**Testing Thermal Performance: A Comparison of RocketCool and Stock IHS**

We had previously discussed our thermal testing results with the rocket cool IHS, which showed impressive performance even without any silicone adhesive. In this article, we'll delve deeper into the comparison between rocket cool and stock IHS, as well as explore alternative methods for achieving similar results.

**The Stock IHS: A Benchmarking Point**

To put the rocket cool IHS in perspective, let's take a look at its performance with our standard testing procedure. Without any silicone adhesive, we were able to achieve a temperature result of 28 degrees Celsius over ambient. This is just barely outside of our error margins for this testing functionally, but still impressive given the absence of adhesive.

In contrast, the stock IHS with silicone adhesive measured at an astonishing 32.6 degrees over ambient. However, when we accounted for the Z height gap created by the adhesive, the results dropped to a mere 47 degrees on our 320200 G non-soldered and CPU test case. While this is still higher than expected, it's clear that the stock IHS with silicone adhesive is not as effective as initially thought.

**The Rocket Cool IHS: A Polishing Exercise**

To take the rocket cool IHS to the next level, we decided to use lapping to achieve a more precise thermal result. After applying an extensive amount of sandpaper – a whopping 20 dollars' worth – we were able to achieve a temperature result of approximately 27.5 degrees Celsius over ambient.

This is remarkably close to our expectations, and it's clear that the rocket cool IHS can be improved with a bit of finesse. However, at this point, the differences between the stock IHS with silicone adhesive and the lapped rocket cool IHS are outside of our measurement resolution. While we ran multiple test passes, the results were still within an error margin of only one degree.

**De-wetting: A Fun Experiment**

For those who enjoy tinkering with their components, de-wetting the IHS can be a fun project in and of itself. By removing the silicone adhesive and thermal paste, you're essentially starting from scratch. However, this process is not necessary for achieving good thermal performance.

In our case, we decided to de-wet the IHS as an experiment, and it's clear that it's more hassle than it's worth. While the results are impressive – dropping temperature by 14 degrees in solve test cases – the process itself is not a significant improvement.

**A Word of Caution: Not Worth the Effort**

In conclusion, while de-wetting the IHS can be an interesting experiment, it's not worth the effort for those seeking to improve thermal performance. The stock IHS with silicone adhesive may not be the best option, but it's still more than capable of delivering good results.

The rocket cool IHS, on the other hand, can be improved with a bit of lapping and patience. However, at this point, we're seeing only marginal improvements that aren't worth the hassle and expense. For those looking to push the limits of thermal performance, it's better to focus on more significant upgrades – like applying liquid metal or upgrading to a copper-based IHS.

**Conclusion**

In the end, our testing has shown that the rocket cool IHS can be improved with a bit of lapping, but only by a marginally small amount. While de-wetting the IHS was an interesting experiment, it's not worth the effort for those seeking to improve thermal performance.

If you're looking to push the limits of your cooling system, we recommend exploring more significant upgrades – like applying liquid metal or upgrading to a copper-based IHS. However, if you're simply looking to tweak your system and enjoy a fun project, de-wetting the IHS can be an entertaining experience.

As always, we appreciate your support through Patreon and our store, where you can find unique merchandise and tools for enthusiasts like yourself. Don't forget to subscribe for more content, and we'll catch you all in the next article!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwe recently tested these two things against each other they are rising integrated heat spreaders to both copper as stated previously this one's just nickel plated copper not really a big difference between them it was about two degrees at the end of the day with tasking which is barely outside of test error and variance so the question we had and a lot of you had as well was where is the two degree difference is it really just because it's bare copper rather than nickel plated or did rocket Kools do something different with this like increase the surface area or something and probably a lot of the answer comes down to just lapping the surface which is kind of an old thing to do it's not really worth doing in general but we're gonna try it out cuz we haven't done it for a rise in GPU yet so this is a rise in APU it's an r3 2200 G we've already done thermal tests on it now we're going to basically send down the surface and the point of that is not to just expose bare copper the point is more to flatten it to get as many of the imperfections out of it as we can so that when we have thermal compound between this and the cooler there are fewer microscopic imperfections to fill so that's what we're doing today before that this video is brought to you by the EVGA X 299 dark motherboard the one that we recently used to take a top 5 world record for fire strike overclocking results the EVGA x2 99 dark board is one of the best we've used presently in this current generation and it has a coupon code of gamers nexus for a savings of $75 off for us customers expires on May 31st you've been interested in the X 299 dark with its actual vrm heatsink and actual vrm cooling capabilities that was a good time to grab it use code gamers next as that check out click the link in the description below the approach to this is pretty simple basically I'm going to tape some sandpaper to the table and then send down the service and we're just gonna keep going until it's really shiny copper it'll take a while probably so we'll end up time lapsing it most likely but the the plan is to use 600 grit to start with if that's too much we'll find out pretty quickly 800 would be my alternative and then we're gonna go up to 1,200 1,500 2,000 maybe 3,000 probably maybe do a wet sand in there to once some of the paper is worn down enough that's functionally a higher value grit anyway so start with 600 the trick that I'm going to use here is rather than take this and try to rub it on a small surface area we're just gonna tape it to the table and you've got the GN mod mat under it so that's definitely not going anywhere the tables gonna wobble as it does but so this is your last look at the face of it before we get started rise in our 320 200 G the imperfections here that we're getting rid of are not something that any of us would really be able to see without a microscope or magnifying glass but that's what we're trying to get rid of we're probably not gonna bother with the backside just the front I think so let's see how long this will take oh man that's cool that's pretty cool dan the lettering gone I almost want to test it right there like how much basically the test would be how much does Andy's laser etching impact the performance the answer is not at all but that looks pretty cool starting to see some copper at the edges there see that so originally I have to keep an eye on this that hole which will see if it goes away that's the original bottom corner so the word Rison will be face up in this current orientation which for note-taking purposes it's going to be the this is more for my own information but if you need it to in case you sand away the hole the hole is to the right of the letters AMD on the inside when the letters AMD are right side up when they're legible so it's to the right of that D let's keep going with 600 before we move on this is gonna be the roughest grit we use for now definitely getting some copper going through this is faster still 600 just got a new sheet definitely the edges are standing away first so if you've ever looked at a rhizome IHS from Andy not the rocky cool ones they kind of look like a cylinder or a circle push down on the middle of them the outer corners are always kind of chamfered and what we're doing right now apparently is sending those off that's why you're seeing copper there first because they're higher than the middle of the IHS which is just kind of an A in the manufacturing thing so that's what you're seeing right now is we're seeing everything gets sanded down to an equal level still pretty scratchy on the surface but there is some copper shine through in the middle and as we keep going we'll move to finer grit just sand it off some of my skin yeah a little bit of copper in the middle so think what we're going for is just visible copper everywhere right that that paper so use now it's basically become like a grit eight hundred or a thousand let's try one more of these see how far we can get that's cool okay really get in there now so we're gonna have the middles middles exposing earliest so that was the highest along with the edges which I guess makes senses is where the die contact is and it's being exposed basically where the inner plate is at the same place one more spot I want to get the beacon copper and then we'll change the grid how the blood in that one one more one more sheet where's that motherboard vice.com quote I bled for this thing computer building so hard it's the hardest thing ever and it hurts anyone who hasn't seen our response to motherboard YouTube likes to recycle it sometimes that's looking pretty good sorry there's your copper IHS there's the rocket : which is actually now it's roughly the same size if there's a different size it's very very very small amounts I think I maybe should have started with like a 400 or 300 or something just so I could have sanded my skin off down to the bone instead but also this would have been faster one wet-sand pass before we move up the next grit have I mentioned before that the mod mat is pretty water resistant oh no I accidentally got water on my mod mat what do I do check that oh that's actually pretty cool though looking good very smooth and polished see all that copper dust and the water around it it's definitely getting rid of more and more copper starting to smooth it out I think we've pretty much exposed the copper under the nickel plating at this point nickel plating is gone so at this point it's probably time to move to a grit 1200 I think because this is getting very smooth now basically sending it to a polish in between each pass you can got some copper copper dust on the mat okay so 1200 next and if you do want one of the mats which is evidently as we're we're learning with you pretty what a resistant you got a store that gamers extra thought net and pick them up they're currently on backorder if you place your order at the time this video goes live or shortly thereafter you will definitely get one in the next production run after that kind of depends we sell out pretty quickly so you'll want to place one sooner rather than later to make sure you get one for the next run which will go out within the next couple of weeks so there's some like brown drops of liquid around to the side that's not drawing blood from me that's actually well it's probably not it's just copper dust so 1200 grit so again our goal here isn't to take off all of it like just hand it all the way down our goal is to smooth it a lot so we're going 1202 I think 1,500 to 2,000 maybe 3,000 I do have some here I just don't know if we're gonna want to go that far certainly would polish it further though look wow this table doesn't shake I don't know why everyone complains about the table where's the dot I'm glad they took a note of where it was supposed to align I think the dots gone dan that's getting some polish you see that mostly towards me right in this corner over here I seem to be putting more pressure on that side this is super fine like check that trade out 3000 is crazy okay here we go polishing passes on 3000 hopefully it's sanded down it off at this point wait this is this is not good hang on check out the instructions can you see that applications for high-gloss polishing of final finishes on wood and automobiles nowhere does it say integrated heat spreaders that's pretty shiny sure it could be polished more I took it to like a jeweler or something and asked them to do it but that's pretty good I think for our test we'll see how it does it's certainly very smooth at this point I mean we've done six hundred six hundred wet 1200 1200 wet 2000 thousand wet and three thousand and there's three thousand is probably turning into four thousand at this point Wow that's getting very very shiny so there's a polished IHS for now I could probably do a bit more with proper polishing tools or something but it's functionally a mirror right now so I want to go ahead and test this it looks pretty damn good so we're gonna test this and then we're gonna come back in the same video and show you the results and and we'll see if it makes up the two degree difference which was pretty close to margin of error anyway although just outside of it so we'll see if it makes it up and competes directly with the rocket cool IHS I will say this one involved less blood but that's the fun part so well you know how it goes right now let's get into the charts as always go to the testing methodology section linked in the article in the description below if you want to know how we tested this stuff I actually don't know the results presently but I will when I'm talking in a second previously we were hitting 26 point three degrees Celsius over ambient for the rocket cool IHS you can check our previous video on that if you want more data on how that performed thermally that was without any silicone adhesive and was our best thermal result the stock risin IHS without adhesive and without lapping held a 28 degree results which is just barely outside of our error margins for this testing functionally they're the same results although measurably different the stock IH asked with silicone adhesive which creates a bit of a Z height gap that needs to be filled with more Tim under the IHS measured at thirty two point six degrees over ambient and complete stock was 47 degrees over a mid and that's again for the our 320 200 G which is a non soldered and the CPU for our new test with the lab ths we ran three test passes with newly applied conductor not liquid metal for each pass which will link below and averaged at about twenty seven point five degrees we're within error margins for either flanking results and so can say that we've lost measurement resolution as to the differences between them it looks like logically the results indicate we can get toward the rocket cool yhs thermally with lapping it took more than twenty dollars of sandpaper to get there and so exceeded the cost of rocking coals IHS and also took an hour of time but you can certainly push closer to its performance perhaps with even more polish we'd be at equivalence for now the differences are outside of our measurement resolution so all that work was basically for what we expected which is roughly one degree of difference maybe a bit more a bit less depending because we ran multiple test passes and at the end of the day it was just between the ROC equal HS and the stock one with no silicon adhesive so thermally they're kind of functionally identical or at least they are outside of our measurement resolution the the difference between this and this one we can't measure a difference reliably with our resolution so not very exciting but basically if you wanted to get more or less the rocket collage as performance you could do it if you have sandpaper lying around already that's probably the best approach because otherwise if you're buying sandpaper you're spending basically the same amount of money on the sandpaper as you would for one of these assuming they sell them again and also the hour of time has value too so either way neither of these things our sanded version or the rocket coal IHS neither of them are necessary you don't even need to deal it it's just it's not needed if you want to do it for fun or I mean delighting does drop temperature like 14 degrees in solve our test cases which is significant that allows you to run a lot quieter fan speeds if you want a deal it'd really you can just deal it and put liquid metal on it and call it a day if you really want to go the full copper like no no nickel plating IHS approach yeah you could sand down yours it's really just because it's cool and kind of fun at that point and if you don't find it fun then don't bother caning a lot from it the rocky cool one same thing an extra couple degrees isn't gonna change anything especially on an APU it's just something that's kind of fun to do if you want to mess around with it because it's cheap and it's not a big commitment if you've already done the deal itting but again neither of these things are things that you should get worked up over or deliberate over for more than a few minutes because it's not gonna change your end result for overclocking and stuff like that but dewetting will that's mostly because you're getting rid of silicon adhesive and thermal paste and replace it with liquid metal it's just the IHS part doesn't matter a whole lot anyway it was a fun project the IHS is really shiny now so that's kind of cool I guess makes for a good thumbnail or something maybe some good b-roll but that's mostly the end result what might be fun is maybe laughing the inside of it but we're still gonna be looking at less than one degree difference so maybe both sides of it will get us to which just is barely even worth it so that's it for now they can receive the suggestion on this one a couple you asked for this content and as always subscribe for more if you like supporting this type of coverage for being a bit unique you can go to patreon.com/scishow selves out directly or stored on cameras next to scott net if you want to do a one-time donation it's in the bottom left or you can pick up of course one of our mod mats or the GN crystals the teardown 3d laser engraved crystals check it out at the store I'll see you all next timewe recently tested these two things against each other they are rising integrated heat spreaders to both copper as stated previously this one's just nickel plated copper not really a big difference between them it was about two degrees at the end of the day with tasking which is barely outside of test error and variance so the question we had and a lot of you had as well was where is the two degree difference is it really just because it's bare copper rather than nickel plated or did rocket Kools do something different with this like increase the surface area or something and probably a lot of the answer comes down to just lapping the surface which is kind of an old thing to do it's not really worth doing in general but we're gonna try it out cuz we haven't done it for a rise in GPU yet so this is a rise in APU it's an r3 2200 G we've already done thermal tests on it now we're going to basically send down the surface and the point of that is not to just expose bare copper the point is more to flatten it to get as many of the imperfections out of it as we can so that when we have thermal compound between this and the cooler there are fewer microscopic imperfections to fill so that's what we're doing today before that this video is brought to you by the EVGA X 299 dark motherboard the one that we recently used to take a top 5 world record for fire strike overclocking results the EVGA x2 99 dark board is one of the best we've used presently in this current generation and it has a coupon code of gamers nexus for a savings of $75 off for us customers expires on May 31st you've been interested in the X 299 dark with its actual vrm heatsink and actual vrm cooling capabilities that was a good time to grab it use code gamers next as that check out click the link in the description below the approach to this is pretty simple basically I'm going to tape some sandpaper to the table and then send down the service and we're just gonna keep going until it's really shiny copper it'll take a while probably so we'll end up time lapsing it most likely but the the plan is to use 600 grit to start with if that's too much we'll find out pretty quickly 800 would be my alternative and then we're gonna go up to 1,200 1,500 2,000 maybe 3,000 probably maybe do a wet sand in there to once some of the paper is worn down enough that's functionally a higher value grit anyway so start with 600 the trick that I'm going to use here is rather than take this and try to rub it on a small surface area we're just gonna tape it to the table and you've got the GN mod mat under it so that's definitely not going anywhere the tables gonna wobble as it does but so this is your last look at the face of it before we get started rise in our 320 200 G the imperfections here that we're getting rid of are not something that any of us would really be able to see without a microscope or magnifying glass but that's what we're trying to get rid of we're probably not gonna bother with the backside just the front I think so let's see how long this will take oh man that's cool that's pretty cool dan the lettering gone I almost want to test it right there like how much basically the test would be how much does Andy's laser etching impact the performance the answer is not at all but that looks pretty cool starting to see some copper at the edges there see that so originally I have to keep an eye on this that hole which will see if it goes away that's the original bottom corner so the word Rison will be face up in this current orientation which for note-taking purposes it's going to be the this is more for my own information but if you need it to in case you sand away the hole the hole is to the right of the letters AMD on the inside when the letters AMD are right side up when they're legible so it's to the right of that D let's keep going with 600 before we move on this is gonna be the roughest grit we use for now definitely getting some copper going through this is faster still 600 just got a new sheet definitely the edges are standing away first so if you've ever looked at a rhizome IHS from Andy not the rocky cool ones they kind of look like a cylinder or a circle push down on the middle of them the outer corners are always kind of chamfered and what we're doing right now apparently is sending those off that's why you're seeing copper there first because they're higher than the middle of the IHS which is just kind of an A in the manufacturing thing so that's what you're seeing right now is we're seeing everything gets sanded down to an equal level still pretty scratchy on the surface but there is some copper shine through in the middle and as we keep going we'll move to finer grit just sand it off some of my skin yeah a little bit of copper in the middle so think what we're going for is just visible copper everywhere right that that paper so use now it's basically become like a grit eight hundred or a thousand let's try one more of these see how far we can get that's cool okay really get in there now so we're gonna have the middles middles exposing earliest so that was the highest along with the edges which I guess makes senses is where the die contact is and it's being exposed basically where the inner plate is at the same place one more spot I want to get the beacon copper and then we'll change the grid how the blood in that one one more one more sheet where's that motherboard vice.com quote I bled for this thing computer building so hard it's the hardest thing ever and it hurts anyone who hasn't seen our response to motherboard YouTube likes to recycle it sometimes that's looking pretty good sorry there's your copper IHS there's the rocket : which is actually now it's roughly the same size if there's a different size it's very very very small amounts I think I maybe should have started with like a 400 or 300 or something just so I could have sanded my skin off down to the bone instead but also this would have been faster one wet-sand pass before we move up the next grit have I mentioned before that the mod mat is pretty water resistant oh no I accidentally got water on my mod mat what do I do check that oh that's actually pretty cool though looking good very smooth and polished see all that copper dust and the water around it it's definitely getting rid of more and more copper starting to smooth it out I think we've pretty much exposed the copper under the nickel plating at this point nickel plating is gone so at this point it's probably time to move to a grit 1200 I think because this is getting very smooth now basically sending it to a polish in between each pass you can got some copper copper dust on the mat okay so 1200 next and if you do want one of the mats which is evidently as we're we're learning with you pretty what a resistant you got a store that gamers extra thought net and pick them up they're currently on backorder if you place your order at the time this video goes live or shortly thereafter you will definitely get one in the next production run after that kind of depends we sell out pretty quickly so you'll want to place one sooner rather than later to make sure you get one for the next run which will go out within the next couple of weeks so there's some like brown drops of liquid around to the side that's not drawing blood from me that's actually well it's probably not it's just copper dust so 1200 grit so again our goal here isn't to take off all of it like just hand it all the way down our goal is to smooth it a lot so we're going 1202 I think 1,500 to 2,000 maybe 3,000 I do have some here I just don't know if we're gonna want to go that far certainly would polish it further though look wow this table doesn't shake I don't know why everyone complains about the table where's the dot I'm glad they took a note of where it was supposed to align I think the dots gone dan that's getting some polish you see that mostly towards me right in this corner over here I seem to be putting more pressure on that side this is super fine like check that trade out 3000 is crazy okay here we go polishing passes on 3000 hopefully it's sanded down it off at this point wait this is this is not good hang on check out the instructions can you see that applications for high-gloss polishing of final finishes on wood and automobiles nowhere does it say integrated heat spreaders that's pretty shiny sure it could be polished more I took it to like a jeweler or something and asked them to do it but that's pretty good I think for our test we'll see how it does it's certainly very smooth at this point I mean we've done six hundred six hundred wet 1200 1200 wet 2000 thousand wet and three thousand and there's three thousand is probably turning into four thousand at this point Wow that's getting very very shiny so there's a polished IHS for now I could probably do a bit more with proper polishing tools or something but it's functionally a mirror right now so I want to go ahead and test this it looks pretty damn good so we're gonna test this and then we're gonna come back in the same video and show you the results and and we'll see if it makes up the two degree difference which was pretty close to margin of error anyway although just outside of it so we'll see if it makes it up and competes directly with the rocket cool IHS I will say this one involved less blood but that's the fun part so well you know how it goes right now let's get into the charts as always go to the testing methodology section linked in the article in the description below if you want to know how we tested this stuff I actually don't know the results presently but I will when I'm talking in a second previously we were hitting 26 point three degrees Celsius over ambient for the rocket cool IHS you can check our previous video on that if you want more data on how that performed thermally that was without any silicone adhesive and was our best thermal result the stock risin IHS without adhesive and without lapping held a 28 degree results which is just barely outside of our error margins for this testing functionally they're the same results although measurably different the stock IH asked with silicone adhesive which creates a bit of a Z height gap that needs to be filled with more Tim under the IHS measured at thirty two point six degrees over ambient and complete stock was 47 degrees over a mid and that's again for the our 320 200 G which is a non soldered and the CPU for our new test with the lab ths we ran three test passes with newly applied conductor not liquid metal for each pass which will link below and averaged at about twenty seven point five degrees we're within error margins for either flanking results and so can say that we've lost measurement resolution as to the differences between them it looks like logically the results indicate we can get toward the rocket cool yhs thermally with lapping it took more than twenty dollars of sandpaper to get there and so exceeded the cost of rocking coals IHS and also took an hour of time but you can certainly push closer to its performance perhaps with even more polish we'd be at equivalence for now the differences are outside of our measurement resolution so all that work was basically for what we expected which is roughly one degree of difference maybe a bit more a bit less depending because we ran multiple test passes and at the end of the day it was just between the ROC equal HS and the stock one with no silicon adhesive so thermally they're kind of functionally identical or at least they are outside of our measurement resolution the the difference between this and this one we can't measure a difference reliably with our resolution so not very exciting but basically if you wanted to get more or less the rocket collage as performance you could do it if you have sandpaper lying around already that's probably the best approach because otherwise if you're buying sandpaper you're spending basically the same amount of money on the sandpaper as you would for one of these assuming they sell them again and also the hour of time has value too so either way neither of these things our sanded version or the rocket coal IHS neither of them are necessary you don't even need to deal it it's just it's not needed if you want to do it for fun or I mean delighting does drop temperature like 14 degrees in solve our test cases which is significant that allows you to run a lot quieter fan speeds if you want a deal it'd really you can just deal it and put liquid metal on it and call it a day if you really want to go the full copper like no no nickel plating IHS approach yeah you could sand down yours it's really just because it's cool and kind of fun at that point and if you don't find it fun then don't bother caning a lot from it the rocky cool one same thing an extra couple degrees isn't gonna change anything especially on an APU it's just something that's kind of fun to do if you want to mess around with it because it's cheap and it's not a big commitment if you've already done the deal itting but again neither of these things are things that you should get worked up over or deliberate over for more than a few minutes because it's not gonna change your end result for overclocking and stuff like that but dewetting will that's mostly because you're getting rid of silicon adhesive and thermal paste and replace it with liquid metal it's just the IHS part doesn't matter a whole lot anyway it was a fun project the IHS is really shiny now so that's kind of cool I guess makes for a good thumbnail or something maybe some good b-roll but that's mostly the end result what might be fun is maybe laughing the inside of it but we're still gonna be looking at less than one degree difference so maybe both sides of it will get us to which just is barely even worth it so that's it for now they can receive the suggestion on this one a couple you asked for this content and as always subscribe for more if you like supporting this type of coverage for being a bit unique you can go to patreon.com/scishow selves out directly or stored on cameras next to scott net if you want to do a one-time donation it's in the bottom left or you can pick up of course one of our mod mats or the GN crystals the teardown 3d laser engraved crystals check it out at the store I'll see you all next time\n"