remember: Gamer = the same but with RGB, if you're lucky. If you're Not, it's 'cheap knock off of the worst version that technically meets the description if the seller is halfway honest, with a logo'.
My 2021 Legion 7i laptop comes with the Honeywell 7950 thermal pads straight from Lenovo's factory. As a matter of fact, replacing them with thermal paste actually makes the cooling worse.
May i ask: What are the temps of the Laptop while just browsing? Is it still better with lower CPU temps (= solid state)? specifically on the bottom side. Im having a hard time believing it would still be usable on the lap while just browsing without turning pretty toasty compared to what you are doing.
@@beepboop40 what? That's not how heat works, you are not generating more heat, just the heat isn't going anywhere hence the rise in CPU temps meaning if heat not going to your lap and away from the cpu, ITS COOLER ON YOUR LAP! Besides thermal throttle only happens at high temps and at that point the material has turned to liquid and is doing its job at getting the heat away from the cpu and onto your lap. But that's when there is a load and enough heat is generated in the first place.
@@kellyshea92 This is most likely applied inside electronic modules, you wont be seeing this stuff standalone nor being replaced by a tech. Dont waste your time.
Hey LTT team! I'm glad this amazing product is getting some publicity. I just wanted to share some additional information about the product and why PTM7950 is particularly special in the laptop space. All of this is from my personal experience with the product across 4 different laptops over the last 6 months or so, so please don't take this as absolute, but more-so recommendations and general tips. First, I want to point out that phase-change materials such as this perform remarkedly well vs. even the best aftermarket pastes in laptop-specific use cases because there is no IHS involved -- it is direct-die cooling, outside of DTRs. In those instances, viscosity/permeability and thermal impedence matter quite a bit more than *just* thermal conductivity of a particular TIM (thermal interface material). Not only that, but because it can phase-change, it is basically impervious to pump-out, so performance will never degrade due to this factor. Further, the performance of PTM7950 vs. liquid metal on Ryzen mobile CPUs is incredibly similar, just as it was in the desktop tests performed in this video. However, the gap is significantly larger for Intel mobile CPUs, though, I have no specific evidence to ascertain exactly why that is outside of anecdotal testing on my end (11980HK, 12900HX, 5800H, and 5900HX). The latest theory that I've discussed with some folks is something to do with the AMD die shape/convexity, power density as it relates to heat transfer/surface area, as well as some other factors. Long story short, if you want ultimate performance out of an Intel-based laptop, PTM will be 8-12c behind liquid metal in sustained loads, vs. 3-4c behind for AMD-equivalent laptops. Since AMD-based laptops have multiple traces/SMDs surrounding the CPU package, I would wholeheartedly recommend Honeywell's solution over a modest 3c lead with a conductive TIM like Conductonaut or Eisfrost. Secondly, a fresh application of PTM7950 *will* continue to get better, performance-wise, after 4-6 heavy heat cycles. When I put this stuff up against liquid metal in my previous Legion 7 Gen 6 (Ryzen 9 5900HX was the CPU in question), I would have to do some burn-in to allow the pad to phase-change a few times to really conform in the space between the cold-plate and the die itself. Usually I would do 10-minute Cinebench R23 runs, with 20-minute rest periods in between before doing pre/post temperature comparisons. It really does make a massive difference, and is important not to assume it works magically right away at full performance. Third, for mobile GPUs I've tested (3070 140W, 3070Ti 150W, 3080 165W, and 3080Ti 165W), I've found that PTM7950 performs about 2c *worse* vs. pastes like KINGPIN KPx, Phobya Nanograse Extreme, and Kryonaut Extreme, likely due to the larger die area (and thus, larger surface area for heat transfer into the GPU cold-plate of the laptop's cooling assembly) but again, for something that will last *significantly* longer (8-12 months vs. 3-5 YEARS), that is a very small price to pay. Again, this is merely my personal experience with the product as it relates to high-performance laptop parts, which many people may watch this video to try and find out! I hope some of this was useful to someone out there, and feel free to reply with any questions and I'll do my best to answer. Cheers!
Did you find that the gap on intel CPU's became less of a gap under sustained load as found in this video? I'm asking because I have a laptop with a 10750H that's still on factory paste, and she needs a bit of TLC. For me it's a case of the Cobbler's kids not wearing shoes, so a set-and-forget type product is super appealing to me.
Thermal grizzly trashes on a laptop as it doesn’t have like longevity sure the performance will be only good for 2 months and who knows it might even liquidise and flow over your circuits so ye Honeywell strong option
pretty much same experience as me in 3 laptops... it is just the best thing you can do to a laptop, avoiding pomp out and helping so much with very low pressure laptops heatsinks, plus performance worsening is just so much longer than a normal paste that is really a no brainer in laptop zone.
@@chrisd4813 Hey there! After doing some appropriate burn-in cycles, the performance of PTM7950 does get better, "lessening the gap" between itself and other TIMs as you've asked, albeit not as narrow as it would for an AMD mobile CPU. While Liquid-Metal does perform noticeably better for Intel systems, Honeywell's solution is still very impressive from a performance and longevity perspective, especially if you do *not* have a nickel-plated heatsink that prevents galvanic corrosion which forces the end-user to reapply something like Conductonaut. My suggestion would be to go ahead and grab some, and let it do its thing, especially if you aren't chasing benchmark scores or need more thermal headroom for overclocking!
The long service life is a huge deal. Derbauer talked with Steve from GN about thermal pastes, and he said the biggest problem OEMs have to deal with when selecting a TIM is the pump-out effect. They will often sacrifice max performance in exchange for a longer service life. I'm wondering if this being a phase change material gets around the pump-out effect. If that is the case, this is definitely worth the added cost.
No kidding! After almost five years in my Threadripper server, my (rather expensive) TIM pumped out to the point almost half the processor was bare - and this is a system that never cooled off to room temp since it was never shut down, only rebooted.
It seems kinda overkill though, generally the thermal paste will last more than long enough till you get an upgrade, at most you will have to replace it once but even that may not be necessary. Whilst the specs are great it seems nowhere near worth the price simply because you can't really take advantage of its long life span.
@@starcultiniser The price isn't actually that bad if you're buying in bulk direct from honeywell. Dell, Lenovo, etc. are buying in bulk. You and I aren't. Even as a consumer, getting a 80mmx80mm sheet should be enough for anywhere from 4 to 12 applications depending on the size of what you're covering, and costs between $15 and $35 depending on your source and tolerance for sorting through the fakes.
I'm a Chinese. In our laptop BBS system many geek test 7900sp(use as traditional silicon paste)/7950(this one) Answer is yes. Use it. The negative thing is, like AMD factory silicon paste, remove it when it at high temperature. And a tip to make it easier paste this. Before you paste it, put it in refrigerator.
Many corporations in the industry strive on planned obsolescence in order to sell you the same products over and over. It makes perfect sense if something is "apply once and forget forever" would not make corporations happy. Look up the alliance these disgusting human made in order to make the light bulb obsolete. Welcome to capitalism.
I’m surprised you guys were less excited about it. 99.something of the performance with little to no device risk, plus no reapplication for life? Seems great. It’s like saying, well the furnace is great, but the flamethrower would heat your room faster.
Exactly. It costs the same as a tube of thermal paste. But the thermal paste need to be reapplied every so often. And he even said a sheet of this will cover several processors anyway. So to me it's win-win. Even at the higher $60 price point, it still seems like a good idea to me.
@@thundercat_pumyra I can see this used on GPU. I probly hunt this for my parents PC and laptop. And maybe my PC, I don't OC much more like undervolting/count watts. Edit 28/11/2022 : I buy one sheet of this from aliexpress deliver in 15/12, have Athlon X4 970. With moded MOBO for OC let test it.
So what are the odds that LTT Store starts carrying this stuff so people can get it easily? Edit a year later: Based on the announcement today I have learned that the odds are 100% and that I will now be starting a career as a professional soothsayer
You putting this on LTT store would be a win-win for everyone because if a pad in any capacity can perform similar to a thermal paste I think everyone here would buy it. Especially with all the new mining cards on the market having this stuff as the new thermal pad on your ram would be kick ass.
and instead of $60 you could pay $180 from ltt store... yeah sounds like a good idea guy! don't forget, it only gets you one application at that. na, i'll stick to the tried and tested method that's been used for decades and also for extreme oc
A note about this material is also that because of the life cycle it doesn't dry out like other conventional thermal pastes do. My laptop runs really hot and it will start to dry out thermal grizzly pastes since it will sit at a high temperature for extended periods under load...
i had to replace the thermal grizzly cryonaught after every few months as it would simply pump out and dry on my laptop. this is miles better than that.
i'm surprised to see this item, actually available locally after checking some online stores (and the most interesting part is I live in a 3rd world country and not even in the capital) and that shop is a legit one and already sold some of them. gonna grab it quick
I think that actually makes some sense when you consider how much manufacturing is done in developing countries it, would make sense to have it more readily available in countries where the demand will be higher.
I think you guys missed something big in this video. A lot of laptop heatsinks have very weak mounting pressures and generally rather “rough” heat plates on the bottom of their heatsinks. Only testing this on a GPU and CPU rather than in a laptop where PTM is being most frequently heralded as “the best solution” I think makes you guys lose a little perspective. Also, the “bad performance” you guys saw at the beginning of that GPU run is suggesting that you didn’t follow the tech sheet for PTM7950 which suggests that you should do a cycle or two at or above the phase change temperature to reach full performance. You guys need to revisit this and test a few laptops vs conventional/enthusiast laptop community recommended pastes (IC.d for ex) and Liquid Metal to really be able to say much of anything useful for that space. Stuff like MX-4 works extremely poorly on a lot of laptops due to pump out.
@@GiorgosKoukoubagia It's a physical effect on the distribution of paste. Due to temperature variations causing thermal expansion, thermal pastes with time will get "pumped" (quite literally) out of the center of the processor.
Arctic Silver 5 used to be the standard because it phase cures over ~100h and avoids pumpout etc, but we decided constant changing was worth it for an extra degree.
@@mycosys AS5 performs quite poorly actually on laptops, it's not super great in devices with low mounting pressure IIRC for whatever reason. I think it's just the general low thermal conductivity + being pretty thick, but I'm not 100% certain on what the reasons are. It's been a while since I looked into it last. Pastes I've seen recommended previously are like IC Diamond, MasterGel Maker, stuff like those.
I am one of the users in the thread trying it out too. It is good for things that have exposed dies which causes pump out issues, it is also an apply and forget solution (at the higher price). If I applied my Arctic MX-4 on the Framework, the pump out effect will require me to redo the thermal paste often. This pad can be used for GPUs too. I would say it is easier to spread then some of the very thick and viscous thermal paste/putty stuff. For this pad, there's at least 2 thickness too, the ebuy is thicker if I remember correctly.
Good ol Arctic Silver 5 was made to phase into the cracks and cure and avoid pumpout but for some reason we decided an extra degree was worth constant changing.
Applied it to my Zephyrus Duo 15 SE when I suspected the service center didn't apply liquid metal to my CPU die. It now quickly cools down faster than before. Got mine from China through Lazada.
If it really lasts that long and you don't switch out parts often the high price actually sounds pretty worth it while still have good thermal performance
The price he quoted is much overpriced, probably because they weren't sold a lot in Canada at that time. Most of the price attributed to the importing cost from China divided by a small sales number. The pads themselves are pretty inexpensive.
Chemist here! Another thing worth mentioning, is that the actual process of changing phase is endothermic (or at least it is with water, I have never worked with PTM7950) so when it starts to melt it will absorb a lot of heat from the processor without the temperature of the material increasing. You can see this yourself at home by putting a thermometer into some water on the stove and watching it as it heats up. Once the water starts to change from liquid to gas (boiling) you will notice the temperature start to plateau.
Isn't that implied when he says it phase changes with heat? Changes from a more ordered state (solid) to a less ordered state (liquid) are endothermic.
for this effect to matter we would need a greater thermal mass. the possible use case would be to absorb peak heat loads, potentially faster than conventional cooling systems. but for continuous use the effects would be negated.
Correct me if I'm wrong. Not only phase change is endothermic, it absorbs energy way more than temperature change, e.g. look how much energy is needed to melt ice or steaming water. Even refrigerants are used at their boiling point.
This is actually like magical stuff. I applied it on my laptop that was thermal throttling with mx-4 arctic silver ~around 85C+ on gpu, and it now gets to 75C max on cpu and gpu combined stress test! The actual "problems" that linus said it has aren't really problems. I bought from ebuy7 with no problems. And it isn't actually too expensive since you do not need to replace the thermal paste for the application. If you don't want to deal with liquid metal, this is the only option. Especially this should be the go to option with laptops. And way easier to apply (you literally just measure the area you need to cover) and the removal and cleanup is like regular thermal paste.
i bought it from amazon as the reviews said it was legit. yes indeed it was. BIG difference. I'm in India and the temperatures are high. my college dorm doesn't have AC and I'm in the tropical region and ambient temps go up to 30-35 C. the cpu went up to 90-95 before while under load. now it doesn't go over 80 C after a few hear cycles.
I got it for my laptop from AliExpress and my laptop's fan rarely spins now on non gaming use with a ryzen 7 and rtx 4060, and honestly even with some light games it's really magic
just applied this on my 7900 XTX 15 days ago, it brought down my Hotspot temps in Furmark from 108°C to now 84°C and the hotspot temps keep dropping the longer I use the card (started at 90°C) - it's amazing
I can see this being very useful in manufacturing thousands of units of something. Instead of making sure all your engineers are using the right amount of a liquid from a tube, just give them a little slip of plastic to put in every system.
AMD did this over 20 years ago for all their CPUs. Phase change TIM came pre applied to the box CPU coolers. Edit: Intel also used a phase change TIM called Chomerics XTS454
yes but also the engineers dont touch the production model, some poor chinese man who wants to die is going to be the one sticking the sheet on your laptops
This stuff is particularly important in laptops. Traditional pastes experience pump out. You'll often read about people repasting their laptop, that used to run cool, but no longer does, with traditional off the shelf pastes, having great results, and then 2 weeks later being back to running excessively hot, often hotter than before they repasted. The reason being factory pastes are much thicker, so they don't pump out as fast, but consumer pastes go on the IHS, so pump out isn't an issue. So you need a dedicated paste that isn't really available on the market for consumers. Lenovo, alienware and MSI decided to avoid this by using a new phase changing thermal paste on their high end machines. Care to guess what they went with? It's all just honeywell 7950. As linus touched on, the longevity will be much better.
The best pastes for laptops/direct-die afaik are: Shin-Etsu X23-7921-5, IC-Diamond, Thermalight TFX, viscous pastes. I use them on midrange/low power laptops. And switched to the PTM pads a couple of weeks ago on High-end (gaming) laptops and consoles.
@@phenos can't comment on others but thermalright tfx was basically like stock paste on my machine, and steadily degraded over a year or so, had to downclock my cpu quite a bit to reach low 80s while playing games.did a repaste with PTM 7950 recently, let's hope it performs better
I was working for a company that used a lot of industrial compute modules, hardly ever saw paste, always thermal pads, however no idea who made them. I ended up with a small stash (pre-cut, not sheets, darn) so I better hang onto them. The biggest problem is that you pretty much always have to fit a new pad every time you pull things apart, even for a quick looksee. (unless it never got hot)
I was working for a company that builds "high end" computes for consumers. They used paste. They had a machine that did the application of thermal paste. Cant name the brand because of NDA but it rhymes with crapple.
One of the most popular uses for PCM is in cooling mattresses. They will have a thin layer of PCM (usually close to the top of the bed so it doesn't work as an insulator) on top of a very porous foam so once the heat does get through the PCM it can dissipate more quickly. The PCM here also works as a sort of gate, so that lighter people (who tend to be colder) aren't super cold on the mattress, because the lighter person probably isn't putting out enough heat to change the phase and activate the cooling layer.
linus: "if water can do it, it's not that special" water (one of the most essential substances acting as a building block for all life): "well shit, guess im useless"
I was thinking the same lol. water is so weird and unique, the fact that it has multiple "solid/ice states" based on it's crystal arrangement is insane
He was talking about phase changes but compared to other substances, water is quite special in its melting/boiling points so perhaps not the best comparison
I'm using it for 10 months now in my 4800H/RTX2060 Omen laptop. After few products like ZF-12 or Cryonaut - I bought PTM7590. Temp on CPU on clasic products were like 92-95*C. On this product I have 80-82*C in the same conditions. And absolutely no degradation over time.
Over 10°C reduction? If someone would just test this with the Steam Deck! ;) It really seems too good to be true. For a PS4 it might not make enough sense but in a laptop or another portable device I'm really interested.
@@imn0tgarbage Piece of cake. Linus was applying it wrong. It has litle stickers attached to the package, and taking out these foils is then very easy. Most time i spent on cleaning cpu and gpu with alcohol.
PSA for anyone watching this video: DON'T use any Noctua thermal paste on GPUs or laptops, unless you enjoy opening up your GPU or laptop every 6 months (or less) due to sudden and inexplicably terrible thermals. The "pump out" effect is extremely common with those pastes since they're very low viscosity, and are best used only on CPUs, not direct on die applications like on a GPU or laptop. There are better thermal pastes for those cases, like the gelid gc extreme, kingpin kpx, cooler master maker nano, etc, which are far more viscous and will last much longer. Or you could get the thermal pad shown in the video and pretty much guarantee none of that pump out effect happens.
This needs to be told way more often! I guess Kryonaut is another paste that has a lower viscosity and thus shouldn't be used. The Hydronaut paste from the same company works with a higher viscosity but isn't as good as your mentioned ones (even though the difference isn't massive).
@@JohnA... That would be awesome because I still have some and would rather use this before buying something different. But maybe there's still a difference for portable devices.
I had applied PTM7950 from Ebuy7 in my MSI GE73 and it does wonders. It was 3 months ago and the laptop still runs quieter and cooler than ever before, even better than when it had cooling replaced under warranty. I also had bought K5-Pro but then I discovered it uses thermal pads so I opted for keeping them till the next maintenance.
I was a Dell Repair tech up until about 2 years ago and we used this in the field. The change in temperature is insane going from the stock liquid paste from the factory to this stuff
This is super interesting. I recently applied liquid metal on my 5950x unconventionally between the IHS and the waterblock. It worked wonders but this pad would probably have been a safer solution if I knew about it. Thermal interface is getting increasingly important with new CPUs being so dense they throttle due to heat trapped within the IHS before the coolers are even saturated.
I used this on my laptop a few months ago, I swapped out all the theramal pads to thermalright pads, swapped out the stock single heatpipe to a dual heatpipe, and repasted the cpu and gpu with ptm7950. Overall droped my temps almost 15°C; not bad for a 5 year laptop with a i5 7200u and a geforce 940mx... that thing is a tank
@@cookies3350 the dual heatpipe was from another model. I have a acer aspire e5 774g, the dual heatpipe came from an aspire 575g... they're essentially the same laptop, the only difference being size, and cpu/gpu configuration; which goes for almost any aspire series at the time... pretty much all of them used the same mobo; which makes upgrading a breeze on my part
@@MrPaxio i do think the dual heatpipe helped a bit, but not 15°C, while it is a dual heatpipe, the pipes are smaller than the single heatpipe. From what I understand the dual heatpipe should be more efficient, with roughly the same cooling capability. The laptop is also 5 years old, removing the 5 years of dust probably dropped the temps at least a degree to two.
Considering its major use in laptops, it would have been nice to see a test involving a laptop CPU. The IHS on a 13900K is significantly different thermally than direct die cooling.
@@JohnA... GPUs and CPUs do not exactly match up in their thermal performance; The larger die does detract from the benefits of higher thermal conductivity per meter kelvin. This is unlike a laptop chip or delidded CPU which would benefit significantly from this greater thermal conductivity.
@@genethebean7597 Honestly I don't know enough on that scale to tell you. I just knew that GPUs are direct die so it would probably be closer to the de-lided CPU than having it applied to the heat spreader as was the comment I responded to. Either way its still impressive for what it is being able to compete with liquid metal and not having the risks involved. I personally went with Kryonaut over the liquid metal specifically because I didn't want the risks, this might be an interesting option next time I make a change.
It may be significantly different in form, but at the end of the day, it's the same 1D linear ODE governing total heat resistance. They could've attached it to a dummy block and it would've been just as valid as long as the ambient temperatures, surface finishes, materials, and power densities were comparable.
I'm a bit disappointed they didn't run a benchmark on the CPU, with that much more power being drawn, it seems like it could allow a useful performance difference for those that run apps that use 100% CPU for an extended time.
I suspect he's learned some lessons about fire safety... Particularly after he took a lighter to a graphite thermal pad he was holding in his fingers. Those conduct heat surprisingly well across the surface.
I'm actually curious if the orientation of the motherboard makes a difference. this pad is mostly used for stuff with horizontal boards (servers, laptops, cars). if it gets more liquid under heavy load, gravity could do work over time...
I think this should be revisited for smaller devices such as laptops or steam deck. I applied the PTM7950 to my 2020 Razer Blade 15 (10750h & 2070 max-q), which resulted much lower temps and no throttling while playing CSGO (undervolted and 4.1GHZ all cores)!
@@pierremiranda3849 I actually decided to put liquid metal on it. I placed it on the APU about 2 months ago and my Deck runs cooler, especially when running it on harder games. For instance, when I ran Spider-Man at 15-watt TDP at 60 fps, my temps would run into the mid 90s before. Now, the temps don't go past 90 degrees C. Of course, I am still very conservative about my TDPs per game, so I run that game either 11 or 13 watts at 40 fps. Nonetheless, I did record the process of having the liquid metal on the Deck's APU and I showed the precautions that I took, plus I spoke at length about the potential risks. I will put that video on my channel (mrAPchem) later this week since you asked me about it.
Some have already said it but, the LTT store would be capable of getting large amounts of PTM7950 like you said, and we would 100% buy some knowing it's coming from a trusted source. It may also be slighty profitable
My friend recommended this to me when I was repasting my XPS 15, and after I applied it it was the first time that my laptop completed Cinebench without ever thermal throttling.
Looking at Digikey, there are quite some other brands using phase change compound solutions. So Honeywell is most definitely not the only one. Unfortunately I can't put any links here, bust just go to Digikey, Thermal - Pads, Sheets, Bridges and select Phase Change Compound as Material. Mouser probably also has a selection of these. So there is no need to go to obscure websites like Ali etc.
Do they have a reasonable minimum order? I could see myself buying 10 and keeping them for a while, but something like 100? I'd have to figure out how to flip them.
I'm using 3M's thermally conductive polyimide film as a heatsink insulator in my 110w/ch Gainclone amplifier because it conducts heat better than mica or conductive silicone without having to be as thick. I've also used their thermally-conductive double-sided tape to adhere small low-power devices like power LEDs onto heatsinks. 3M makes a _lot_ of thermal materials - they are actually one of the larger manufacturers of this stuff. DuPont also makes a lot of thermally conductive materials, and are one of the other larger manufacturers in this arena.
The increase in performance over time shown in the testing from Honeywell with the extremely small difference shown to liquid metal would suggest the PTM will win out after maybe 6 months or a year. This is something the lab should test for us, is the PTM better than liquid metal after a year?
And basically guaranteed to win on a laptop where liquid metal is a no-go, since having the device vertical (like in a bag) is a great way to get the metal all over the place.
no - it shows they didnt do the initial temperature cycles to bed it in before testing. Phase change materials work like that, needs to melt into the smallest spaces. Arctic Silver 5 takes literally days.
Would love to see a long-term review of this material versus other thermal pastes, specifically in laptops! As in, how do they compare after a year's worth of use and drying. Have heard bad things about thermal paste in laptops while researching this today cos of "pump out" or something like that, so that's where I'd love to see a comparison. Maybe all the LTT staff that use laptops can use a different paste for a year and then compare the performance at fresh-apply to that one year later?
I remember the little pink pad that used to melt and fill the voids on the cpu making an extremely close interface on the bottom of some AMD heatsinks 20 years ago, they performed very well - but single use only
That is the same stuff, phase change TIM. Nothing new in the PC world, but more difficult to install compared to paste. Ideally you'd heat cycle to about 70-80C with the CPU fan disconnected a few times to "set" it. I used to do it for a living, and I guess AMD moved to paste to make installation easier as more people started building computers at home.
I find it very interesting that when you were looking through the thermal camera and heating up the metal, the thermal paste was the same hot color as the metal, indicating it's transferring the heat. But the pad was still cooler on top and didn't really change.
One advantage of phase change is that it takes energy for that phase change to happen. So instead of continuing to heat up the energy is instead used to alter the bonds and turn it liquid before it then heats up again. Despite not being all that much material my guess is that's why it looks so much cooler on the thermal camera. Clearly didn't have any particular impact on their later graphs but it's possible it might be an added benefit for short boosts.
I use this stuff on a class A power amp between some mosfets and heatsink. works great, as does Keratherm Red. maybe have a look at that stuff too, even less messy and possibly higher performance.
@@fortheprofit2186 ummm, no, that is an egregious generalisation. There are many ways to make a class A(or ab, D etc) amplifier. some will be with N and P channel devices, some will be with N+N channel, some will be P + P channel. You have depletion mode mosfets, enhancement mode mosfets, mosfets with isolated tabs and most that do not. Common gate amplifiers, common drain amplifiers, common source amplifiers, circlotrons etc. Some amplifiers are fine with the tab (even if it isnt isolated) directly connected to the heatsink, but many will not be and it is NOT a safe assumption to make, regardless of whether the power supply is symmetrical or not. Many amplifiers that will mean that the heatsink is swinging at the same potential as the drain. SOMETIMES that is ok, as it may be ground, but it really isnt a safe assumption to make at all. then you may have the case where you want the driver fet to share the same temperature as the output devices, so you place it right next to the outputs on the heatsink, but not the same voltage. If the tabs are not isolated and even if you are ok with the heatsink sitting at the same potential as drain etc, you may still need to make sure there are current sharing resistors in place if there are paralleled output fets.
and mica is pretty old hat. thus mentioning Keratherm Red. There are other phase change materials too. please try and stay away from making potentially dangerous generalisations on youtube.
After trying several top tier thermal pastes for my Asus TUF A17 5800H 3060 laptop (Thermalright TFX, NTH2, MX5, SYY157, TG Hydronaut & Kryonaut/Extreme), PTM7950 has been the longest lasting and consistent Thermal application for my laptop. Temps now sit max CPU 85c and 74c GPU whilst gaming. Chuck it on a cooling pad and 80c CPU 70c GPU. This stuff is a miracle for laptops.
this is exactly my PC a 2021 ( bought it in 2022 i think ) model, I was thinking of repasting it since it's 2023 now, every where I look and it's PTM this ! and PTM that ! everything else sucks !!!!!! glad you did it, after this comment, I'll try to get my hands on some. question, what did you use on the side chips gel / pads ?
Been doing work for Honeywell for 10 years on the controls side and didn’t even know about this! Thank you Linus I’ll ask for some! And we are also a distributor for them so gunna stock up on them!
I was taught at uni, and confirmed with math / lab work. That the thermal conductivity of thermal pastes barely affects actual heat transfer as the layer is so thin (like having a micro-ohm resistor in series). What really makes a difference is the ability to fill holes. However as most pastes are quite similar, now thermal conductivity is having a measurable effect.
The Problem in the long run is "Pumpout". Due to expansion and contraction of the material the paste will pull in air bubbles, especially on direct die applications. For example my PS4 pro only ran
@@tschuuuls486 why a lot of old techs still swear by AS5. Its a degree or so off the best but takes up to 200h to melt into the smallest spaces and cure, and is long term stable.
Yeah it’s sole purpose is to get as complete and full a conductive surface as possible it is actually less efficient than metal to metal however that is outweighed by those air voids and imperfections. The ideal setup other than this would be atomically perfect or close to ur metal plates directly attached
This stuff is so good I feel like I rediscovered repasting laptops, and funnily enough Intel suggested using PCM in a paper in 2006 over the downsides of paste because of paste pump out and dry out. AMD and Nvidia actually uses PCM (albeit from different companies) in their newer reference/FE cards
The TIM Intel provided with their Xenon processors back around 2010 was a paste made by Shin-Etsu, don't remember the number. But it was long term stable, resisted pump out and instead of drying was a phase change material. It also had thermal transfer about as good or better than the best of the normal pastes of the time, such as AC5. It was simply a great product. Intel had some whitepapers about the TIM with a lot of info on what tests they had run and how it performed. I remember that what disqualified most pastes and other TIM that fullfilled the thermal transfer demands was pump out and long term stability. It was easy to apply as you simply squeezed out the entire syringe provided with each processor in a puddle on the CPU and slapped the heat sink on top. The specification called for spring loaded heatsink retention so when the CPU heated up the first time the TIM would flow out forming a very thin layer. Once it cooled down it would turn solid. Each subsequent heat cool cycle it would flow, and when cooling down it would suck in material from the surrounding excessive TIM that had been pressed out. This way it resisted the pump out effect. It would be interesting to see how it compares to the current crop of TIM. One thing that I found funny was how some people would remove the HS to check on the TIM and be appalled by how dry it was. That's the thing with phase change materials, they don't have to be "wet" to work. When they heat up they will flow even if they seem dry and hard at room temperature.
Which is why Arctic Silver 5 was all the rage soon after, it was specifically designed to melt into the small spaces and cure over ~ a hundred hours and be long term stable. Then the enthusiasts all decided it was fine if you had to re-apply regularly for a degree or 2 more?
AMD used phase change TIMs on their Athlon/Duron box coolers 20+ years ago, I assume they changed to a regular paste due to the increased difficulty of using a phase change TIM to the end user as DIY PCs got more common. Intel also shipped some same era CPUs with phase change tims
@@flandrble Part of what makes phase change TIM has to use is that they can make it hard to remove the heatsink when cold. You need to do a twisting motion to break it lose. If you just pull you risk pulling the component of the card or the processor out of the socket. If you are lucky that's fine, but if you left a pin or two in the socket you could have a big problem...
My PTM7950 order from ebuy7 just arrived last week, and here LTT made a video about it. In my experience using it, it was able to cool my laptop down better than a 6-month-old NT-H2. The problem with many thermal pastes is many of them perform poorly with laptop applications (more focused heat, higher operating temp, lower mounting pressure, etc.) and causing them to have shorter than usual life or even worse performance. Finding a good review or comparison between several thermal pastes specifically for laptop applications is even rarer. My reasoning for going with PTM7950 is not to have to re-paste every few months to get a better temp. Good to know that its performance will be even better in the long run.
swapped out the cpu recently and used this pad after watching this video. Honestly glad I did, found easier to apply and less guesswork of if I got a good amount or not and temps are great.
I like the thought of this being used for high power LED, considering some larger LED spotlights/flashlights need their own passive and sometimes active cooling solution.
Pre applied would be even better like some AIOs have. The issue comes down to cost and time though on both. We already know the manufacturers cheap out on thermal paste most of the time when it will save pennies compared to using decent stuff, its unlikely they would spend even more for this kind of solution.
@@batt3ryac1d Cooler was just an example. But I wouldn't go so far as to say either of those two won't skimp, they have been shown plenty of time to put inferior TIM on their CPUs below the heat spreader, even when they produce them in such bulk as I mentioned it would cost them pennies to put some good stuff on them. Again I like the idea, but I don't see them spending the money even if the cost was passed down. I also think it would be easier all around if it was pre-applied to not cause as much possible confusion or miss application. However it might be better with the cooler simply because you they don't seem to want anything on the CPU before being installed, and there are already companies pre applying to coolers and supplying TIM with them unlike CPUs. (except the ones with a cheap cooler sold with).
@@lietchje Free marketing, and for some reason people like to be walking billboards for things they don't get paid to advertise. Gotta have your "tribe" in some way or another can't look like a normal sheep without the branding or sportsball team logos. I agree the stickers for products are pointless to the consumer.
I was going to mention that anytime I repair old electronics, when I find thermal paste in them (its usually hard as a rock and chunky) and whenever Ive found the thermal pad instead It always had some flexibility to it and was still in fair condition
One big advantage (in my eyes) that hasn't been mentioned is that you can't mess up your application pattern. It's always a bit of a gamble when you apply thermal paste and hope it spreads evenly under pressure.
@@phenos Yes the paste version needs "drying" as there is solvent to make them spreadable or printable. The length of the drying time depends on the temperature. The pad form also requires you to heat the surface before application and then chill the surface for easier removal of the plastic liner... Honestly I dun think it is worth the trouble of an average user despite the benefits.
If ppl are just looking for a stable phase cured material that wont pump out - thats what Arctic Silver 5 was for, enthusiasts for some reason decided constant re-application was worth it for a degree or 2 (which sure, if ur an overclocker with the CPU out every day or 2 it is)
I've known about this stuff for probably a couple weeks at this point but I've never really looked into it however considering what I've learned from you guys I'm going to have to look into it now because the possible benefits from my industry would probably warrant buying at least a few hundred
he needs to redo this video but with a RX7900xtx that is notorious for having pump out issues... i put this on my red devil xtx and the hotspot temps improved significantly. i was getting near 30C hotspot deltas, now it peaks at 19 in benchmarks, and stays within 9-13c when gaming. stuff is actual magic
That's it, I'm trying this. I don't care how expensive it is or even it will perform a bit worse than normal paste. I'm just too goddamn tired of the pump-out effect even with the very expensive Kryonaut Extreme. My laptop's temp only goes higher and higher after the first 3 weeks of re-pasting. This TPM7950 better be the best solution for long run and thermal consistency. EDIT: Tried it. What else can I say but amazing!! I got my CPU to never reached beyond 85 degree and no throttle down, and even better result on the GPU to never ever reached 78 degree on full load and obviously never throttled down. If the claim is true that things will only get better from now on, the longer phase changing cycles happens the better the heat transfer performance, this TIM is definitely a must for laptop. Don't even think about LM solution for portable devices such as laptop. And most importantly, don't waste your money on pastes that will only degrade it's performance overtime the first 2 to 3 weeks after application. They're all good for desktop use that has bigger area coverage and high mounting pressure.
Especially if you want to have a long lasting thermal paste you do NOT want to use extreme overclocking pastes like Kryonaut Extreme or KINGPIN KPx. They specifically tradeoff longevity for a tiny bit more performance. Use something more standard like the Arctic MX-5 or the Noctua NT-H2 instead.
modDIY has pads and thermal paste made from PTM7950. $7 for a pad or $20 for a tube as big as any of the thermal paste companies. I wouldn't be surprised if most thermal paste if all PTM or something very close.
I already love this for how even you can apply it and how THIN you can apply it. Much thinner than conventional pad and probably a lot thinner than the basic issue "pre applied" thermal goo a lot of coolers come with.
Something you didn't really note in your video is Pre-cured vs Uncured PTM. There are pre-cured sheets of PTM that have already received the thermal cycling and as such provide higher performance.
There's no such thing as pre-cured sheets. The curing process only happens when it's under pressure between two substrates. The curing that you refer to is the TIM thining out and filling in microscopic grooves over time. The pumping during hot and cold cycles is what makes this work, but thankfully the TIM is viscous enough that it only pumps out what isn't necessary, and thus increasing efficiency.
@@phenos I was under the understanding it took longer than that via heat cycling it? Perhaps it takes longer depending on the thickness? I know you don't want to apply it pre-cured because it will shrink quite a bit.
@@zqzj PTM does have a curing time to remove any solvents and you can buy pre-cured sheets of it that are at its final thickness. If you apply PTM before the solvent is completely out you can end up with a thinner piece that won't entirely fill the area and will contract inward resulting in a smaller surface area of coverage. It was my understanding that the sheets were essentially baked on and off as a "pre-cured" process to remove the solvents.
Well there is another explanation for the use of this kind of materials : When changing from solid to liquid, the pad itself (just like any other material) needs to absorb heat in order to break the bonds that link every molecule to its close neighbour, thus preventing heat from increasing more. This is observed when we check the phase transition for water : as long as there is solid left, the system won't get hotter than 0°C.
Hey! Thanks for the deal on the sweatpants and hoodie. I've been eyeing the hoodie since y'all announced it, but the combo deal really convinced me to actually pay for it. Good timing too, because I'm in need of more long pants for the winter time. I'm a little worried that the longest pants are for 6'1 - 6'4" individuals, since I'm 6'6", but I can make it work.
I work at a laptop repair shop and we have switched to this stuff because of the normal paste pump-out risk. (160X400mm factory size sheets and the paste form which needs some curing time before attaching the heatsink, 5minutes with hot air at 100'c) for high end laptops, vga and consoles. Kryonaut/MX4/NT-H2 stuff doesn't last with the modern age above 80'c temperatures.
Now that I've gotten into a "set it and forget it" mentality, I wouldn't mind going through the hoops to get some of this stuff lol. Maybe put it on the CPUs of all my friend's machines that I play tech support to and not have to worry about that ever again, especially since this stuff supposedly gets a little better over time lol.
This was my thought. I tend to keep machines way longer than I should - My last CPU was a Phenom II x4 965BE - so, the idea of not reapplying past and just throwing on a pad that lasts a good 5 years is a nice thought.
Correction. I believed people who told me that GLID won't pump out. They were wrong! My laptop is clearly a worst case, and needs to be repasted OFTEN no matter which paste I use and no matter what the claims about it are. I'm about to try PTM790 because I can't take repasting every few months or weeks. The wrong thing this USED to say: Reminds me of working with GELID GC-Extreme thermal paste. That is also too thick at room temperature and you have to stick the tube in hot water so you can spread it. It also is good (though perhaps slightly worse), and should be able to handle a laptop's no-heat-spreader die without pump out for the life of your laptop. It has the advantages of being easy to get and a lot cheaper.
Thanks for the hot water tip. I worked with GELID GC-Extreme on two laptop CPUs and found it difficult to spread over the silicon die. I was applying it at room temperature and I would attempt to spread it further and it would LIFT off the previously covered surface area on the die!
@@davidhiggins2804 I'm pretty sure the PTM7950 I got off of Amazon was something almost as good like ptm7900, because it came slightly thinner than Ptm7950. It worked well for almost as long as it's been since that comment, but after another crash or two I replaced it whatever that eternal carbon stuff that Debaur is selling is. Carbon with fibers lined up to spread heat up and down. That is longer lasting than ptm
Not just the legion 7. I got a legion 5 almost exactly a year ago and it's thermal pads are ptm! I didn't know this at first and after subjecting it to mining and changed them out for fresh pads I was actually getting worse performance!
Wait? The power draw shows that it does better than the liquid metal. So if we have access from reputable source, isn't it the best thing? Easier to apply, better performance after 5 min
The key word is "industrial". Manufacturers need "apply once use until service time" that won't get smeared or cracked over the years. Like Linus said if you need the BEST performance and you're willing to deal liquid metal's headaches it is the best solution because the laws of thermodynamics are constant.
Surprised with the outcome, considering the IR image at the 4:00 mark. And as for your initial conclusions, you are correct that lifespan is one of the things they have in common, and the other is that they are mass produced by automation. A solid "pad" is easier to include in the assembly process than a liquid or a paste.
In case anyone catches this video in 2024, Thermalright actually makes PTM7950 pads, re-branded as Thermalright Helios, and its just under $5 for a sheet. If you don't know what kind of material it is, it's kind of like the M.2 thermal puddy in your motherboard's M.2 slot or what comes with M.2 enclosures.
I remember these things from working at Honeywell aerospace, and lockheed martin. They worked great for large cold plates when you needed to engineer with tight tolerances but still transfer heat. This stuff is only the surface of what I’ve had to play with. You should look into more honeywell products if you can. Good stuff.
@@MrGamelover23 Thermal transfer materials in general. We got loads of ways to transfer heat and isolate Radio Frequencies to make chip sets more efficient. I wish Linus was able to test these out how we actually use them. The materials that they are applied to are normally machined at one thousandth of an inch. Something only a hand full of companies in the US are able to achieve. One of the biggest areas this product shines in over normal thermal paste is this product is made to take vibrations. Thermal pastes will vibrate themself s out from under the two planes it is applied to over time even in vehicles or moving objects with good suspensions. The micro vibrations will eventually make the compound work its way out and make voids trapping air and conducting heat instead of transferring it. Where thermal interface pads really shine is there ability to be durable in these problem areas.
@@MrGamelover23 Not necessarily. What I'm referring to is highly mobile server racks and computer systems that sit in container ships, warships, and aircraft that experience anything from micro vibrations, to full on shakes it's more commercial than high end consumer but it does have it's uses. An example is you wanted to build a desktop to go in a rv. This is more ideal because it doesn't fall apart.
If it's a commercial product from Honeywell, there's a good chance your standard service tech who works in the HVAC/Electrical trade could just walk into a parts store with their license (maybe even without!) and buy them 1 or 2 at a time. Will have to check that out later!
My limited experiment is that it's much easier to use, and less likely you ends up with air bubbles. It takes a significant time until the pressure pushes all the not necessary material out. I found it pre installed on some heatsinks.
For direct-die cooling, this stuff is a lifesafer. I just applied some to my 7900 XTX that was suffering from extreme pump-out, and the hot spot dropped by almost 20 degrees right out of the gate. Applied to a Steam Deck, the temps maxed out at 10 degrees less than stock full-tilt.
Looks like this stuff comes closest to the wax pastes I've been looking for for ages. There used to be a type of commercial grade paste that came as a semi-solid chunk in a dispenser tube, like lipstick, and it would self-spread when heated. It used to give really good results, but I haven't seen any on even industry supplier sites since around 2003(?). EDIT: Apparently, it was called "Power Devices Thermstrate".
your answer is that it was a bar form of thermstrate 1000, power devices was owned by loctite back then (don't know history now but i think henkel bought them???) either way its not manufactured by them (in that form) anymore... the stick form is still made by another company that rebrands it and that company is called AAVID, they just call it the ultrastick at one of my former employers we used the loctite 2000 TCM material in the DIP's and VIP's
I'm surprised you're not more excited about testing this on a high end GPU, I know the pads used there can be quite good but if this is on par with high end CPU cooling then I'm sure there would be performance/stability gains to be had for GPU pad replacement.
One thing this video failed to mention is that thermodynamically any sort of phase change requires a large amount of energy to complete. Thus adding some thermla mass to the pad that would be unachievable via a typical solution.
Because stuff like that only matters for 20 to 40 minute loads which for gaming isn't really a thing, You would realistically only care about the long-term performance
Actually, over time, it has improved. I'm now seeing a consistent 10 degree C reduction in temps. Fans spin up later and slower and quieter. Amazing stuff.
If you're curious about the whole "phase changes absorb/emit heat" thing, Technology Connections has some great videos about that (in the context of air conditioning, heat pumps, and refrigerators, which use the same technology).
Probably not very relevant here, the phase change is more interesting due to the possibility of achieving a more consistent application in an industrial assembly situation (due to being solid-ish), while achieving a good thin layer later (due to turning into a liquid on heating). The mass of material is too low for the heat of changing phase to affect much. Water is pretty much king in terms of heat of changing phase, and you can guess how little time it would take for a cpu tu melt such a thin layer of ice. Vaporisation would take more time, but still probably less than a minute on a 100W CPU.
lol that's not what this is, the only benefit of phase change here is better coverage of the TIM across the heatsink/IHS because it's a liquid, and under pressure, can fill gaps better than any paste can due to its physical structure. The phase changes used to facilitate heat transfer require refrigerants and some electrical expenditure all within a pressure-sealed system that effectively is designed to take the heat from one source and push it somewhere else, and dumps it via evaporation, none of which is what happens here.
@@Validole Yeah, this comment was basically a gamble hoping that it'd be the premise of the technology/video, and I'd get an early helpful comment. The gamble did not succeed :p
I had many issues with multiple known thermal paste brands suffering from pump out and just degrading after one or two months to a point that my Thinkpad would thermal throttle. This is an old Thinkpad so Lenovo wasn't using this TIM. My best result so far is with this PTM stuff. It doesn't degrade at all! Is it the best? On short term, almost. On long therm? By far! I just wish there was a way to buy this stuff in Europe with decent pricing
Would you really call Liquid Metal viscous? I find viscous things hard to get into small cracks while "watery" solutions are very easy to get into those cracks. Liquid metal always looked extremely watery to me, viscosity seemed quite low? Timestamp: 2:47
So we used to use this in an x86 two phase immersion application. It was our best performer by far. For a couple reasons. We could not use Liquid Metal for many reasons. And the two phase fluid would dissolve almost every commercially available thermal paste’s base material. But it also resulted in the most PERFECT spread of the Tim. And this is even more crucial in a two phase immersion system where any voids would get filled with the immersion fluid. This essentially also provided the hermetic seal between the IHS and the boiling enhancement plates. It was the only way we could keep the 500w chips cool without going through like a gpu delid😅
Now that LTT have done a video on it, I wouldn't be surprised if brands start coming out with their own gamer or enthusiast versions.
Just need to figure out how to get some RGB in there and it will sell like hotcakes.
@@--_DJ_-- They will just dye it the color of hotcakes.
@@janemba42 That would be the Noctua branded stuff. :)
@@--_DJ_-- so that's why they sell like hotcakes then...
remember: Gamer = the same but with RGB, if you're lucky. If you're Not, it's 'cheap knock off of the worst version that technically meets the description if the seller is halfway honest, with a logo'.
My 2021 Legion 7i laptop comes with the Honeywell 7950 thermal pads straight from Lenovo's factory. As a matter of fact, replacing them with thermal paste actually makes the cooling worse.
May i ask: What are the temps of the Laptop while just browsing? Is it still better with lower CPU temps (= solid state)? specifically on the bottom side.
Im having a hard time believing it would still be usable on the lap while just browsing without turning pretty toasty compared to what you are doing.
@@beepboop40 my 2022 legion 7 gen 7 is borderline silent and stays cool while web browsing, and it also uses ptm7950
@@beepboop40 Laptop cpu's temp goes up to around 50°C in web browsing use anyway, the solid phase won't affect any normal use.
@@beepboop40 if cpu reaches 50°C, enough to liquefy the pad, your laptop chassis would still be well below 30 most likely.
@@beepboop40 what? That's not how heat works, you are not generating more heat, just the heat isn't going anywhere hence the rise in CPU temps meaning if heat not going to your lap and away from the cpu, ITS COOLER ON YOUR LAP!
Besides thermal throttle only happens at high temps and at that point the material has turned to liquid and is doing its job at getting the heat away from the cpu and onto your lap. But that's when there is a load and enough heat is generated in the first place.
Would be cool if LTT store carried this
Yeah they could probably move volume
Sell it in a 3 pack or something, already cut to the correct size for whichever CPU you use
He did say automotive ppaces carry them. Ask your local car parts store or mechanics shops if they'll sell you a pad
@@kellyshea92 This is most likely applied inside electronic modules, you wont be seeing this stuff standalone nor being replaced by a tech. Dont waste your time.
@@kellyshea92 it's inside electronic control unit, which most shop never actually take it apart. So they might not knowing anything about the pad.
Hey LTT team! I'm glad this amazing product is getting some publicity. I just wanted to share some additional information about the product and why PTM7950 is particularly special in the laptop space. All of this is from my personal experience with the product across 4 different laptops over the last 6 months or so, so please don't take this as absolute, but more-so recommendations and general tips.
First, I want to point out that phase-change materials such as this perform remarkedly well vs. even the best aftermarket pastes in laptop-specific use cases because there is no IHS involved -- it is direct-die cooling, outside of DTRs. In those instances, viscosity/permeability and thermal impedence matter quite a bit more than *just* thermal conductivity of a particular TIM (thermal interface material). Not only that, but because it can phase-change, it is basically impervious to pump-out, so performance will never degrade due to this factor.
Further, the performance of PTM7950 vs. liquid metal on Ryzen mobile CPUs is incredibly similar, just as it was in the desktop tests performed in this video. However, the gap is significantly larger for Intel mobile CPUs, though, I have no specific evidence to ascertain exactly why that is outside of anecdotal testing on my end (11980HK, 12900HX, 5800H, and 5900HX). The latest theory that I've discussed with some folks is something to do with the AMD die shape/convexity, power density as it relates to heat transfer/surface area, as well as some other factors. Long story short, if you want ultimate performance out of an Intel-based laptop, PTM will be 8-12c behind liquid metal in sustained loads, vs. 3-4c behind for AMD-equivalent laptops. Since AMD-based laptops have multiple traces/SMDs surrounding the CPU package, I would wholeheartedly recommend Honeywell's solution over a modest 3c lead with a conductive TIM like Conductonaut or Eisfrost.
Secondly, a fresh application of PTM7950 *will* continue to get better, performance-wise, after 4-6 heavy heat cycles. When I put this stuff up against liquid metal in my previous Legion 7 Gen 6 (Ryzen 9 5900HX was the CPU in question), I would have to do some burn-in to allow the pad to phase-change a few times to really conform in the space between the cold-plate and the die itself. Usually I would do 10-minute Cinebench R23 runs, with 20-minute rest periods in between before doing pre/post temperature comparisons. It really does make a massive difference, and is important not to assume it works magically right away at full performance.
Third, for mobile GPUs I've tested (3070 140W, 3070Ti 150W, 3080 165W, and 3080Ti 165W), I've found that PTM7950 performs about 2c *worse* vs. pastes like KINGPIN KPx, Phobya Nanograse Extreme, and Kryonaut Extreme, likely due to the larger die area (and thus, larger surface area for heat transfer into the GPU cold-plate of the laptop's cooling assembly) but again, for something that will last *significantly* longer (8-12 months vs. 3-5 YEARS), that is a very small price to pay.
Again, this is merely my personal experience with the product as it relates to high-performance laptop parts, which many people may watch this video to try and find out! I hope some of this was useful to someone out there, and feel free to reply with any questions and I'll do my best to answer.
Cheers!
Did you find that the gap on intel CPU's became less of a gap under sustained load as found in this video?
I'm asking because I have a laptop with a 10750H that's still on factory paste, and she needs a bit of TLC. For me it's a case of the Cobbler's kids not wearing shoes, so a set-and-forget type product is super appealing to me.
Thermal grizzly trashes on a laptop as it doesn’t have like longevity sure the performance will be only good for 2 months and who knows it might even liquidise and flow over your circuits so ye Honeywell strong option
pretty much same experience as me in 3 laptops... it is just the best thing you can do to a laptop, avoiding pomp out and helping so much with very low pressure laptops heatsinks, plus performance worsening is just so much longer than a normal paste that is really a no brainer in laptop zone.
tldr
@@chrisd4813 Hey there! After doing some appropriate burn-in cycles, the performance of PTM7950 does get better, "lessening the gap" between itself and other TIMs as you've asked, albeit not as narrow as it would for an AMD mobile CPU. While Liquid-Metal does perform noticeably better for Intel systems, Honeywell's solution is still very impressive from a performance and longevity perspective, especially if you do *not* have a nickel-plated heatsink that prevents galvanic corrosion which forces the end-user to reapply something like Conductonaut.
My suggestion would be to go ahead and grab some, and let it do its thing, especially if you aren't chasing benchmark scores or need more thermal headroom for overclocking!
The long service life is a huge deal. Derbauer talked with Steve from GN about thermal pastes, and he said the biggest problem OEMs have to deal with when selecting a TIM is the pump-out effect. They will often sacrifice max performance in exchange for a longer service life. I'm wondering if this being a phase change material gets around the pump-out effect. If that is the case, this is definitely worth the added cost.
No kidding! After almost five years in my Threadripper server, my (rather expensive) TIM pumped out to the point almost half the processor was bare - and this is a system that never cooled off to room temp since it was never shut down, only rebooted.
It seems kinda overkill though, generally the thermal paste will last more than long enough till you get an upgrade, at most you will have to replace it once but even that may not be necessary. Whilst the specs are great it seems nowhere near worth the price simply because you can't really take advantage of its long life span.
@@starcultiniser The price isn't actually that bad if you're buying in bulk direct from honeywell. Dell, Lenovo, etc. are buying in bulk. You and I aren't.
Even as a consumer, getting a 80mmx80mm sheet should be enough for anywhere from 4 to 12 applications depending on the size of what you're covering, and costs between $15 and $35 depending on your source and tolerance for sorting through the fakes.
I'm a Chinese. In our laptop BBS system many geek test 7900sp(use as traditional silicon paste)/7950(this one)
Answer is yes.
Use it.
The negative thing is, like AMD factory silicon paste, remove it when it at high temperature.
And a tip to make it easier paste this.
Before you paste it, put it in refrigerator.
Many corporations in the industry strive on planned obsolescence in order to sell you the same products over and over. It makes perfect sense if something is "apply once and forget forever" would not make corporations happy. Look up the alliance these disgusting human made in order to make the light bulb obsolete.
Welcome to capitalism.
I’m surprised you guys were less excited about it. 99.something of the performance with little to no device risk, plus no reapplication for life? Seems great. It’s like saying, well the furnace is great, but the flamethrower would heat your room faster.
plus it literally getting better over heat cycles.
Exactly. It costs the same as a tube of thermal paste. But the thermal paste need to be reapplied every so often. And he even said a sheet of this will cover several processors anyway. So to me it's win-win. Even at the higher $60 price point, it still seems like a good idea to me.
@@thundercat_pumyra I can see this used on GPU. I probly hunt this for my parents PC and laptop. And maybe my PC, I don't OC much more like undervolting/count watts.
Edit 28/11/2022 : I buy one sheet of this from aliexpress deliver in 15/12, have Athlon X4 970. With moded MOBO for OC let test it.
cut it to pieces and you get nice thermals for yhe good ole raspi 4
i wonder what a pain it'll be to remove this melted and re-hardened plastic once u need to get it off
So what are the odds that LTT Store starts carrying this stuff so people can get it easily?
Edit a year later: Based on the announcement today I have learned that the odds are 100% and that I will now be starting a career as a professional soothsayer
0
@@TheArijitBanerjee An optimist I see lol
I am going to steal this comment to the idea every extra inch of visibility
If people request it enough on the WAN show he would probably look into it
With their margins it would be probably about $100 per sheet.
You putting this on LTT store would be a win-win for everyone because if a pad in any capacity can perform similar to a thermal paste I think everyone here would buy it. Especially with all the new mining cards on the market having this stuff as the new thermal pad on your ram would be kick ass.
you can get it from moddiy its also the real stuff not the knock offs that are available
Imagine Gamers Nexus having that, and people would be buying that along with the coasters.
LLT Store has quite some markups though (as in order of magnitude) for their things.
and instead of $60 you could pay $180 from ltt store... yeah sounds like a good idea guy! don't forget, it only gets you one application at that. na, i'll stick to the tried and tested method that's been used for decades and also for extreme oc
Instead of socks and condoms ltt store should sell computer parts.
A note about this material is also that because of the life cycle it doesn't dry out like other conventional thermal pastes do. My laptop runs really hot and it will start to dry out thermal grizzly pastes since it will sit at a high temperature for extended periods under load...
i had to replace the thermal grizzly cryonaught after every few months as it would simply pump out and dry on my laptop. this is miles better than that.
i'm surprised to see this item, actually available locally after checking some online stores (and the most interesting part is I live in a 3rd world country and not even in the capital) and that shop is a legit one and already sold some of them. gonna grab it quick
I think that actually makes some sense when you consider how much manufacturing is done in developing countries it, would make sense to have it more readily available in countries where the demand will be higher.
Argentina??
Can you provide the site name pls?
I think you guys missed something big in this video. A lot of laptop heatsinks have very weak mounting pressures and generally rather “rough” heat plates on the bottom of their heatsinks. Only testing this on a GPU and CPU rather than in a laptop where PTM is being most frequently heralded as “the best solution” I think makes you guys lose a little perspective. Also, the “bad performance” you guys saw at the beginning of that GPU run is suggesting that you didn’t follow the tech sheet for PTM7950 which suggests that you should do a cycle or two at or above the phase change temperature to reach full performance. You guys need to revisit this and test a few laptops vs conventional/enthusiast laptop community recommended pastes (IC.d for ex) and Liquid Metal to really be able to say much of anything useful for that space. Stuff like MX-4 works extremely poorly on a lot of laptops due to pump out.
Very interesting points. If I may ask, what do you mean by pump out at the end?
@@GiorgosKoukoubagia It's a physical effect on the distribution of paste. Due to temperature variations causing thermal expansion, thermal pastes with time will get "pumped" (quite literally) out of the center of the processor.
Arctic Silver 5 used to be the standard because it phase cures over ~100h and avoids pumpout etc, but we decided constant changing was worth it for an extra degree.
@@mycosys AS5 performs quite poorly actually on laptops, it's not super great in devices with low mounting pressure IIRC for whatever reason. I think it's just the general low thermal conductivity + being pretty thick, but I'm not 100% certain on what the reasons are. It's been a while since I looked into it last. Pastes I've seen recommended previously are like IC Diamond, MasterGel Maker, stuff like those.
Not sure what you expect when Alex isn't involved.
I don't expect accurate takes, or knowledgeable answers when he is not present.
I am one of the users in the thread trying it out too. It is good for things that have exposed dies which causes pump out issues, it is also an apply and forget solution (at the higher price). If I applied my Arctic MX-4 on the Framework, the pump out effect will require me to redo the thermal paste often. This pad can be used for GPUs too. I would say it is easier to spread then some of the very thick and viscous thermal paste/putty stuff. For this pad, there's at least 2 thickness too, the ebuy is thicker if I remember correctly.
Good ol Arctic Silver 5 was made to phase into the cracks and cure and avoid pumpout but for some reason we decided an extra degree was worth constant changing.
Given how experimental this is, I half-expected Alex to be the one hosting the video.
Alex only does that when it isn't GF approved builds
The solution is buy the efficient smartphone, laptop, cpu, gpu. But Gpu is failing thermal wise.
I think Alex is working in the background to cool something insanely massive with it.
how is this experimental? It's been around since 2016...
Half life alyx
Applied it to my Zephyrus Duo 15 SE when I suspected the service center didn't apply liquid metal to my CPU die. It now quickly cools down faster than before. Got mine from China through Lazada.
did you apply it to both cpu and gpu instead of the liquid metal?
@@user-rf47CwB72 Then good thing it neither rapidly cools or heats anything.
It simply aids in thermal transfer.
Can ya send me a link?
Can you send us a link through lazada?
Could you please share the link?
If it really lasts that long and you don't switch out parts often the high price actually sounds pretty worth it while still have good thermal performance
The price he quoted is much overpriced, probably because they weren't sold a lot in Canada at that time. Most of the price attributed to the importing cost from China divided by a small sales number. The pads themselves are pretty inexpensive.
@@serena-yu yeah I can get Ptm7950 under $10, shipping cost more than the stuff I am buying
Chemist here! Another thing worth mentioning, is that the actual process of changing phase is endothermic (or at least it is with water, I have never worked with PTM7950) so when it starts to melt it will absorb a lot of heat from the processor without the temperature of the material increasing. You can see this yourself at home by putting a thermometer into some water on the stove and watching it as it heats up. Once the water starts to change from liquid to gas (boiling) you will notice the temperature start to plateau.
not actually a lot
Isn't that implied when he says it phase changes with heat? Changes from a more ordered state (solid) to a less ordered state (liquid) are endothermic.
for this effect to matter we would need a greater thermal mass.
the possible use case would be to absorb peak heat loads, potentially faster than conventional cooling systems.
but for continuous use the effects would be negated.
Correct me if I'm wrong. Not only phase change is endothermic, it absorbs energy way more than temperature change, e.g. look how much energy is needed to melt ice or steaming water. Even refrigerants are used at their boiling point.
Thank you for the gen-chem 1 lesson.
This is actually like magical stuff. I applied it on my laptop that was thermal throttling with mx-4 arctic silver ~around 85C+ on gpu, and it now gets to 75C max on cpu and gpu combined stress test!
The actual "problems" that linus said it has aren't really problems. I bought from ebuy7 with no problems. And it isn't actually too expensive since you do not need to replace the thermal paste for the application.
If you don't want to deal with liquid metal, this is the only option. Especially this should be the go to option with laptops. And way easier to apply (you literally just measure the area you need to cover) and the removal and cleanup is like regular thermal paste.
i bought it from amazon as the reviews said it was legit. yes indeed it was. BIG difference. I'm in India and the temperatures are high. my college dorm doesn't have AC and I'm in the tropical region and ambient temps go up to 30-35 C. the cpu went up to 90-95 before while under load. now it doesn't go over 80 C after a few hear cycles.
heat*
@@NotBorno you bought the joyjom version from Amazon? Is it still working good? How many months you are using it and what is your CPU and cooler?
I got it for my laptop from AliExpress and my laptop's fan rarely spins now on non gaming use with a ryzen 7 and rtx 4060, and honestly even with some light games
it's really magic
@@hououinkyouma00 anything about the joyjom version?
An NH-P1 and this stuff sounds like a good combo for long lasting and low maintenance solutions.
just applied this on my 7900 XTX 15 days ago, it brought down my Hotspot temps in Furmark from 108°C to now 84°C and the hotspot temps keep dropping the longer I use the card (started at 90°C) - it's amazing
Did you buy it from aliexpress?
9 month update? How is it doing?
The squirt of liquid metal is painful to watch 0:37
I can see this being very useful in manufacturing thousands of units of something. Instead of making sure all your engineers are using the right amount of a liquid from a tube, just give them a little slip of plastic to put in every system.
That isn't done manually and is done with a silk screen anyway.
@@Jaymiecain1 Great idea! didnt think about silk screen
Dell provides pre-cut pads for their certified field techs when doing warranty parts repair.
AMD did this over 20 years ago for all their CPUs. Phase change TIM came pre applied to the box CPU coolers.
Edit: Intel also used a phase change TIM called Chomerics XTS454
yes but also the engineers dont touch the production model, some poor chinese man who wants to die is going to be the one sticking the sheet on your laptops
This stuff is particularly important in laptops. Traditional pastes experience pump out. You'll often read about people repasting their laptop, that used to run cool, but no longer does, with traditional off the shelf pastes, having great results, and then 2 weeks later being back to running excessively hot, often hotter than before they repasted. The reason being factory pastes are much thicker, so they don't pump out as fast, but consumer pastes go on the IHS, so pump out isn't an issue. So you need a dedicated paste that isn't really available on the market for consumers.
Lenovo, alienware and MSI decided to avoid this by using a new phase changing thermal paste on their high end machines. Care to guess what they went with? It's all just honeywell 7950. As linus touched on, the longevity will be much better.
The best pastes for laptops/direct-die afaik are: Shin-Etsu X23-7921-5, IC-Diamond, Thermalight TFX, viscous pastes. I use them on midrange/low power laptops. And switched to the PTM pads a couple of weeks ago on High-end (gaming) laptops and consoles.
@@phenos How about MX-6?
@@unL33T I have no personal experience with MX-6 so I don't know how it will behave.
@@phenos can't comment on others but thermalright tfx was basically like stock paste on my machine, and steadily degraded over a year or so, had to downclock my cpu quite a bit to reach low 80s while playing games.did a repaste with PTM 7950 recently, let's hope it performs better
@pegatrisermice how is the performance now
“But there’s always a catch”
The ultimate truth
“There’s always a drop”
I was working for a company that used a lot of industrial compute modules, hardly ever saw paste, always thermal pads, however no idea who made them.
I ended up with a small stash (pre-cut, not sheets, darn) so I better hang onto them.
The biggest problem is that you pretty much always have to fit a new pad every time you pull things apart, even for a quick looksee. (unless it never got hot)
I was working for a company that builds "high end" computes for consumers. They used paste. They had a machine that did the application of thermal paste. Cant name the brand because of NDA but it rhymes with crapple.
@@gantz4u Didn’t know Snapple was getting into tech stuff. Neat!
@@PoyoPancakes Dude, I love Snapple, I remember that they had Apple Snapple. That one always cost more and felt like I got cheated in the end.
@@MrGamelover23 Nah I said Crapple not Apple so we good.
@@gantz4uBRUH
One of the most popular uses for PCM is in cooling mattresses. They will have a thin layer of PCM (usually close to the top of the bed so it doesn't work as an insulator) on top of a very porous foam so once the heat does get through the PCM it can dissipate more quickly. The PCM here also works as a sort of gate, so that lighter people (who tend to be colder) aren't super cold on the mattress, because the lighter person probably isn't putting out enough heat to change the phase and activate the cooling layer.
linus: "if water can do it, it's not that special"
water (one of the most essential substances acting as a building block for all life): "well shit, guess im useless"
Right one of the most unique things that exists
I was thinking the same lol. water is so weird and unique, the fact that it has multiple "solid/ice states" based on it's crystal arrangement is insane
He was talking about phase changes but compared to other substances, water is quite special in its melting/boiling points so perhaps not the best comparison
Yeah, water is pretty amazing.
all these replies would have made my AICE Marine Science teacher so happy 😂
I'm using it for 10 months now in my 4800H/RTX2060 Omen laptop. After few products like ZF-12 or Cryonaut - I bought PTM7590. Temp on CPU on clasic products were like 92-95*C. On this product I have 80-82*C in the same conditions. And absolutely no degradation over time.
Oh, one thing. It performs better on chips without IHS. There's giant difference.
How was installation?
Over 10°C reduction? If someone would just test this with the Steam Deck! ;)
It really seems too good to be true. For a PS4 it might not make enough sense but in a laptop or another portable device I'm really interested.
@@imn0tgarbage Piece of cake. Linus was applying it wrong. It has litle stickers attached to the package, and taking out these foils is then very easy. Most time i spent on cleaning cpu and gpu with alcohol.
@@cervgda Where did you buy it from?
PSA for anyone watching this video: DON'T use any Noctua thermal paste on GPUs or laptops, unless you enjoy opening up your GPU or laptop every 6 months (or less) due to sudden and inexplicably terrible thermals. The "pump out" effect is extremely common with those pastes since they're very low viscosity, and are best used only on CPUs, not direct on die applications like on a GPU or laptop. There are better thermal pastes for those cases, like the gelid gc extreme, kingpin kpx, cooler master maker nano, etc, which are far more viscous and will last much longer. Or you could get the thermal pad shown in the video and pretty much guarantee none of that pump out effect happens.
Yea, I found the thermal pad easier to apply so I guess I stuck with it.
This needs to be told way more often!
I guess Kryonaut is another paste that has a lower viscosity and thus shouldn't be used. The Hydronaut paste from the same company works with a higher viscosity but isn't as good as your mentioned ones (even though the difference isn't massive).
let me also add syy 157 which I love
@@Deinorius I've had Kryonaut on my GPUs and delided CPU for years. I never had any issues like that.
@@JohnA... That would be awesome because I still have some and would rather use this before buying something different. But maybe there's still a difference for portable devices.
I had applied PTM7950 from Ebuy7 in my MSI GE73 and it does wonders. It was 3 months ago and the laptop still runs quieter and cooler than ever before, even better than when it had cooling replaced under warranty. I also had bought K5-Pro but then I discovered it uses thermal pads so I opted for keeping them till the next maintenance.
I was a Dell Repair tech up until about 2 years ago and we used this in the field. The change in temperature is insane going from the stock liquid paste from the factory to this stuff
This is super interesting. I recently applied liquid metal on my 5950x unconventionally between the IHS and the waterblock. It worked wonders but this pad would probably have been a safer solution if I knew about it. Thermal interface is getting increasingly important with new CPUs being so dense they throttle due to heat trapped within the IHS before the coolers are even saturated.
I used this on my laptop a few months ago, I swapped out all the theramal pads to thermalright pads, swapped out the stock single heatpipe to a dual heatpipe, and repasted the cpu and gpu with ptm7950. Overall droped my temps almost 15°C; not bad for a 5 year laptop with a i5 7200u and a geforce 940mx... that thing is a tank
Was the dual heatpipe a custom made cooler or a cooler from a similar model laptop that you retro fitted for yours?
@@cookies3350 Prolly from another laptop using the same chassis that had an i7 and 960m or something.
@@cookies3350 the dual heatpipe was from another model. I have a acer aspire e5 774g, the dual heatpipe came from an aspire 575g... they're essentially the same laptop, the only difference being size, and cpu/gpu configuration; which goes for almost any aspire series at the time... pretty much all of them used the same mobo; which makes upgrading a breeze on my part
thats due to double the heat pipe rather than plastic glue
@@MrPaxio i do think the dual heatpipe helped a bit, but not 15°C, while it is a dual heatpipe, the pipes are smaller than the single heatpipe. From what I understand the dual heatpipe should be more efficient, with roughly the same cooling capability.
The laptop is also 5 years old, removing the 5 years of dust probably dropped the temps at least a degree to two.
Considering its major use in laptops, it would have been nice to see a test involving a laptop CPU. The IHS on a 13900K is significantly different thermally than direct die cooling.
They did the test on a gpu, which also does direct die cooling.
@@JohnA... GPUs and CPUs do not exactly match up in their thermal performance; The larger die does detract from the benefits of higher thermal conductivity per meter kelvin. This is unlike a laptop chip or delidded CPU which would benefit significantly from this greater thermal conductivity.
@@genethebean7597 Honestly I don't know enough on that scale to tell you. I just knew that GPUs are direct die so it would probably be closer to the de-lided CPU than having it applied to the heat spreader as was the comment I responded to.
Either way its still impressive for what it is being able to compete with liquid metal and not having the risks involved. I personally went with Kryonaut over the liquid metal specifically because I didn't want the risks, this might be an interesting option next time I make a change.
It may be significantly different in form, but at the end of the day, it's the same 1D linear ODE governing total heat resistance.
They could've attached it to a dummy block and it would've been just as valid as long as the ambient temperatures, surface finishes, materials, and power densities were comparable.
would act just like high end thermal paste, these were designed for direct die cooling.
Tried this pad on my laptop, it legitimately works better than even Kryonaut Extreme
Where did you got it?
Ayo kryonaut extreme is for extremely OC works better in minus temperature.
I'm a bit disappointed they didn't run a benchmark on the CPU, with that much more power being drawn, it seems like it could allow a useful performance difference for those that run apps that use 100% CPU for an extended time.
*3:52** **_"Fire is hot."_*
_- Linus Gabriel Sebastian, 2022_
There is something about Linus wielding a blowtorch that spikes my anxiety 😂
I like to imagine there's some LTT crew off screen holding fire extinguishers, just waiting for Linus to drop it
Maybe a little more heat. Instantly cooks the pad to crumbs.
I suspect he's learned some lessons about fire safety...
Particularly after he took a lighter to a graphite thermal pad he was holding in his fingers.
Those conduct heat surprisingly well across the surface.
I'm actually curious if the orientation of the motherboard makes a difference.
this pad is mostly used for stuff with horizontal boards (servers, laptops, cars). if it gets more liquid under heavy load, gravity could do work over time...
That's actually an interesting thought. Does liquid metal behave the same way, with that thought process?
@@Marble21463 liquid metal should hold onto the heat sink due to a variety of effects, so there should be no problems with that.
@@RKBock Thanks!
My guess would be that viscosity is still high enough for the thickness that the pad will hold between the cooler through friction without oozing out.
I think this should be revisited for smaller devices such as laptops or steam deck. I applied the PTM7950 to my 2020 Razer Blade 15 (10750h & 2070 max-q), which resulted much lower temps and no throttling while playing CSGO (undervolted and 4.1GHZ all cores)!
It's funny that you said this, because I am going to put some on my Steam Deck when it arrives. I might do a video of the process also!
Did you use it on both CPU and GPU? Getting ready to do this on my Blade 15 1070.
@@air2liquid yes I did. Make sure to cover the whole die area of the cpu and gpu.
@@mrAPchemplease what’s your channel i would love to see this on the steam deck
@@pierremiranda3849 I actually decided to put liquid metal on it. I placed it on the APU about 2 months ago and my Deck runs cooler, especially when running it on harder games.
For instance, when I ran Spider-Man at 15-watt TDP at 60 fps, my temps would run into the mid 90s before. Now, the temps don't go past 90 degrees C. Of course, I am still very conservative about my TDPs per game, so I run that game either 11 or 13 watts at 40 fps.
Nonetheless, I did record the process of having the liquid metal on the Deck's APU and I showed the precautions that I took, plus I spoke at length about the potential risks. I will put that video on my channel (mrAPchem) later this week since you asked me about it.
Some have already said it but, the LTT store would be capable of getting large amounts of PTM7950 like you said, and we would 100% buy some knowing it's coming from a trusted source. It may also be slighty profitable
good news they did they on the store now
My friend recommended this to me when I was repasting my XPS 15, and after I applied it it was the first time that my laptop completed Cinebench without ever thermal throttling.
Looking at Digikey, there are quite some other brands using phase change compound solutions.
So Honeywell is most definitely not the only one.
Unfortunately I can't put any links here, bust just go to Digikey, Thermal - Pads, Sheets, Bridges and select Phase Change Compound as Material.
Mouser probably also has a selection of these.
So there is no need to go to obscure websites like Ali etc.
Do they have a reasonable minimum order? I could see myself buying 10 and keeping them for a while, but something like 100? I'd have to figure out how to flip them.
@@Fay7666 That really depends per product.
I'm using 3M's thermally conductive polyimide film as a heatsink insulator in my 110w/ch Gainclone amplifier because it conducts heat better than mica or conductive silicone without having to be as thick. I've also used their thermally-conductive double-sided tape to adhere small low-power devices like power LEDs onto heatsinks. 3M makes a _lot_ of thermal materials - they are actually one of the larger manufacturers of this stuff.
DuPont also makes a lot of thermally conductive materials, and are one of the other larger manufacturers in this arena.
The increase in performance over time shown in the testing from Honeywell with the extremely small difference shown to liquid metal would suggest the PTM will win out after maybe 6 months or a year. This is something the lab should test for us, is the PTM better than liquid metal after a year?
Given that according to the temperature cycling test, it's conductivity improves with use, it's practically certain
And basically guaranteed to win on a laptop where liquid metal is a no-go, since having the device vertical (like in a bag) is a great way to get the metal all over the place.
no - it shows they didnt do the initial temperature cycles to bed it in before testing. Phase change materials work like that, needs to melt into the smallest spaces. Arctic Silver 5 takes literally days.
@@mycosys you are probably right, that makes a lot of sense.
THE GREATEST TECHNICIAN WHOSE EVER LIVED! uses this!
Would love to see a long-term review of this material versus other thermal pastes, specifically in laptops! As in, how do they compare after a year's worth of use and drying. Have heard bad things about thermal paste in laptops while researching this today cos of "pump out" or something like that, so that's where I'd love to see a comparison.
Maybe all the LTT staff that use laptops can use a different paste for a year and then compare the performance at fresh-apply to that one year later?
Never a good thing when you havnt slept yet and you see an ltt video and realize its afternoon. Mistakes were made
real
Me rn
couldnt be me
Same here. How am I even up
Did you also spend all yesterday watching football? 😂
I remember the little pink pad that used to melt and fill the voids on the cpu making an extremely close interface on the bottom of some AMD heatsinks 20 years ago, they performed very well - but single use only
Arctic Silver 5 does a similar thing, permanently phase change cures - we decided an extra degree was worth constant changing for some reason.
That is the same stuff, phase change TIM. Nothing new in the PC world, but more difficult to install compared to paste. Ideally you'd heat cycle to about 70-80C with the CPU fan disconnected a few times to "set" it. I used to do it for a living, and I guess AMD moved to paste to make installation easier as more people started building computers at home.
I find it very interesting that when you were looking through the thermal camera and heating up the metal, the thermal paste was the same hot color as the metal, indicating it's transferring the heat.
But the pad was still cooler on top and didn't really change.
One advantage of phase change is that it takes energy for that phase change to happen. So instead of continuing to heat up the energy is instead used to alter the bonds and turn it liquid before it then heats up again. Despite not being all that much material my guess is that's why it looks so much cooler on the thermal camera. Clearly didn't have any particular impact on their later graphs but it's possible it might be an added benefit for short boosts.
I use this stuff on a class A power amp between some mosfets and heatsink. works great, as does Keratherm Red. maybe have a look at that stuff too, even less messy and possibly higher performance.
no mica to isolate the plus and minus fets assuming it uses a symmetrical power supply
@@fortheprofit2186 ummm, no, that is an egregious generalisation. There are many ways to make a class A(or ab, D etc) amplifier. some will be with N and P channel devices, some will be with N+N channel, some will be P + P channel. You have depletion mode mosfets, enhancement mode mosfets, mosfets with isolated tabs and most that do not. Common gate amplifiers, common drain amplifiers, common source amplifiers, circlotrons etc.
Some amplifiers are fine with the tab (even if it isnt isolated) directly connected to the heatsink, but many will not be and it is NOT a safe assumption to make, regardless of whether the power supply is symmetrical or not.
Many amplifiers that will mean that the heatsink is swinging at the same potential as the drain. SOMETIMES that is ok, as it may be ground, but it really isnt a safe assumption to make at all.
then you may have the case where you want the driver fet to share the same temperature as the output devices, so you place it right next to the outputs on the heatsink, but not the same voltage. If the tabs are not isolated and even if you are ok with the heatsink sitting at the same potential as drain etc, you may still need to make sure there are current sharing resistors in place if there are paralleled output fets.
and mica is pretty old hat. thus mentioning Keratherm Red. There are other phase change materials too.
please try and stay away from making potentially dangerous generalisations on youtube.
nerd
@@MapleTalkative2 Your watching a LTT video, what do you expect in the comment section?
After trying several top tier thermal pastes for my Asus TUF A17 5800H 3060 laptop (Thermalright TFX, NTH2, MX5, SYY157, TG Hydronaut & Kryonaut/Extreme), PTM7950 has been the longest lasting and consistent Thermal application for my laptop. Temps now sit max CPU 85c and 74c GPU whilst gaming. Chuck it on a cooling pad and 80c CPU 70c GPU. This stuff is a miracle for laptops.
this is exactly my PC a 2021 ( bought it in 2022 i think ) model, I was thinking of repasting it since it's 2023 now, every where I look and it's PTM this ! and PTM that ! everything else sucks !!!!!!
glad you did it, after this comment, I'll try to get my hands on some.
question, what did you use on the side chips gel / pads ?
Been doing work for Honeywell for 10 years on the controls side and didn’t even know about this! Thank you Linus I’ll ask for some! And we are also a distributor for them so gunna stock up on them!
christmas gift
Hows the Retro-Encabulator program going?
@@mycosys I work there too, but the program was held back because our engineers used linear casings instead of logarithmic ones 🤦♂
I was taught at uni, and confirmed with math / lab work. That the thermal conductivity of thermal pastes barely affects actual heat transfer as the layer is so thin (like having a micro-ohm resistor in series). What really makes a difference is the ability to fill holes. However as most pastes are quite similar, now thermal conductivity is having a measurable effect.
Really?
So what your saying is, cheese whiz WOULD work?
The Problem in the long run is "Pumpout". Due to expansion and contraction of the material the paste will pull in air bubbles, especially on direct die applications. For example my PS4 pro only ran
@@tschuuuls486 why a lot of old techs still swear by AS5. Its a degree or so off the best but takes up to 200h to melt into the smallest spaces and cure, and is long term stable.
Yeah it’s sole purpose is to get as complete and full a conductive surface as possible it is actually less efficient than metal to metal however that is outweighed by those air voids and imperfections. The ideal setup other than this would be atomically perfect or close to ur metal plates directly attached
This stuff is so good I feel like I rediscovered repasting laptops, and funnily enough Intel suggested using PCM in a paper in 2006 over the downsides of paste because of paste pump out and dry out. AMD and Nvidia actually uses PCM (albeit from different companies) in their newer reference/FE cards
The TIM Intel provided with their Xenon processors back around 2010 was a paste made by Shin-Etsu, don't remember the number. But it was long term stable, resisted pump out and instead of drying was a phase change material. It also had thermal transfer about as good or better than the best of the normal pastes of the time, such as AC5. It was simply a great product.
Intel had some whitepapers about the TIM with a lot of info on what tests they had run and how it performed. I remember that what disqualified most pastes and other TIM that fullfilled the thermal transfer demands was pump out and long term stability.
It was easy to apply as you simply squeezed out the entire syringe provided with each processor in a puddle on the CPU and slapped the heat sink on top. The specification called for spring loaded heatsink retention so when the CPU heated up the first time the TIM would flow out forming a very thin layer. Once it cooled down it would turn solid. Each subsequent heat cool cycle it would flow, and when cooling down it would suck in material from the surrounding excessive TIM that had been pressed out. This way it resisted the pump out effect. It would be interesting to see how it compares to the current crop of TIM.
One thing that I found funny was how some people would remove the HS to check on the TIM and be appalled by how dry it was. That's the thing with phase change materials, they don't have to be "wet" to work. When they heat up they will flow even if they seem dry and hard at room temperature.
Which is why Arctic Silver 5 was all the rage soon after, it was specifically designed to melt into the small spaces and cure over ~ a hundred hours and be long term stable. Then the enthusiasts all decided it was fine if you had to re-apply regularly for a degree or 2 more?
AMD used phase change TIMs on their Athlon/Duron box coolers 20+ years ago, I assume they changed to a regular paste due to the increased difficulty of using a phase change TIM to the end user as DIY PCs got more common. Intel also shipped some same era CPUs with phase change tims
@@flandrble Part of what makes phase change TIM has to use is that they can make it hard to remove the heatsink when cold. You need to do a twisting motion to break it lose. If you just pull you risk pulling the component of the card or the processor out of the socket. If you are lucky that's fine, but if you left a pin or two in the socket you could have a big problem...
My PTM7950 order from ebuy7 just arrived last week, and here LTT made a video about it. In my experience using it, it was able to cool my laptop down better than a 6-month-old NT-H2.
The problem with many thermal pastes is many of them perform poorly with laptop applications (more focused heat, higher operating temp, lower mounting pressure, etc.) and causing them to have shorter than usual life or even worse performance. Finding a good review or comparison between several thermal pastes specifically for laptop applications is even rarer.
My reasoning for going with PTM7950 is not to have to re-paste every few months to get a better temp. Good to know that its performance will be even better in the long run.
swapped out the cpu recently and used this pad after watching this video. Honestly glad I did, found easier to apply and less guesswork of if I got a good amount or not and temps are great.
I like the thought of this being used for high power LED, considering some larger LED spotlights/flashlights need their own passive and sometimes active cooling solution.
maybe Frameworks should start using these for their laptops!
These could be super cool I like to imagine a little precut square in your cpu box to save you bothering with paste.
Pre applied would be even better like some AIOs have. The issue comes down to cost and time though on both. We already know the manufacturers cheap out on thermal paste most of the time when it will save pennies compared to using decent stuff, its unlikely they would spend even more for this kind of solution.
@@JohnA... that's why I thought it could come in the cpu box rather than with your cooler. Imo amd or Intel are was less likely to skimp
I'd take a pad or two over the sticker tbh, it's a cool sticker but has no reason to be there other than just having it.
@@batt3ryac1d Cooler was just an example. But I wouldn't go so far as to say either of those two won't skimp, they have been shown plenty of time to put inferior TIM on their CPUs below the heat spreader, even when they produce them in such bulk as I mentioned it would cost them pennies to put some good stuff on them.
Again I like the idea, but I don't see them spending the money even if the cost was passed down. I also think it would be easier all around if it was pre-applied to not cause as much possible confusion or miss application. However it might be better with the cooler simply because you they don't seem to want anything on the CPU before being installed, and there are already companies pre applying to coolers and supplying TIM with them unlike CPUs. (except the ones with a cheap cooler sold with).
@@lietchje Free marketing, and for some reason people like to be walking billboards for things they don't get paid to advertise. Gotta have your "tribe" in some way or another can't look like a normal sheep without the branding or sportsball team logos.
I agree the stickers for products are pointless to the consumer.
"Confirmed - Fire is hot" Linus Tech Tips will never stops to surprice and educate me! Thank you for this information!
I was going to mention that anytime I repair old electronics, when I find thermal paste in them (its usually hard as a rock and chunky) and whenever Ive found the thermal pad instead It always had some flexibility to it and was still in fair condition
One big advantage (in my eyes) that hasn't been mentioned is that you can't mess up your application pattern. It's always a bit of a gamble when you apply thermal paste and hope it spreads evenly under pressure.
This! Especially in something like a laptop. This almost appear to be like those temporary tattoo's, but without water.
PTM7950 is the name of the material. There is a paste variant which may be a bit easier to handle than pads.
The paste form needs 15 hours of curing time with ambient temperature for the solvent to evaporate before attaching the heatsink.
@@phenos Yes the paste version needs "drying" as there is solvent to make them spreadable or printable. The length of the drying time depends on the temperature. The pad form also requires you to heat the surface before application and then chill the surface for easier removal of the plastic liner... Honestly I dun think it is worth the trouble of an average user despite the benefits.
If ppl are just looking for a stable phase cured material that wont pump out - thats what Arctic Silver 5 was for, enthusiasts for some reason decided constant re-application was worth it for a degree or 2 (which sure, if ur an overclocker with the CPU out every day or 2 it is)
Pads are easier to use in non industrial use
I've known about this stuff for probably a couple weeks at this point but I've never really looked into it however considering what I've learned from you guys I'm going to have to look into it now because the possible benefits from my industry would probably warrant buying at least a few hundred
he needs to redo this video but with a RX7900xtx that is notorious for having pump out issues... i put this on my red devil xtx and the hotspot temps improved significantly. i was getting near 30C hotspot deltas, now it peaks at 19 in benchmarks, and stays within 9-13c when gaming. stuff is actual magic
Where did you buy it from?
Frankly enough this is whst the greatest technician that has ever lived uses.
That's it, I'm trying this. I don't care how expensive it is or even it will perform a bit worse than normal paste. I'm just too goddamn tired of the pump-out effect even with the very expensive Kryonaut Extreme. My laptop's temp only goes higher and higher after the first 3 weeks of re-pasting. This TPM7950 better be the best solution for long run and thermal consistency.
EDIT: Tried it. What else can I say but amazing!! I got my CPU to never reached beyond 85 degree and no throttle down, and even better result on the GPU to never ever reached 78 degree on full load and obviously never throttled down. If the claim is true that things will only get better from now on, the longer phase changing cycles happens the better the heat transfer performance, this TIM is definitely a must for laptop. Don't even think about LM solution for portable devices such as laptop. And most importantly, don't waste your money on pastes that will only degrade it's performance overtime the first 2 to 3 weeks after application. They're all good for desktop use that has bigger area coverage and high mounting pressure.
Its even better for laptops
@@JakubixIsHere apparently, from what I read so far. It's perfom okay-ish on CPU with IHS, but great on direct contact to the die.
@@svd355 yeah that's why its Perfect for laptops
Especially if you want to have a long lasting thermal paste you do NOT want to use extreme overclocking pastes like Kryonaut Extreme or KINGPIN KPx. They specifically tradeoff longevity for a tiny bit more performance. Use something more standard like the Arctic MX-5 or the Noctua NT-H2 instead.
@@svd355 where you get it my guy ?
I wonder how the pressure distribution looks like after a few heat cycles. It does turn liquid, so I'd expect it to move around a bit.
Sounds like something Gamers Nexus should test!
modDIY has pads and thermal paste made from PTM7950.
$7 for a pad or $20 for a tube as big as any of the thermal paste companies. I wouldn't be surprised if most thermal paste if all PTM or something very close.
The paste form needs 15 hours of curing time on ambient temperature for the solvent to evaporate before attaching the heatsink.
I already love this for how even you can apply it and how THIN you can apply it. Much thinner than conventional pad and probably a lot thinner than the basic issue "pre applied" thermal goo a lot of coolers come with.
I've been using coolaboratory liquid metal pad for a couple years, which also is solid at room temperature, and liquid at cpu temperature
Something you didn't really note in your video is Pre-cured vs Uncured PTM. There are pre-cured sheets of PTM that have already received the thermal cycling and as such provide higher performance.
There's no such thing as pre-cured sheets. The curing process only happens when it's under pressure between two substrates. The curing that you refer to is the TIM thining out and filling in microscopic grooves over time. The pumping during hot and cold cycles is what makes this work, but thankfully the TIM is viscous enough that it only pumps out what isn't necessary, and thus increasing efficiency.
The paste form (7950SP) needs 15 hours of curing time on ambient temperature for the solvent to evaporate before attaching the heatsink.
@@phenos I was under the understanding it took longer than that via heat cycling it? Perhaps it takes longer depending on the thickness? I know you don't want to apply it pre-cured because it will shrink quite a bit.
@@zqzj PTM does have a curing time to remove any solvents and you can buy pre-cured sheets of it that are at its final thickness. If you apply PTM before the solvent is completely out you can end up with a thinner piece that won't entirely fill the area and will contract inward resulting in a smaller surface area of coverage. It was my understanding that the sheets were essentially baked on and off as a "pre-cured" process to remove the solvents.
@@FeudOfJustice I've never heard of pre-cured PTM being sold. Please link me as I'm eager to find out.
Well there is another explanation for the use of this kind of materials :
When changing from solid to liquid, the pad itself (just like any other material) needs to absorb heat in order to break the bonds that link every molecule to its close neighbour, thus preventing heat from increasing more.
This is observed when we check the phase transition for water : as long as there is solid left, the system won't get hotter than 0°C.
I'd be down to get this on my gaming laptop! Exciting to see if the industry will adapt. I love the fact that it works long term...
Given all of the other odd characteristics that water has, I think the fact that it can change states so easily is in fact, very special
PTM 7950 is fucking amazing and it's criminal that it isn't that well known.
Let's change that :)
Hey! Thanks for the deal on the sweatpants and hoodie. I've been eyeing the hoodie since y'all announced it, but the combo deal really convinced me to actually pay for it. Good timing too, because I'm in need of more long pants for the winter time. I'm a little worried that the longest pants are for 6'1 - 6'4" individuals, since I'm 6'6", but I can make it work.
Apparently , PTM7950 is a super highly thermally conductive Phase Change Material (PCM) that come in both pad and paste forms.
Yeah it is. Paste is cheaper but require time to be fully treated unlike the pad
@@Zack-Strife Fully treated ? Kindly expand on that.
I work at a laptop repair shop and we have switched to this stuff because of the normal paste pump-out risk. (160X400mm factory size sheets and the paste form which needs some curing time before attaching the heatsink, 5minutes with hot air at 100'c) for high end laptops, vga and consoles.
Kryonaut/MX4/NT-H2 stuff doesn't last with the modern age above 80'c temperatures.
@@Human-bf7kz sorry for the late reply. The paste version requires you to let it dry to solid
@@Zack-Strife No need to apologise. There is no obligation to reply but you did out of the kindness of your heart. So Thank you.
Now that I've gotten into a "set it and forget it" mentality, I wouldn't mind going through the hoops to get some of this stuff lol. Maybe put it on the CPUs of all my friend's machines that I play tech support to and not have to worry about that ever again, especially since this stuff supposedly gets a little better over time lol.
This was my thought. I tend to keep machines way longer than I should - My last CPU was a Phenom II x4 965BE - so, the idea of not reapplying past and just throwing on a pad that lasts a good 5 years is a nice thought.
No short circuit? No need for changing/maintenance? Better performance over time? The extra cost makes up for it easily...
Correction. I believed people who told me that GLID won't pump out. They were wrong! My laptop is clearly a worst case, and needs to be repasted OFTEN no matter which paste I use and no matter what the claims about it are. I'm about to try PTM790 because I can't take repasting every few months or weeks.
The wrong thing this USED to say:
Reminds me of working with GELID GC-Extreme thermal paste. That is also too thick at room temperature and you have to stick the tube in hot water so you can spread it. It also is good (though perhaps slightly worse), and should be able to handle a laptop's no-heat-spreader die without pump out for the life of your laptop. It has the advantages of being easy to get and a lot cheaper.
Thanks for the hot water tip. I worked with GELID GC-Extreme on two laptop CPUs and found it difficult to spread over the silicon die. I was applying it at room temperature and I would attempt to spread it further and it would LIFT off the previously covered surface area on the die!
do you have any update on applying the ptm7950?
@@davidhiggins2804 I'm pretty sure the PTM7950 I got off of Amazon was something almost as good like ptm7900, because it came slightly thinner than Ptm7950. It worked well for almost as long as it's been since that comment, but after another crash or two I replaced it whatever that eternal carbon stuff that Debaur is selling is. Carbon with fibers lined up to spread heat up and down. That is longer lasting than ptm
Not just the legion 7. I got a legion 5 almost exactly a year ago and it's thermal pads are ptm! I didn't know this at first and after subjecting it to mining and changed them out for fresh pads I was actually getting worse performance!
Wait? The power draw shows that it does better than the liquid metal. So if we have access from reputable source, isn't it the best thing? Easier to apply, better performance after 5 min
The key word is "industrial". Manufacturers need "apply once use until service time" that won't get smeared or cracked over the years. Like Linus said if you need the BEST performance and you're willing to deal liquid metal's headaches it is the best solution because the laws of thermodynamics are constant.
Surprised with the outcome, considering the IR image at the 4:00 mark.
And as for your initial conclusions, you are correct that lifespan is one of the things they have in common, and the other is that they are mass produced by automation. A solid "pad" is easier to include in the assembly process than a liquid or a paste.
In case anyone catches this video in 2024, Thermalright actually makes PTM7950 pads, re-branded as Thermalright Helios, and its just under $5 for a sheet. If you don't know what kind of material it is, it's kind of like the M.2 thermal puddy in your motherboard's M.2 slot or what comes with M.2 enclosures.
LTT carries it in their store now.
both of you are very helpful
I remember these things from working at Honeywell aerospace, and lockheed martin. They worked great for large cold plates when you needed to engineer with tight tolerances but still transfer heat. This stuff is only the surface of what I’ve had to play with. You should look into more honeywell products if you can. Good stuff.
for better or worse Honeywell control most of the deadliest gear on earth
@@mycosys I always thought it was pretty funny how they could go from nuclear war head to coffee pot. The gap is pretty comical.
@@MrGamelover23 Thermal transfer materials in general. We got loads of ways to transfer heat and isolate Radio Frequencies to make chip sets more efficient. I wish Linus was able to test these out how we actually use them. The materials that they are applied to are normally machined at one thousandth of an inch. Something only a hand full of companies in the US are able to achieve. One of the biggest areas this product shines in over normal thermal paste is this product is made to take vibrations. Thermal pastes will vibrate themself s out from under the two planes it is applied to over time even in vehicles or moving objects with good suspensions. The micro vibrations will eventually make the compound work its way out and make voids trapping air and conducting heat instead of transferring it. Where thermal interface pads really shine is there ability to be durable in these problem areas.
@@MrGamelover23 Not necessarily. What I'm referring to is highly mobile server racks and computer systems that sit in container ships, warships, and aircraft that experience anything from micro vibrations, to full on shakes it's more commercial than high end consumer but it does have it's uses. An example is you wanted to build a desktop to go in a rv. This is more ideal because it doesn't fall apart.
If it's a commercial product from Honeywell, there's a good chance your standard service tech who works in the HVAC/Electrical trade could just walk into a parts store with their license (maybe even without!) and buy them 1 or 2 at a time. Will have to check that out later!
8 months later... fyi, nobody in the HVAC/Electrical trade has a use for these.
Looks interesting for use in game consoles. You apply once and forget.
My limited experiment is that it's much easier to use, and less likely you ends up with air bubbles. It takes a significant time until the pressure pushes all the not necessary material out. I found it pre installed on some heatsinks.
For direct-die cooling, this stuff is a lifesafer. I just applied some to my 7900 XTX that was suffering from extreme pump-out, and the hot spot dropped by almost 20 degrees right out of the gate. Applied to a Steam Deck, the temps maxed out at 10 degrees less than stock full-tilt.
DUDES!
Ryzen 9 7950x
Radeon 7950xt (it will come)
Thermal Pad PTM 7950!!
We did it! 7950 system!
Looks like this stuff comes closest to the wax pastes I've been looking for for ages. There used to be a type of commercial grade paste that came as a semi-solid chunk in a dispenser tube, like lipstick, and it would self-spread when heated. It used to give really good results, but I haven't seen any on even industry supplier sites since around 2003(?).
EDIT: Apparently, it was called "Power Devices Thermstrate".
your answer is that it was a bar form of thermstrate 1000, power devices was owned by loctite back then (don't know history now but i think henkel bought them???)
either way its not manufactured by them (in that form) anymore... the stick form is still made by another company that rebrands it and that company is called AAVID, they just call it the ultrastick
at one of my former employers we used the loctite 2000 TCM material in the DIP's and VIP's
Arctic Silver 5
I'm surprised you're not more excited about testing this on a high end GPU, I know the pads used there can be quite good but if this is on par with high end CPU cooling then I'm sure there would be performance/stability gains to be had for GPU pad replacement.
One thing this video failed to mention is that thermodynamically any sort of phase change requires a large amount of energy to complete. Thus adding some thermla mass to the pad that would be unachievable via a typical solution.
Because stuff like that only matters for 20 to 40 minute loads which for gaming isn't really a thing, You would realistically only care about the long-term performance
Just did my laptop with the stuff and had a 5+ degree C difference, both at idle and under full CPU load. Impressive!
Actually, over time, it has improved. I'm now seeing a consistent 10 degree C reduction in temps. Fans spin up later and slower and quieter. Amazing stuff.
If you're curious about the whole "phase changes absorb/emit heat" thing, Technology Connections has some great videos about that (in the context of air conditioning, heat pumps, and refrigerators, which use the same technology).
Probably not very relevant here, the phase change is more interesting due to the possibility of achieving a more consistent application in an industrial assembly situation (due to being solid-ish), while achieving a good thin layer later (due to turning into a liquid on heating). The mass of material is too low for the heat of changing phase to affect much. Water is pretty much king in terms of heat of changing phase, and you can guess how little time it would take for a cpu tu melt such a thin layer of ice. Vaporisation would take more time, but still probably less than a minute on a 100W CPU.
lol that's not what this is, the only benefit of phase change here is better coverage of the TIM across the heatsink/IHS because it's a liquid, and under pressure, can fill gaps better than any paste can due to its physical structure.
The phase changes used to facilitate heat transfer require refrigerants and some electrical expenditure all within a pressure-sealed system that effectively is designed to take the heat from one source and push it somewhere else, and dumps it via evaporation, none of which is what happens here.
@@Validole Yeah, this comment was basically a gamble hoping that it'd be the premise of the technology/video, and I'd get an early helpful comment. The gamble did not succeed :p
So....this is that key in the first Metal Gear Solid that changed phases whether you got it hot or cold?
I had many issues with multiple known thermal paste brands suffering from pump out and just degrading after one or two months to a point that my Thinkpad would thermal throttle. This is an old Thinkpad so Lenovo wasn't using this TIM. My best result so far is with this PTM stuff. It doesn't degrade at all! Is it the best? On short term, almost. On long therm? By far! I just wish there was a way to buy this stuff in Europe with decent pricing
Where did you get yours? Was looking for some a few weeks back.
@@Deinorius ebuy7. Took 3 weeks to get to Portugal
Good ol Arctic SIlver 5 phase cures to avoid pumpout and is permanently stable. We decided constant changing was worth a degree or 2.
Would you really call Liquid Metal viscous? I find viscous things hard to get into small cracks while "watery" solutions are very easy to get into those cracks. Liquid metal always looked extremely watery to me, viscosity seemed quite low? Timestamp: 2:47
So we used to use this in an x86 two phase immersion application. It was our best performer by far. For a couple reasons.
We could not use Liquid Metal for many reasons. And the two phase fluid would dissolve almost every commercially available thermal paste’s base material.
But it also resulted in the most PERFECT spread of the Tim. And this is even more crucial in a two phase immersion system where any voids would get filled with the immersion fluid. This essentially also provided the hermetic seal between the IHS and the boiling enhancement plates.
It was the only way we could keep the 500w chips cool without going through like a gpu delid😅