figured they'd just make some for AM5 while they were at it and people will buy them even if AFAIK no benefit has been shown there.

 

The guards don't do anything about that or thermally.

Thanks everyone for clearing that up. I can now confidently say I learnt more reading these than in my Computer Science lesson 

Sorry for the confusion 

[RevGAM]

3 hours ago, Tan3l6 said:

Considering the goal being lower temps and better contact  between IHS and the cooler, then sure AM5 one hasn't got much point, but considering the reduction of thermal paste drippage it still performs good, I believe as good as the smaller frame pointed out by OP.

 

Has at least as much function as LED show in some cases, perhaps even more, as it has a physical function rather than aesthetical.

No disagreement there, but I'm not sure the cleanliness benefit is worth the price for someone on a limited budget.