Check our video on how long liquid metal lasts: th-cam.com/video/fnbovjT4JLQ/w-d-xo.html Grab something on the GN store! store.gamersnexus.net/ Article: www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3362-how-liquid-metal-affects-copper-nickel-and-aluminum-corrosion-test
Steve, would you please do some tests with lapping cold plates? It would be interesting to see how much a mirror-finish affects temperatures. You'd probably want a control test, a lapped cold plate only test, and finally a lapped cold plate and lapped CPU IHS test.
Hey Steve iv seen some concerns and photos of the effects of liquid metal to the die itself. Can u please look into this if there's any truth or anything to worry about?
great dive into the potentially controversial topic. I do suspect that the depth of tainting is only atoms thick beyond the imperfections of the copper surface. And even then, unless a heat pipe is already on the edge of failure due to excessively thin outer walls, the atoms thick tainted copper outer layer will not cause any problems at all. Also, given the nature of LM attoms filling gaps between copper atoms on the surface, it may actually make the surface a tad better for contact area to whatever TIM is later used (albata possibly immeasurably outside of an ultra-precision lab test), due to LM atoms being better at conducting heat than a void between copper atoms, lol. Great vid GN crew.
Thanks so much for this video! I've been pondering these questions for a while. Good to know all the laptops i repaired and did cpu upgrades for will be fine. I started to question the longevity of the performance seeing first hand how the copper and LM react with each other.
In my understanding the corrosion/alloy effects of liquid gallium with solid solid aluminum, copper and nickel (actually nickel plated on copper) have been fully described in the video as 1) Aluminum: destructive corrosion (solid aluminum alloys with liquid gallium and the resulting brittle alloy gets attacked by moisture in the air with final effect the aluminum gets "eaten away", similar like solid iron corrosive rust oxidation with gaseous oxygen, but at a much faster rate) 2) Copper: also strong reaction, but non-destructive and also thermal degradation is negligible (copper alloys with gallium to CuGa2 and this alloy stays as a mechanically stable layer on the copper, thermal conductivity is reduced to 95 W/m-K compared to 400W/m-K for copper, but due to the thinness of the CuGa2 layer no measurable/see-able effect on the chip temperature) 3) Nickel (actually a thin plated layer of nickel on solid copper): A very slow reaction between nickel and gallium causes some not harmful staining of the nickel and the plated nickel layer seems to suppress that the copper alloys with the gallium In my understanding this video has not at all addressed what above 3 corrosion/alloy reactions mean for the thin TIM layer of liquid metal. Liquid metal stands in my understanding for all metal compositions that are liquid at room temperature. No fixed/concrete composition exists/is defined. Liquid metals based on mercury need special care because of mercury's high toxicity. Generally considered as nontoxic are liquid metals based on gallium. The name Galinstan stands for a 3 metal composition mainly of rather expensive gallium (Ga 69~95%), but also indium (In ?%) and tin (Sn 0~11%) with the specific composition Ga 68/69%, In 21/22% and Sn 9.5/10.5% showing under vacuum the quite deep melting point of -19°C. However there are also 4 metal or even 5 metal liquid metals mentioned in this German patent (application: thermometers for several purposes/temperature ranges in the total temperature range of -20 to +1.200°C, patents.google.com/patent/DE10321843A1/de). As additional metals zink ( Zn 0~29%) and plumb (Pb 0~10%) are addressed for specific purposes and in another patent bismuth (Bi) and antimony (Sb). The patent also mentions that a 4th or 5th metal may allow to reduce the percentage of expensive gallium to 50% with only minor degradation and that the way of processing/mixing results in differences, for example by addressing the strong oxidization of gallium with oxygen. In my reading liquid metal is not liquid metal, but there exists a multitude of possible metal compositions around gallium as the main material which I see also in application as TIM, where CoolLaboratory offers today 3 compositions, Pro obviously for lowest thermal resistance, Ultra probably for lower cost and on the newest composition Extreme CoolLaboratory claims they have addressed also the longevity. The harmful consequence of gallium's strong reactivity seems to be that several people have proven by video that the applied liquid metal got hard/"dried out" while others even commented when they opened the gap/TIM and checked visually the liquid metal was gone completely. In my understanding such hardening of the liquid metal happens only when applied on copper (does not occur when applied to nickel plated copper, this means especially the IHS) and I understand the underlying process for the hardening is gallium leaves the liquid metal and migrates into the copper to form there the solid CuGa2. For the quite thin TIM layer this means the percentage contents of gallium is permanently/quite fast reducing and when the gallium percentage falls below a certain percentage (different for each composition of liquid metal) it becomes hard and the hard remains of the liquid metal are quite difficult to remove from copper (the people even claiming liquid metal disappeared completely may have difficulties to see the remains of liquid metal by their eyes, especially when the gap was extremely thin and the color of the remains may be similar to CuGa2). In total I see following 2 problems when applying liquid metal as a TIM: 1) Only on aluminum: destruction corrosion and 2) Only on copper: hardening of the remains of very thin liquid metal once a certain amount of gallium has moved into the copper it is in contact with to form there the solid CuGa2 alloy. This hardening when applied on copper requires to re-apply the liquid metal generally every 6 months (in extreme cases even faster) to avoid the not easy removal of hardened liquid metal from copper.
So using it on the die of a microprocessor under the nickel plated IHS is mostly safe and doesn't degrade the materials. Have I understood it correctly?
@@eniff2925 Yes. I did this with a de-lidded 7700K with Thermal Grizzly which i bought new 4 years ago. If you do as I did and as the rocketcool or similar recommend to reseal the heatspreader after application then its a once off process. Im one of those OCD people so I would reapply thermal grease once a year after the delid and at the same time inspect the 7700k for any damage. None and literally no drop in performance. Infact before I upgraded earlier this week 18/6/2020 I did an experiment with liquid mental on the heat spreader to AIO (for about a month) and yes, the results were as expected even better. Do I recommend having liquid metal between a cooler and processor? Probably not. But if you are just doing a delid then yeah man just do it.
Steve is hands-down the most thoroughly informative reviewer online. This video is excellent! Why don't any other channels offer as much info; why don't they even offer half the info on topics like this?
After using liquid metal on a bare copper heatsink for a year, I noticed that the liquid metal had fused to the copper and became a solid similar to the chalky residue from the aluminum heatsink test. I also noticed that the thermal performance became worse over time because the liquid metal was no longer liquid and even with the heatsink removed and heating the surface up, the stuff didn’t turn back into a liquid. So I’m guessing some of the copper and galinstin actually changed chemically so now the only way to get the flat surface back is to scrape off the alloy of galinstin plus copper and not scratch the actual copper
That usually happens if the copper had imperfections. Sometimes this is intentional to cut costs. I've been running the same liquid metal for 6 years on a pure copper plate with 0 problems. Still liquid.
Did you ever reapplied !! After 2-3 month you actually have to reapply liquid metal !!! This step is very very important and everybody missing it and then claiming that it does not work!!!
@@IvanRossSFinally someone said it. First year, reapply it at least twice, after that the galium migration will slow down significantly as the galium that already migrated will act as a barrier and you will not have to reapply thst often anymore.
@@khawajashaharyar9294 What's left of the liquid metal that's bridging the cpu/gpu die and the heatsink should be gallium deficient so it's not of optimal composition. Therefore, I would suggest cleaning it off with alcohol first and then reapplying. Is it absolutely critical to first clean of the remains? I have no idea. I would imagine gallium is used in the composition due to its low melting point so galium deficiency could case lm to not be so liquid anymore and that's obviously bad. In summary, cleaning it off first and then reapplying seems like a safer option
Jokes aside, i used toothpaste in my first pc, LGA 775, 1.8ghz celeron, heatsink plastic socket died and i had to secure it with a ziptie to the MOBO and replaced original thermal paste with toothpaste as a temporal fix for at least a week or two, got some solid 70º under load, much better than expected tbh
For those that dpn't wanna watch vid. Coolers are made in general of three metals Aluminum,Copper,Nickel You dont wanna apply it on aluminum You can apply on copper but it also degrade permamently over time You want aply on nickel plated copper In all three cases it interacts with these metals but only with nickel plated copper you can clear off stain
Hi, how identify with my cold plate is nickel or aluminium? i have a laptop msi gf63 thin , but the cold plate of the gpu is not copper looks like aluminium or nickel, i want to put liquid metal but im not sure she is nickel.thanks
@@Anonymous09096 you could check with the manufacturer. Its a very small chance that they use aluminum, probably nickle plated copper. But you can never be certain so i wouldnt risk it untill you know for sure
I have a der8auer i7 8700k Ultra with a silver IHS. The last weeks the temps kept rising until I couldn’t overlock anymore and figured my watercooling was busted. That proved not to be the case. I delidded the CPU and what I saw was nothing short of catastrophic. The LM was completely hardened and had visibly corroded the silver to the point of effectively having destroyed the IHS. The CPU is 2 years old. Replaced the IHS with a pure copper one and will delidd at least every 6 months now.
I used 8700K with delid and liquid metal for a year. I lapped both sides of the HS to copper. On the bottom between the core and the HS year later the metal was still liquid. But between the top and Noctua cooler (which I also lapped just to be sure), it dried and basically fused the two surfaces together. I had to use a lot of force to pull them apart, and after that I had to lap both surfaces again to get rid of it. But that being said, before I pulled them apart, the temps were still fine, so even when it reacted and dried off the thermal conductivity was still fine.
When I finally decided to use LM on my 2080 TI on a bare copper EKWB, I remembered this video and needed to re-check the results of Conductonaut on bare copper. Steve, never doubt any of the research and testing that you do. As niche or cliche as it may seem sometimes, it's great information that you're putting out there.
Thanks for the comment on my Liquid Metal video, when i replace my liquid metal ill make sure to inspect for these same issues, as of now my system is still stable at 5GHz but who knows maybe today will be the day the Magic blue smoke is liberated only time will tell. keep up the great work i love your videos
Gallium and Aluminum is an amazing reaction. There’s tons of TH-cam videos showing what it does, but look for gallium vs lock. It makes the aluminum so weak and brittle it just falls apart in the guys hands.
Bare Copper can suck a bit of it up, so the best thing you can do is add a bit more than you would with nickel plated copper. The mistake a lot of these laptop LM users make is in fear of LM doing a different short prone kind of migration; they use the complete and utter bare minimum amount of LM they can manage to get away with, and the LM dries up in a matter of months. Use a little bit more and just insulate the surrounding circuitry and you will be fine.
@@lvl-up3951 conformal coating would be a much better idea, it's meant for damp proofing electronics. Grizzly sell 'SHIELD PROTECTIVE VARNISH' for this exact purpose which also looks a lot like relabelled nail varnish, lol
Hi, how identify with my cold plate is nickel or aluminium? i have a laptop msi gf63 thin , but the cold plate of the gpu is not copper looks like aluminium or nickel, i want to put liquid metal there but im not sure she is nickel.thanks
I used a product called Indigo Extreme on an old Core 2 Quad (stock nickel-plated IHS) mated with a copper waterblock years ago: that produced a metal film like a foil. It was difficult to separate the CPU from the block when un-mounting, but the material had flowed so well that the mirror-image of the markings on the IHS was printed onto the slice of foil that came out when it was disassembled. Weird installation procedure, but it seemed to work pretty well. Removal was mostly just peeling off the "foil"-- IIRC almost all of it came off in one piece, with a couple of extra bits that needed to be scraped free. Seemed like an easier thing to apply and remove than these liquid metal TIMs. Personally I went back to using non-conductive paste-- it's just easy / relatively risk-free and I'm not trying to set any overclocking records :D
Great video, very useful too (even though i'll probably never use LM on my CPU's) Please make focusing faster (10:35 - 10:45 for example, 10 seconds to bring cpu into focus even though camera is looking directly at IHS). It hurts my eyes.
Here's a video of a liquid metal with copper reaction over a year: th-cam.com/video/FW8fgTjHdCo/w-d-xo.html Short version: gallium forms an alloy with copper over time (months, a year) leaving indium and other materials as a hard metal residue, which is difficult to remove and often not flat. Because of its surface shape, the residue has bad contact with the silicon surface and does a poor job of conducting heat. So the liquid metal appears to "dry out" and fail over time. I wouldn't say that copper and liquid metal is a safe long term combination.
If the gallium indium mixture is reacting with the copper in a way that ends up plating the copper as you said, wouldn't it then become an almost perfect non reactive surface for liquid metal due to the plating acting like a barrier between the gallium and copper, just like the nickle plated copper?
When the copper surface on the cold plate is saturated with gallium then no more reaction will occur and you will get a cold plate finish with the same color as gallium. For first time application I have found that you need to apply a little more liquid metal than you would normally use to compensate for the copper/gallium fusing or else loosing a measurable amount of heat transfer from the IHS to the cold plate.
This is all the same for a copper base on the cooler itself? I purchased a cheap Cooler Master water cooler that is very respectable for the price but it has a copper base on the pump itself. I was planning on doing this just for the hell of it with the toasty 4790k.
Gallium penetrates atomic structure of the copper but thats not galvanic corrosion and has nothing to do with electrochemical potential of involved metals.
Gold has a negative electrical potential, like copper but much deeper in the negative, so it would probably react like copper but the negatives would arise three times faster, or take three times longer to manifest If you are worried about pitting and staining then you may want to stay away, but unlike aluminum gold should survive (based solely on electrical potential, I don't know enough about liquid metal to say in other regards) but if you want a definitive answer you could test it yourself if you get a new water block some day, interesting thought non the less
@@LaserHuset actually found said waterblock from about 2004 I have not seen gold plated blocks since this one. It is amazing how they have changed over the years. If I had any liquid metal laying around I'd be tempted to test it myself.
Absolutely do not do this.. That stuff is way too expensive - If you want to mess up aluminum locks just get some regular old Gallium. It is much cheaper. You can get 20g of Gallium for under $10.. Where as Conductonuat and the like is over $10 per gram..
I'm really glad for this video. I had been kinda worried about the Phanteks liquid cooler I had picked out with nickel and thought I would need to go copper but now I know that it's actually better. I liquid metaled my G752 laptop and it's so good my power brick can't keep up!
Hi, how identify with my cold plate is nickel or aluminium? i have a laptop msi gf63 thin , but the cold plate of the gpu is not copper looks like aluminium or nickel, i want to put liquid metal there but im not sure she is nickel.thanks
Focus pull shot around 8:30 is waaaay too slow. Really annoys me and I see it every so often on tech channels. I'm just staring a blurry image for what seems like forever.
"As he writes, it..." ?! It is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium called aluminium. Americans popularized false pronunciation. Rest of the world addresses it as it is.
Just a random thought. Could copper foil be used instead of paste or liquid metal. Is the clamping force of the heatsink enough to cause the copper to conform to surface imperfections. I believe copper is used as a gasket but under much higher pressures.
What about copper plated aluminium? Will the copper surface protect the aluminium from reacting or will it migrate through the copper as the surface is very very thin?
How do you seal liquid metal to protect from getting air (oxygen) to it? I mean can we use conformal couting? This is to make sure no air/oxygen get into it and make it hardened.
If you want to remove all stains of the LM from copper or nickel, just put the IHS (only the IHS) in a heated 1+4 solution by weight of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) + water. When mixing NaOH with water it is an exothermic reaction so add the NaOH gradually into the water, it will heat up quite a bit, so heating it extra to achieve about 60 - 70 °C might not be necessary. It also becomes very Basic when heated, up to about pH 18, so keep the fingers out. Should also be done in a ventilated area, as the fumes coming off when it dissolves gallium, indium and the tin, are basicly Oxygen and Hydrogen...
Steve, I haven't seen anyone do a review of the CooLLaboratory Liquid Copper - this seems like it could be a much better alternative to the current liquid metals that can be corrosive. Copper is likely more conductive but should not cause concern if proper application guidelines are followed just like other liquid metals. i wonder if this might be a good option for those who have had disastrous results with shunt mods using regular liquid metal?
@@TheRealFobican That would work. You can electroplate aluminum with a layer of nickel, then add on whatever extra plating you want (silver, gold, etc)
Probably not at all is my guess, silver isn't very reactive. Der8auer is the man behind them, and I doubt he would make a custom IHS made for delidding if it didn't work with liquid metal, that just doesn't make sense.
@@Ownage4lif31 im thinking its a marketing hype. it will have hardware revision sooner than most people think and replace with regular heatsink and thermal paste
Liquid metal on consoles (ps4 pro/xbox One X)? Or changing the paste for a better one? Does it help? Could you do a test for that? Would it help for temps and noise?
FortuneFed To be honest, structure and design usually counts more than the material (e.g. in radiators, aluminium vs copper fins have negligible impact compared to different fin density and channel formations). But of course material compatibility must be checked.
i put some nh-1 on my ps4 pro with some new arctic thermal pads, it's quiet now, i imagine liquid metal would work even better and yes you can use it on the ps4 pro as it uses a chopper plated heatsink
Pro-Tip in 2021: I thought 9900X was totally corroded past recognition after two years. Isopropanol and Acetone did nothing. Then I tried rubbing baking soda in with alcohol prep pads. After 10 minutes I could read the SN again. Cheers.
Two things, there is so much concern about performance, corrosion, and reactivity, but 1) why aren't people concerned about getting this stuff on their skin and 2) why is everyone using cotton swabs to apply this and paper towels to clean when these things will shed tons of fibers all over the place. What's the point of lapping and trying to get a perfectly mating surface when dust in the air, fibers from application tools, and tons of other crap is getting between the surfaces?
I applied conductonaut to my EVGA GTX 970 FTW+, but discovered a few months later that it dried up (alloyed?) And was causing overheating issues. It was so difficult to remove from the coldplate of the cooler that I had to lap it off. No idea what happened other than coming to the conclusion that it must have been a low quality copper alloy of some type, or I needed to keep cleaning and reapplying it until the surface "stabilized" or something. Hard to say. Did a vid on it too, but it was pretty interesting what happened.
I did notice LM making alloy with copper, also corroding the silicon chip in the process, however the temps didn't change at all after a year in the laptop... Seems to make great contact still, till u remove it and look at the damage... However in legion 5 it's super worth it, went from 100°C at 60W to consistent 80°C at 80W on the CPU. Paste works good in there for 2 days, but then reaches unacceptable temps really quickly...
this was a beautiful explination. i tried to point you towards this info in one of your ask GN's but i was honestly not great at any explanations. i loved seeing this, since i use liq metal everywhere in my pc since im a mad man. thank you tech jesus
Two days ago I popped open my Asus GL502VSK they I applied Conductonaut to, I noticed staining and freaked out a little Thanks for the video, it was very relevant to me lol
Commenting on a older video, but this is a great reference and wanted to mention something with regards to bare copper. When the liquid metal alloys with the copper, the oxidized result is sort of dry and chalky. This is normal, but it could hurt performance. What you want to do is ALLOW this to happen initially. Give it a few weeks or so to "soak" and bind. Once you've given it some time, you want to open it up again. Remove the existing liquid metal and clean it as well as you can like you would normal thermal paste. Do NOT use sanding or polishing to remove the alloy stains. If lapping the IHS, you should lap it first. The idea is that we WANT that staining to stick around. It is only surface-level, is stable, and has done all the reacting/alloying it is going to do. That is, it isn't going to continue reacting the way it would with aluminum. So in essence, it has become a protective barrier, stopping further corrosion. After thoroughly cleaning the surface, simply reapply the liquid metal. At that point, the liquid metal should more or less retain its original properties from then on. If you had polished or sanded the staining off of the surface, then when you went to reapply the liquid metal, it'll just re-alloy and create the same chalky residue. You may still want to check the temps after re-application in case you need to repeat the process. But basically once the alloying process is "complete", the liquid metal is mostly just an alloy of elemental metals, rather than a complex emulsion or ceramic you would see with other TIMs. This means you shouldn't have to worry about decomposition or "aging". A couple other tips: - On the cooler, apply an amount notably larger than the die for the initial application. There will probably further reactions along the edges, so you want those edges to be outside of your contact zone. - To speed up the alloying process, you could do some thermal cycling. Running hot will speed up the reaction. Thermal cycling may help it expand/contract and thus fill tinier nooks and crannies. I usually do a batch video conversion, or do an overclocking stability test, perhaps running the fans lower. We basically want to hang out around 80-90C. Modern CPUs are OK with this, and LM works better at higher temperatures.
I have a Sapphire Nitro R9 390 and I am thinking about changing the thermal paste with Conductonaut because the temperature is higher than my liking. The first year and a half it maxed out at 72C but lately I am racing for the over 80's. Can you give me some tips about doing it?
It will be great to find out how pure is the copper plate. copper will stain and more when is expose on fast changes of temperatures. I will check my delid soon and see how that changes here.
Just look at TheBackyardScientist at TH-cam and his video on Gallium then you see the effect of it on Aluminium. If you take a few drops on a car rim that have exposed metal, within a few hours the wheel WILL break and fall apart just from standing still!!!! And since it destroys the protective layer on Aluminium it also makes it react fast with water making hydrogen gas that could ignite and cause an explosion or fire
Something to be careful off is the copper content as some so called copper heat sinks may be something I came across when working in a fitting workshop called cheap mans copper where aluminum is mixed with the copper. Was very common when copper prices went up
Great info. I'm eagerly awaiting Asus' Ryujin cooler so now I'm hoping they don't use aluminum. I'm happy to use Kryonaut, but I'll probably get a better result with Conductonaut.
With Noctua heat sinks I have never had to reapply liquid metal (I use Coollaboratory Liquid Metal Pro). I am on my third system with Intel CPU and Noctua heat sink, I have never reapplied, my current system is a delidded Intel I7-7700K, no temperature problems, I could not swear, since my use changes, various overhead from OS and so on, but I have not seen temperatures change to any degree that I have ever noticed. For me the main attraction with liquid metal is pure laziness, I never ever want to touch that CPU again, and my fiendish, nay even devilish plans are proceeding as ...planned, so far. Honestly I thought this was the main attraction for liquid metal, the, what 1-3 degrees? difference, from properly applied liquid metal, does not make up for the hassle of properly applying the liquid metal, instead of fingerpainting on some paste?!? (Woo, the quitest fan in my case might ramp 20-40 RPMs up from what it is, Woo, bugga buggah, soo scary?)
Super informative! I have a Clevo P750TM1-G laptop with an all copper heatsink, a 8700k that's delidded and using a rockit cool IHS and a 1070 that has direct contact with the copper heatsink. I was concerned about the potential degredation over time but if its just staining, I'm not concerned. Over the six and a bit month period, I haven't observed any drop in thermal performance but I did notice that the liquid metal looked kinda grainy, which made me feel like something bad was happening but after seeing this, it isn't too much of a concern. Maybe its just drying out faster in my laptop since the heatsink's cooling performance is basically maxed out at this point.
you'll use up liquid metal a lot faster in a laptop than on desktop, in my g750jz the liquid metal started going "bad" after similar time than a thermal paste so in the long run it was not worth it
As true as that may be, considering the hardware and the amount of heat it chucks out, especially during intense gaming sessions, I'd rather spend the extra time and money of replacing liquid metal more often than being thermal throttled or risking ruining the hardware sooner than I'd like. My laptop basically uses desktop parts in a much smaller form factor so cooling is especially important in my case. I'm actually working on a better cooling pad by using a pair of industrial Noctua NF-A14s for intake and another pair, one for each exhaust plus some ducting. I don't think the exhaust fans would do too much but after watching Linus' video of adding blowmatrons to a gaming laptop's exhaust fans, it did show an improvement in temperature. Blowies are WAY too loud for me but Noctua industirals aren't and they still give a lot of airflow at high pressures and in a laptop, the higher pressure would be very much appreciated. When I'm on the go, I pin the gpu to 1500mhz on the core, leave the memory at stock speeds, and downclock the i7 to 3.7Ghz on all cores with a 130mA undervolt (which I use when runnig at 4.4Ghz on all cores as well) then further pull it back to 55% with windows power management and I get a whole wopping 2 hours of gameplay on it, which again considering the hardware and the amount of power it uses and the small battery, that's pretty impressive. Thermals are also much improved to the point I can let the computer manage the fans rather than me setting them to 100%.
I just bought myself a 4790k. upgrading from a 4670k. According to the eBay guy, this particular chip has temperatures in the 90's on his coolermaster CPU cooler. I was looking into delidding in case I got bad temperatures. Thanks Gamers Nexus for making it look easy, and for doing experiments like this. I'm about to swap the CPU's. Wish me luck! Also I die a little inside when you say Aluminum and not Aluminium. IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
A minimum eutectic should have a fixed composition, so the mixture shouldn't be too much of a mystery. Sounds like they move a little away from the eutectic point to improve cost or performance.
Moving away from the exact eutectic point to gain some thermal conductance isn't really a problem if the melting point is still under (or around) room temperature.
I've just moved my laptop back to normal TIM and actually got better thermal performance for the moment. A fresh liquid metal application would still be significantly superior, but an interesting comparison to your degradation test results.
will i be able to use liquid metal on my Cooler Master Hyper 212X? it has aluminum on the base, but the actually pipes that make contact with the IHS are pure copper.
If you inject an aluminium padlock with gallium, the padlock becomes so brittle that you can crush the padlock into a powder with your hand. If liquid metal contains gallium...yeah
Would THIS be a suitable thermal paste for CPU/GPU/APU? www.247solder.com/247-LOWTEMP-15_SDS.pdf It's used as a solder here----> th-cam.com/video/_luUCXGFTQ8/w-d-xo.html Please read the specs before commenting. Thank you.
Check our video on how long liquid metal lasts: th-cam.com/video/fnbovjT4JLQ/w-d-xo.html
Grab something on the GN store! store.gamersnexus.net/
Article: www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3362-how-liquid-metal-affects-copper-nickel-and-aluminum-corrosion-test
Liquid metal can also damage solder joints, so it's not a good idea to use it for shunt mods.
Steve, would you please do some tests with lapping cold plates? It would be interesting to see how much a mirror-finish affects temperatures. You'd probably want a control test, a lapped cold plate only test, and finally a lapped cold plate and lapped CPU IHS test.
Hey Steve iv seen some concerns and photos of the effects of liquid metal to the die itself. Can u please look into this if there's any truth or anything to worry about?
great dive into the potentially controversial topic. I do suspect that the depth of tainting is only atoms thick beyond the imperfections of the copper surface. And even then, unless a heat pipe is already on the edge of failure due to excessively thin outer walls, the atoms thick tainted copper outer layer will not cause any problems at all. Also, given the nature of LM attoms filling gaps between copper atoms on the surface, it may actually make the surface a tad better for contact area to whatever TIM is later used (albata possibly immeasurably outside of an ultra-precision lab test), due to LM atoms being better at conducting heat than a void between copper atoms, lol.
Great vid GN crew.
Thanks so much for this video! I've been pondering these questions for a while. Good to know all the laptops i repaired and did cpu upgrades for will be fine. I started to question the longevity of the performance seeing first hand how the copper and LM react with each other.
Tech Jesus thank for the videos that other TH-camr’s would never dive into. So tired of the casual AWESOME BUILD BLAH BLAH.
Yep. Catering to the lowest common denominator. Hooray 😑
Matthew Ducker yep. I unsubbed from most of em. Even Linus lacks imagination these days.
This. Fuck that full autism rgb builds.
Der8auer did this a year ago. Not in the same direction as Steve, but also liquidmetal and how it interacts with the CPU.
This video was metal AF 🤘
Lmao
Snake?! Snaaaake!!
Heavy metal!
@@sirtaylor2569
Must listen to this Sammy Hagar song when applying Liquid metal.
th-cam.com/video/RWm7T-GgJnE/w-d-xo.html
Yeet!! 🤘🤘
In my understanding the corrosion/alloy effects of liquid gallium with solid solid aluminum, copper and nickel (actually nickel plated on copper) have been fully described in the video as
1) Aluminum: destructive corrosion (solid aluminum alloys with liquid gallium and the resulting brittle alloy gets attacked by moisture in the air with final effect the aluminum gets "eaten away", similar like solid iron corrosive rust oxidation with gaseous oxygen, but at a much faster rate)
2) Copper: also strong reaction, but non-destructive and also thermal degradation is negligible (copper alloys with gallium to CuGa2 and this alloy stays as a mechanically stable layer on the copper, thermal conductivity is reduced to 95 W/m-K compared to 400W/m-K for copper, but due to the thinness of the CuGa2 layer no measurable/see-able effect on the chip temperature)
3) Nickel (actually a thin plated layer of nickel on solid copper): A very slow reaction between nickel and gallium causes some not harmful staining of the nickel and the plated nickel layer seems to suppress that the copper alloys with the gallium
In my understanding this video has not at all addressed what above 3 corrosion/alloy reactions mean for the thin TIM layer of liquid metal.
Liquid metal stands in my understanding for all metal compositions that are liquid at room temperature. No fixed/concrete composition exists/is defined. Liquid metals based on mercury need special care because of mercury's high toxicity. Generally considered as nontoxic are liquid metals based on gallium. The name Galinstan stands for a 3 metal composition mainly of rather expensive gallium (Ga 69~95%), but also indium (In ?%) and tin (Sn 0~11%) with the specific composition Ga 68/69%, In 21/22% and Sn 9.5/10.5% showing under vacuum the quite deep melting point of -19°C.
However there are also 4 metal or even 5 metal liquid metals mentioned in this German patent (application: thermometers for several purposes/temperature ranges in the total temperature range of -20 to +1.200°C, patents.google.com/patent/DE10321843A1/de). As additional metals zink ( Zn 0~29%) and plumb (Pb 0~10%) are addressed for specific purposes and in another patent bismuth (Bi) and antimony (Sb). The patent also mentions that a 4th or 5th metal may allow to reduce the percentage of expensive gallium to 50% with only minor degradation and that the way of processing/mixing results in differences, for example by addressing the strong oxidization of gallium with oxygen.
In my reading liquid metal is not liquid metal, but there exists a multitude of possible metal compositions around gallium as the main material which I see also in application as TIM, where CoolLaboratory offers today 3 compositions, Pro obviously for lowest thermal resistance, Ultra probably for lower cost and on the newest composition Extreme CoolLaboratory claims they have addressed also the longevity.
The harmful consequence of gallium's strong reactivity seems to be that several people have proven by video that the applied liquid metal got hard/"dried out" while others even commented when they opened the gap/TIM and checked visually the liquid metal was gone completely.
In my understanding such hardening of the liquid metal happens only when applied on copper (does not occur when applied to nickel plated copper, this means especially the IHS) and I understand the underlying process for the hardening is gallium leaves the liquid metal and migrates into the copper to form there the solid CuGa2. For the quite thin TIM layer this means the percentage contents of gallium is permanently/quite fast reducing and when the gallium percentage falls below a certain percentage (different for each composition of liquid metal) it becomes hard and the hard remains of the liquid metal are quite difficult to remove from copper (the people even claiming liquid metal disappeared completely may have difficulties to see the remains of liquid metal by their eyes, especially when the gap was extremely thin and the color of the remains may be similar to CuGa2).
In total I see following 2 problems when applying liquid metal as a TIM:
1) Only on aluminum: destruction corrosion and
2) Only on copper: hardening of the remains of very thin liquid metal once a certain amount of gallium has moved into the copper it is in contact with to form there the solid CuGa2 alloy.
This hardening when applied on copper requires to re-apply the liquid metal generally every 6 months (in extreme cases even faster) to avoid the not easy removal of hardened liquid metal from copper.
so it's completely safe to use LM in laptop (with copper HS), as long as it's reapplied every 6 months. what is this extreme cases? thanks!
So using it on the die of a microprocessor under the nickel plated IHS is mostly safe and doesn't degrade the materials. Have I understood it correctly?
@@eniff2925 Yes. I did this with a de-lidded 7700K with Thermal Grizzly which i bought new 4 years ago. If you do as I did and as the rocketcool or similar recommend to reseal the heatspreader after application then its a once off process. Im one of those OCD people so I would reapply thermal grease once a year after the delid and at the same time inspect the 7700k for any damage. None and literally no drop in performance.
Infact before I upgraded earlier this week 18/6/2020 I did an experiment with liquid mental on the heat spreader to AIO (for about a month) and yes, the results were as expected even better. Do I recommend having liquid metal between a cooler and processor? Probably not. But if you are just doing a delid then yeah man just do it.
Just reapply it when you see a degradation in thermal performance.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galinstan
Steve is hands-down the most thoroughly informative reviewer online. This video is excellent! Why don't any other channels offer as much info; why don't they even offer half the info on topics like this?
After using liquid metal on a bare copper heatsink for a year, I noticed that the liquid metal had fused to the copper and became a solid similar to the chalky residue from the aluminum heatsink test. I also noticed that the thermal performance became worse over time because the liquid metal was no longer liquid and even with the heatsink removed and heating the surface up, the stuff didn’t turn back into a liquid. So I’m guessing some of the copper and galinstin actually changed chemically so now the only way to get the flat surface back is to scrape off the alloy of galinstin plus copper and not scratch the actual copper
That usually happens if the copper had imperfections. Sometimes this is intentional to cut costs. I've been running the same liquid metal for 6 years on a pure copper plate with 0 problems. Still liquid.
Did you ever reapplied !! After 2-3 month you actually have to reapply liquid metal !!! This step is very very important and everybody missing it and then claiming that it does not work!!!
@@IvanRossSFinally someone said it. First year, reapply it at least twice, after that the galium migration will slow down significantly as the galium that already migrated will act as a barrier and you will not have to reapply thst often anymore.
@@dariobarisic3502do I have to clean it with alcohol or just reapply it directly?
@@khawajashaharyar9294 What's left of the liquid metal that's bridging the cpu/gpu die and the heatsink should be gallium deficient so it's not of optimal composition. Therefore, I would suggest cleaning it off with alcohol first and then reapplying. Is it absolutely critical to first clean of the remains? I have no idea. I would imagine gallium is used in the composition due to its low melting point so galium deficiency could case lm to not be so liquid anymore and that's obviously bad. In summary, cleaning it off first and then reapplying seems like a safer option
Let's see what Intel thinks.. hmm they suggest toothpaste as the best
😂👍👍
But at least toothpaste leaves your metal clean and plaque free.
Sure, if you want to delid the CPU every 2-3 years, use liquid metal.
Jokes aside, i used toothpaste in my first pc, LGA 775, 1.8ghz celeron, heatsink plastic socket died and i had to secure it with a ziptie to the MOBO and replaced original thermal paste with toothpaste as a temporal fix for at least a week or two, got some solid 70º under load, much better than expected tbh
@@xXPAKSLAYERXx AGH HAHAHAHAHAHA HOLY SHIT DUUUUUUUUDE!
For those that dpn't wanna watch vid. Coolers are made in general of three metals Aluminum,Copper,Nickel
You dont wanna apply it on aluminum
You can apply on copper but it also degrade permamently over time
You want aply on nickel plated copper
In all three cases it interacts with these metals but only with nickel plated copper you can clear off stain
Hi, how identify with my cold plate is nickel or aluminium? i have a laptop msi gf63 thin , but the cold plate of the gpu is not copper looks like aluminium or nickel, i want to put liquid metal but im not sure she is nickel.thanks
@@Anonymous09096 you could check with the manufacturer. Its a very small chance that they use aluminum, probably nickle plated copper. But you can never be certain so i wouldnt risk it untill you know for sure
tech jesus blesses us with his messages at all hours, lmao.
I have a der8auer i7 8700k Ultra with a silver IHS. The last weeks the temps kept rising until I couldn’t overlock anymore and figured my watercooling was busted. That proved not to be the case. I delidded the CPU and what I saw was nothing short of catastrophic. The LM was completely hardened and had visibly corroded the silver to the point of effectively having destroyed the IHS. The CPU is 2 years old. Replaced the IHS with a pure copper one and will delidd at least every 6 months now.
I used 8700K with delid and liquid metal for a year. I lapped both sides of the HS to copper. On the bottom between the core and the HS year later the metal was still liquid. But between the top and Noctua cooler (which I also lapped just to be sure), it dried and basically fused the two surfaces together. I had to use a lot of force to pull them apart, and after that I had to lap both surfaces again to get rid of it. But that being said, before I pulled them apart, the temps were still fine, so even when it reacted and dried off the thermal conductivity was still fine.
When I finally decided to use LM on my 2080 TI on a bare copper EKWB, I remembered this video and needed to re-check the results of Conductonaut on bare copper. Steve, never doubt any of the research and testing that you do. As niche or cliche as it may seem sometimes, it's great information that you're putting out there.
Thanks for the comment on my Liquid Metal video, when i replace my liquid metal ill make sure to inspect for these same issues, as of now my system is still stable at 5GHz but who knows maybe today will be the day the Magic blue smoke is liberated only time will tell. keep up the great work i love your videos
The copper is basically "tinned" or soldered with the LM. Exactly the same process you would get when soldering copper with a lead/tin solder.
@@timno9804 tinning is just a term for coating. It doesn’t relate to tin at all
Gallium and Aluminum is an amazing reaction. There’s tons of TH-cam videos showing what it does, but look for gallium vs lock. It makes the aluminum so weak and brittle it just falls apart in the guys hands.
this is the lock picking lawyer
who makes a lock out of aluminum though?
Late night upload is best upload. Sleep is overrated! Steve is life
damn straight
Bare Copper can suck a bit of it up, so the best thing you can do is add a bit more than you would with nickel plated copper. The mistake a lot of these laptop LM users make is in fear of LM doing a different short prone kind of migration; they use the complete and utter bare minimum amount of LM they can manage to get away with, and the LM dries up in a matter of months. Use a little bit more and just insulate the surrounding circuitry and you will be fine.
What is the better way to insulate? What material do i use?
@@jeanfischer5208 try nail polish or super 33 tape
@@lvl-up3951 conformal coating would be a much better idea, it's meant for damp proofing electronics. Grizzly sell 'SHIELD PROTECTIVE VARNISH' for this exact purpose which also looks a lot like relabelled nail varnish, lol
Hi, how identify with my cold plate is nickel or aluminium? i have a laptop msi gf63 thin , but the cold plate of the gpu is not copper looks like aluminium or nickel, i want to put liquid metal there but im not sure she is nickel.thanks
I used a product called Indigo Extreme on an old Core 2 Quad (stock nickel-plated IHS) mated with a copper waterblock years ago: that produced a metal film like a foil. It was difficult to separate the CPU from the block when un-mounting, but the material had flowed so well that the mirror-image of the markings on the IHS was printed onto the slice of foil that came out when it was disassembled. Weird installation procedure, but it seemed to work pretty well. Removal was mostly just peeling off the "foil"-- IIRC almost all of it came off in one piece, with a couple of extra bits that needed to be scraped free. Seemed like an easier thing to apply and remove than these liquid metal TIMs. Personally I went back to using non-conductive paste-- it's just easy / relatively risk-free and I'm not trying to set any overclocking records :D
So wait, using liquid metal will make my computer explode?!?!
what? no, how did you... no
@@4fiHysteria But that's what Der8auer said!!!
Only if it comes into contact with oxygen 💣🙃
Aluminum powder is not liquid metal
5:44 did you not even understand him
Great video, very useful too (even though i'll probably never use LM on my CPU's)
Please make focusing faster (10:35 - 10:45 for example, 10 seconds to bring cpu into focus even though camera is looking directly at IHS). It hurts my eyes.
It's done on purpose, as an aesthetic effect
Nickel: Looks ok, is ok
Copper: Looks bad, is ok
Aluminum: Looks bad, is bad
Here's a video of a liquid metal with copper reaction over a year: th-cam.com/video/FW8fgTjHdCo/w-d-xo.html
Short version: gallium forms an alloy with copper over time (months, a year) leaving indium and other materials as a hard metal residue, which is difficult to remove and often not flat. Because of its surface shape, the residue has bad contact with the silicon surface and does a poor job of conducting heat. So the liquid metal appears to "dry out" and fail over time. I wouldn't say that copper and liquid metal is a safe long term combination.
If the gallium indium mixture is reacting with the copper in a way that ends up plating the copper as you said, wouldn't it then become an almost perfect non reactive surface for liquid metal due to the plating acting like a barrier between the gallium and copper, just like the nickle plated copper?
When the copper surface on the cold plate is saturated with gallium then no more reaction will occur and you will get a cold plate finish with the same color as gallium. For first time application I have found that you need to apply a little more liquid metal than you would normally use to compensate for the copper/gallium fusing or else loosing a measurable amount of heat transfer from the IHS to the cold plate.
Yep.
a very good point
This is all the same for a copper base on the cooler itself? I purchased a cheap Cooler Master water cooler that is very respectable for the price but it has a copper base on the pump itself. I was planning on doing this just for the hell of it with the toasty 4790k.
PITTING not plating...
Man you guys are the best. Always providing extremely thorough and reliable information. Thankyou so much.
At least you said aluminium correctly once
He should pronounce alu with the American pronunciation and minum as minium, that way no ones happy.
Say "Purified Bauxite" let me guess we brits say "Bawk-site" with a silent k, yanks say "Bow-site" or some other such nonsense.
@@mwnciboo it's almost like different parts of the world have different dialects & pronunciation
shocked face dot jpeg
@@jacobrzeszewski6527 "aloominyum" makes me angrier than I thought it would
Just a question but... why do americans (note: not british nor australians) drop the second i?
I am currently keeping Conductonaut in two copper based cooled laptops - experiment continues for now just fine.
Gallium penetrates atomic structure of the copper but thats not galvanic corrosion and has nothing to do with electrochemical potential of involved metals.
The new studio area is lookin mighty good there GN, only can improve too!
I have had gold plated water blocks in the past, not that they are common anymore I'm curious how it would react (if at all)
Gold has a negative electrical potential, like copper but much deeper in the negative, so it would probably react like copper but the negatives would arise three times faster, or take three times longer to manifest
If you are worried about pitting and staining then you may want to stay away, but unlike aluminum gold should survive (based solely on electrical potential, I don't know enough about liquid metal to say in other regards) but if you want a definitive answer you could test it yourself if you get a new water block some day, interesting thought non the less
@@LaserHuset actually found said waterblock from about 2004 I have not seen gold plated blocks since this one. It is amazing how they have changed over the years. If I had any liquid metal laying around I'd be tempted to test it myself.
@@chrispritchard7977 if you don't want it ruined you could test it on the side of the cold plate, let me know if you do and how it turns out
Gallium/Aluminum reactions are cool as heck and you should look up videos of it it is so fun to watch
now don't go putting liquid metal on the lockers locks @ school
Absolutely do not do this.. That stuff is way too expensive - If you want to mess up aluminum locks just get some regular old Gallium. It is much cheaper. You can get 20g of Gallium for under $10.. Where as Conductonuat and the like is over $10 per gram..
@@tisjester btw, why not make your own liquid metal? Can't imagine indium being that much more expensive. And definitely not tin.
If you want to clean the (permanent) oxyde on nickel plated copper
Try baking soda (bicarbonate de soude en français) instead of alcohol
GREAT VIDEO!!! It's obvious that a LOT of time and effort went into putting this data together. THANKS!!
Chemistry and computers! A few of my favorite things :)
Also, now I notice the stain/poly on that table. Looks great!
I'm really glad for this video. I had been kinda worried about the Phanteks liquid cooler I had picked out with nickel and thought I would need to go copper but now I know that it's actually better. I liquid metaled my G752 laptop and it's so good my power brick can't keep up!
Hi, how identify with my cold plate is nickel or aluminium? i have a laptop msi gf63 thin , but the cold plate of the gpu is not copper looks like aluminium or nickel, i want to put liquid metal there but im not sure she is nickel.thanks
We really needed some tecnical orientation like this, despite all advantages people often claim metal liquid has. Congrats!
Focus pull shot around 8:30 is waaaay too slow. Really annoys me and I see it every so often on tech channels. I'm just staring a blurry image for what seems like forever.
If you want to see how pure gallium affects aluminium, check out this video: th-cam.com/video/JHHI2Lk79cY/w-d-xo.html
"As he writes, it..." ?! It is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium called aluminium. Americans popularized false pronunciation. Rest of the world addresses it as it is.
Who is here after ps5 metal liquid cooling reveal ?
Just a random thought. Could copper foil be used instead of paste or liquid metal. Is the clamping force of the heatsink enough to cause the copper to conform to surface imperfections. I believe copper is used as a gasket but under much higher pressures.
Thanks for this content/subject. I've been wondering about this exact question for a while and I now consider it answered. Thank you.
What about copper plated aluminium? Will the copper surface protect the aluminium from reacting or will it migrate through the copper as the surface is very very thin?
Really good content. Very informative and accurate.
Boss science video, super educational compared to vanilla build and benchmark videos. Thank you GN!
How do you seal liquid metal to protect from getting air (oxygen) to it? I mean can we use conformal couting? This is to make sure no air/oxygen get into it and make it hardened.
Can I use liquid metal as lube in a pinch?
Not testing that.
Hair conditioning for a sleek metallic shine.
Anything is lube of you're brave enough.
Affirmative... hasta la vista baby
Sure. Heard of gold member but not liquid metal member.
If you want to remove all stains of the LM from copper or nickel, just put the IHS (only the IHS) in a heated 1+4 solution by weight of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) + water. When mixing NaOH with water it is an exothermic reaction so add the NaOH gradually into the water, it will heat up quite a bit, so heating it extra to achieve about 60 - 70 °C might not be necessary. It also becomes very Basic when heated, up to about pH 18, so keep the fingers out. Should also be done in a ventilated area, as the fumes coming off when it dissolves gallium, indium and the tin, are basicly Oxygen and Hydrogen...
Steve, I haven't seen anyone do a review of the CooLLaboratory Liquid Copper - this seems like it could be a much better alternative to the current liquid metals that can be corrosive.
Copper is likely more conductive but should not cause concern if proper application guidelines are followed just like other liquid metals.
i wonder if this might be a good option for those who have had disastrous results with shunt mods using regular liquid metal?
For anyone who haven't seen this yet, I can tell you from personal experience that it eats the hell out of aluminum.
What would happen if you put a tiny layer of nickel on aluminium though?
@@TheRealFobican That would work. You can electroplate aluminum with a layer of nickel, then add on whatever extra plating you want (silver, gold, etc)
NOM NOM NOM... I just couldn't resist.
What about silver? i remember there were some very expensive silver ihs, how will they react to liquid metal?
Probably not at all is my guess, silver isn't very reactive. Der8auer is the man behind them, and I doubt he would make a custom IHS made for delidding if it didn't work with liquid metal, that just doesn't make sense.
CampyCamper silver tarnishes a lot. Perhaps reactive means something different though?
@@1pcfred Reaction in this sense would be corrosion
@@TheHalfGlassFullGuy liquid metal does more than corrode metals. Gallium can migrate into metals.
@@1pcfred Yes but I was talking about the fact that tarnish, in this context, wouldn't be considered as "reactive"
So that means that using LM on a standart CPU could potentially decreases resell-ability/-price due to the oxide stains that "bake in" on the IHS.
I wonder what type of Liquid Metal Sony used on PS5..
gallium based mostly
I still don't get why they did it. Watch it dry out completely in Judy 1 year of use!
@@Ownage4lif31 im thinking its a marketing hype. it will have hardware revision sooner than most people think and replace with regular heatsink and thermal paste
@@qwerty6789x that's why you always wait a year till you buy a new product. I wouldn't be surprised if they released the ps5 slim next year
Liquid metal on consoles (ps4 pro/xbox One X)? Or changing the paste for a better one? Does it help? Could you do a test for that?
Would it help for temps and noise?
It probably would help as the console manufacturers usually cheap out on anything they just can...
FortuneFed To be honest, structure and design usually counts more than the material (e.g. in radiators, aluminium vs copper fins have negligible impact compared to different fin density and channel formations). But of course material compatibility must be checked.
Helped my PS4 be slightly less of a noisy piece of shit. Unplugging it and never using it again was more effective, though.
Definitely helps to replace the low quality tim with fresh. I put Kryonaut on my kids xbox one s, get a lot of heat venting, no real noise.
i put some nh-1 on my ps4 pro with some new arctic thermal pads, it's quiet now, i imagine liquid metal would work even better and yes you can use it on the ps4 pro as it uses a chopper plated heatsink
Pro-Tip in 2021: I thought 9900X was totally corroded past recognition after two years. Isopropanol and Acetone did nothing. Then I tried rubbing baking soda in with alcohol prep pads. After 10 minutes I could read the SN again. Cheers.
Two things, there is so much concern about performance, corrosion, and reactivity, but 1) why aren't people concerned about getting this stuff on their skin and 2) why is everyone using cotton swabs to apply this and paper towels to clean when these things will shed tons of fibers all over the place. What's the point of lapping and trying to get a perfectly mating surface when dust in the air, fibers from application tools, and tons of other crap is getting between the surfaces?
I have the RockitCool 8700k Solid Copper IHS and used liquid metal on the die and on the AIO side. Temperatures are amazing.
Aio suck
I like sucky sucky.
Excellent video dude. Very informative.
sometimes i watch these videos at half speed.
stoner's nexus
I applied conductonaut to my EVGA GTX 970 FTW+, but discovered a few months later that it dried up (alloyed?) And was causing overheating issues. It was so difficult to remove from the coldplate of the cooler that I had to lap it off. No idea what happened other than coming to the conclusion that it must have been a low quality copper alloy of some type, or I needed to keep cleaning and reapplying it until the surface "stabilized" or something. Hard to say. Did a vid on it too, but it was pretty interesting what happened.
Waiting for this one for a long time!
I did notice LM making alloy with copper, also corroding the silicon chip in the process, however the temps didn't change at all after a year in the laptop... Seems to make great contact still, till u remove it and look at the damage... However in legion 5 it's super worth it, went from 100°C at 60W to consistent 80°C at 80W on the CPU. Paste works good in there for 2 days, but then reaches unacceptable temps really quickly...
You got the hairlight in the background out of the shot! Looks great!
this was a beautiful explination. i tried to point you towards this info in one of your ask GN's but i was honestly not great at any explanations. i loved seeing this, since i use liq metal everywhere in my pc since im a mad man.
thank you tech jesus
also the article is on point too
Yay, now the internet can finally put their arguments about this to rest, Tech Jesus has spoken.
Two days ago I popped open my Asus GL502VSK they I applied Conductonaut to, I noticed staining and freaked out a little
Thanks for the video, it was very relevant to me lol
I really appreciate Snowflake's remote presence, making sure we keep things impartial from afar
Technical and literate, I love this channel.
i will never replace my "colgate cooling crystal"
Commenting on a older video, but this is a great reference and wanted to mention something with regards to bare copper.
When the liquid metal alloys with the copper, the oxidized result is sort of dry and chalky. This is normal, but it could hurt performance.
What you want to do is ALLOW this to happen initially. Give it a few weeks or so to "soak" and bind.
Once you've given it some time, you want to open it up again. Remove the existing liquid metal and clean it as well as you can like you would normal thermal paste. Do NOT use sanding or polishing to remove the alloy stains. If lapping the IHS, you should lap it first. The idea is that we WANT that staining to stick around. It is only surface-level, is stable, and has done all the reacting/alloying it is going to do. That is, it isn't going to continue reacting the way it would with aluminum. So in essence, it has become a protective barrier, stopping further corrosion.
After thoroughly cleaning the surface, simply reapply the liquid metal. At that point, the liquid metal should more or less retain its original properties from then on.
If you had polished or sanded the staining off of the surface, then when you went to reapply the liquid metal, it'll just re-alloy and create the same chalky residue.
You may still want to check the temps after re-application in case you need to repeat the process. But basically once the alloying process is "complete", the liquid metal is mostly just an alloy of elemental metals, rather than a complex emulsion or ceramic you would see with other TIMs. This means you shouldn't have to worry about decomposition or "aging".
A couple other tips:
- On the cooler, apply an amount notably larger than the die for the initial application. There will probably further reactions along the edges, so you want those edges to be outside of your contact zone.
- To speed up the alloying process, you could do some thermal cycling. Running hot will speed up the reaction. Thermal cycling may help it expand/contract and thus fill tinier nooks and crannies. I usually do a batch video conversion, or do an overclocking stability test, perhaps running the fans lower. We basically want to hang out around 80-90C. Modern CPUs are OK with this, and LM works better at higher temperatures.
Another awesome video. Thank you guys!
I have a Sapphire Nitro R9 390 and I am thinking about changing the thermal paste with Conductonaut because the temperature is higher than my liking. The first year and a half it maxed out at 72C but lately I am racing for the over 80's. Can you give me some tips about doing it?
I guess I can do that. I think it is getting warmer not of age of the chip itself but the age of the thermal paste.
It will be great to find out how pure is the copper plate. copper will stain and more when is expose on fast changes of temperatures. I will check my delid soon and see how that changes here.
Just look at TheBackyardScientist at TH-cam and his video on Gallium then you see the effect of it on Aluminium.
If you take a few drops on a car rim that have exposed metal, within a few hours the wheel WILL break and fall apart just from standing still!!!!
And since it destroys the protective layer on Aluminium it also makes it react fast with water making hydrogen gas that could ignite and cause an explosion or fire
So basically what I got from this is, if I’m going to use LM for lowest temps, I use a cooler with a nickel plate, like bequiet’s liquid coolers
Something to be careful off is the copper content as some so called copper heat sinks may be something I came across when working in a fitting workshop called cheap mans copper where aluminum is mixed with the copper. Was very common when copper prices went up
Great info. I'm eagerly awaiting Asus' Ryujin cooler so now I'm hoping they don't use aluminum. I'm happy to use Kryonaut, but I'll probably get a better result with Conductonaut.
New set looks mint.
With Noctua heat sinks I have never had to reapply liquid metal (I use Coollaboratory Liquid Metal Pro).
I am on my third system with Intel CPU and Noctua heat sink, I have never reapplied, my current system is a delidded Intel I7-7700K, no temperature problems, I could not swear, since my use changes, various overhead from OS and so on, but I have not seen temperatures change to any degree that I have ever noticed.
For me the main attraction with liquid metal is pure laziness, I never ever want to touch that CPU again, and my fiendish, nay even devilish plans are proceeding as ...planned, so far.
Honestly I thought this was the main attraction for liquid metal, the, what 1-3 degrees? difference, from properly applied liquid metal, does not make up for the hassle of properly applying the liquid metal, instead of fingerpainting on some paste?!? (Woo, the quitest fan in my case might ramp 20-40 RPMs up from what it is, Woo, bugga buggah, soo scary?)
TechJesus again with the info
Super informative! I have a Clevo P750TM1-G laptop with an all copper heatsink, a 8700k that's delidded and using a rockit cool IHS and a 1070 that has direct contact with the copper heatsink. I was concerned about the potential degredation over time but if its just staining, I'm not concerned. Over the six and a bit month period, I haven't observed any drop in thermal performance but I did notice that the liquid metal looked kinda grainy, which made me feel like something bad was happening but after seeing this, it isn't too much of a concern. Maybe its just drying out faster in my laptop since the heatsink's cooling performance is basically maxed out at this point.
you'll use up liquid metal a lot faster in a laptop than on desktop, in my g750jz the liquid metal started going "bad" after similar time than a thermal paste so in the long run it was not worth it
As true as that may be, considering the hardware and the amount of heat it chucks out, especially during intense gaming sessions, I'd rather spend the extra time and money of replacing liquid metal more often than being thermal throttled or risking ruining the hardware sooner than I'd like. My laptop basically uses desktop parts in a much smaller form factor so cooling is especially important in my case.
I'm actually working on a better cooling pad by using a pair of industrial Noctua NF-A14s for intake and another pair, one for each exhaust plus some ducting. I don't think the exhaust fans would do too much but after watching Linus' video of adding blowmatrons to a gaming laptop's exhaust fans, it did show an improvement in temperature. Blowies are WAY too loud for me but Noctua industirals aren't and they still give a lot of airflow at high pressures and in a laptop, the higher pressure would be very much appreciated.
When I'm on the go, I pin the gpu to 1500mhz on the core, leave the memory at stock speeds, and downclock the i7 to 3.7Ghz on all cores with a 130mA undervolt (which I use when runnig at 4.4Ghz on all cores as well) then further pull it back to 55% with windows power management and I get a whole wopping 2 hours of gameplay on it, which again considering the hardware and the amount of power it uses and the small battery, that's pretty impressive. Thermals are also much improved to the point I can let the computer manage the fans rather than me setting them to 100%.
Glad to learn more about liquid metal
I just bought myself a 4790k. upgrading from a 4670k. According to the eBay guy, this particular chip has temperatures in the 90's on his coolermaster CPU cooler. I was looking into delidding in case I got bad temperatures. Thanks Gamers Nexus for making it look easy, and for doing experiments like this. I'm about to swap the CPU's. Wish me luck!
Also I die a little inside when you say Aluminum and not Aluminium. IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
A minimum eutectic should have a fixed composition, so the mixture shouldn't be too much of a mystery. Sounds like they move a little away from the eutectic point to improve cost or performance.
Moving away from the exact eutectic point to gain some thermal conductance isn't really a problem if the melting point is still under (or around) room temperature.
i took a shot everytime he said Aluminium
Very very helpful thanks
Exactly what I've been looking for before trying to liquid metal my laptop that come with amd card. Thanks GN!!!
aluminum oxide is used in solid rocket motors
Aluminium.
aliminum
Both are correct
Technically you are right, but .....
@@cmdrnachoman5864 yes
Amelinum.
would aluminum foil work as a tim? i mean it only has to fill up tiny bumps and crevices and its already very thin and soft.
I've just moved my laptop back to normal TIM and actually got better thermal performance for the moment. A fresh liquid metal application would still be significantly superior, but an interesting comparison to your degradation test results.
Very informative - thanks!
I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that "new h500 case with an impressive cooling set up" add
will i be able to use liquid metal on my Cooler Master Hyper 212X? it has aluminum on the base, but the actually pipes that make contact with the IHS are pure copper.
Yessss I've been waiting for this
If you inject an aluminium padlock with gallium, the padlock becomes so brittle that you can crush the padlock into a powder with your hand. If liquid metal contains gallium...yeah
Great episode
Try putting acrylic glass between the heat spreader out had the highest heat conductivity
I have a full copper water block on my cpu i applied liquid metal on it and it dried after a month of use
Would THIS be a suitable thermal paste for CPU/GPU/APU?
www.247solder.com/247-LOWTEMP-15_SDS.pdf
It's used as a solder here----> th-cam.com/video/_luUCXGFTQ8/w-d-xo.html
Please read the specs before commenting. Thank you.