How Liquid Metal Affects Copper, Nickel, and Aluminum (Corrosion Test)

This video investigates if it's safe to use liquid metal with bare copper, nickel-plated copper, and aluminum, looking into the corrosive and pitting characteristics of each.
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Article: www.gamersnexus.net/guides/33...
This content tests liquid metal aging on different metals, and looks into whether it's safe for raw copper and lapped integrated heat spreaders (IHS). For testing, we are using Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut (Amazon - geni.us/M6xL4), but the same data will generally apply to other liquid metals, including CoolLaboratory Liquid Ultra and Liquid Pro. Liquid metal is made of a galinstan compound (gallium, indium, and tin), and is extremely conductive -- particularly when under higher heat loads. Corrosion is a common concern with liquid metal, as is pitting, and that's something we talk about here. This will also help address if liquid metal is safe for laptops, as most laptop coolers use exposed copper directly to the silicon.
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Editorial, Testing: Steve Burke
Video: Andrew Coleman
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[@GamersNexus]

Check our video on how long liquid metal lasts: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nJ_FoKmgiZl9grM 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

[@danielmonsanto8286]

Liquid metal can also damage solder joints, so it's not a good idea to use it for shunt mods.

[@johndrachenberg2254]

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.

[@Visentinel]

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?

[@Zarcondeegrissom]

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.

[@bparks2193]

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.

[@Multimeter1]

Tech Jesus thank for the videos that other KZbinr’s would never dive into. So tired of the casual AWESOME BUILD BLAH BLAH.

[@mduckernz]

Yep. Catering to the lowest common denominator. Hooray 😑

[@brumby92]

Matthew Ducker yep. I unsubbed from most of em. Even Linus lacks imagination these days.

[@DECYYK]

This. Fuck that full autism rgb builds.

[@JarrodsTech]

This video was metal AF 🤘

[@Mc-Derpulous]

Lmao

[@kano2444]

Snake?! Snaaaake!!

[@sirtaylor2569]

Heavy metal!

[@Blackinterceptor999]

@@sirtaylor2569 Must listen to this Sammy Hagar song when applying Liquid metal. kzbin.info/www/bejne/iIjQaIdjfMx9pKc

[@utiantew]

Yeet!! 🤘🤘

[@friedhelmschroter8124]

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.

[@hendystark8333]

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!

[@eniff2925]

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?

[@Juwce_86]

@@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.

[@Dexter-hh2qc]

Just reapply it when you see a degradation in thermal performance.

[@Blox117]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galinstan

[@jeremymoon9088]

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?

[@omgitsme435]

Let's see what Intel thinks.. hmm they suggest toothpaste as the best

[@amerdelic8710]

😂👍👍

[@CaveyMoth]

But at least toothpaste leaves your metal clean and plaque free.

[@philipcooper8297]

Sure, if you want to delid the CPU every 2-3 years, use liquid metal.

[@xXPAKSLAYERXx]

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

[@fr33kSh0w2012]

@@xXPAKSLAYERXx AGH HAHAHAHAHAHA HOLY SHIT DUUUUUUUUDE!

[@supercrazymario404]

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

[@levigoldson4242]

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.

[@IvanRossS]

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!!!

[@dariobarisic3502]

​@@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]

​@@dariobarisic3502do I have to clean it with alcohol or just reapply it directly?

[@dariobarisic3502]

@@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

[@srsheepdog2671]

GREAT VIDEO!!! It's obvious that a LOT of time and effort went into putting this data together. THANKS!!

[@lolnjeoglondajmejejplejlis3365]

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

[@Anonymous09096]

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

[@FrankOnline007]

@@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

[@CarlNagy]

Man you guys are the best. Always providing extremely thorough and reliable information. Thankyou so much.

[@TheyCallMeMrMaybe]

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.

[@nbrowser]

The new studio area is lookin mighty good there GN, only can improve too!

[@ryanrazer1]

"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.

[@webx135]

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.

[@BRUXXUS]

Chemistry and computers! A few of my favorite things :) Also, now I notice the stain/poly on that table. Looks great!

[@MajorHardware]

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

[@hienglish3765]

We really needed some tecnical orientation like this, despite all advantages people often claim metal liquid has. Congrats!

[@aleek4481]

Thanks for this content/subject. I've been wondering about this exact question for a while and I now consider it answered. Thank you.

[@RazorSkinned86]

Really good content. Very informative and accurate.

[@GregorysBrain]

Excellent video dude. Very informative.

[@depth386]

Boss science video, super educational compared to vanilla build and benchmark videos. Thank you GN!

[@Lady_Zenith]

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.

[@digerttm]

Gallium/Aluminum reactions are cool as heck and you should look up videos of it it is so fun to watch

[@quantumpeep8305]

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.

[@richmeisterradio]

tech jesus blesses us with his messages at all hours, lmao.

[@infernaldaedra]

Waiting for this one for a long time!

[@blackhavocjim]

Gallium and Aluminum is an amazing reaction. There’s tons of KZbin 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.

[@Perseagatuna]

this is the lock picking lawyer

[@ivanjakanov]

who makes a lock out of aluminum though?

[@scooter4196]

Another awesome video. Thank you guys!

[@3800S1]

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.

[@chriswho12345]

@@timno9804 tinning is just a term for coating. It doesn’t relate to tin at all

[@auburntanner951]

You got the hairlight in the background out of the shot! Looks great!

[@davidpearson6073]

Technical and literate, I love this channel.

[@fortisprocer966]

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!

[@Anonymous09096]

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

[@ganthrithor]

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

[@xkm1948]

Late night upload is best upload. Sleep is overrated! Steve is life

[@richmeisterradio]

damn straight

[@inuysha360]

Yessss I've been waiting for this

[@JohnnyB43]

Very informative - thanks!

[@coreycarpenter2489]

New set looks mint.

[@spkt0r]

Thank you for the video great content as always,.

[@Erenzilable]

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.

[@TheHalfGlassFullGuy]

It's done on purpose, as an aesthetic effect

[@jsl8367]

Exactly what I've been looking for before trying to liquid metal my laptop that come with amd card. Thanks GN!!!

[@LAZERS4]

Very nice and complete video :)

[@brighammich2513]

Thank you very much for an excellent video! Did you by chance notice any corrosion on any of the die's that you tested?

[@mizimixi6894]

Thank you for clear infomation!

[@michalwiktorow2188]

I am currently keeping Conductonaut in two copper based cooled laptops - experiment continues for now just fine.

[@evadevad6149]

Great episode

[@gristlevonraben]

Great video

[@anasevi9456]

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.

[@jeanfischer5208]

What is the better way to insulate? What material do i use?

[@lvl-up3951]

@@jeanfischer5208 try nail polish or super 33 tape

[@spankeyfish]

@@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

[@Anonymous09096]

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

[@ioanivanof]

Very very helpful thanks

[@colossalcubes]

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

[@colossalcubes]

also the article is on point too

[@hawkeyes4768]

yoooo i been asking this from every tech youtuber for months ,, thankyou thank you thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@kepler1175]

Glad to learn more about liquid metal

[@thegingercrisis]

Bro... Love your content. In this one and the " how long does liquid metal last" video you answered all my questions! I will be using it in my future build. Thank you. Love the new office by the way. Keep up the good work 👍...oh and more snowflake.

[@Supercon57]

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

[@donald2167]

TechJesus again with the info

[@sidewinder666666]

Good info, as usual. I knew that Aluminum was a no-no with any liquid metal, but wasn't sure about bare Copper. Now I know. ;)

[@GiancarloPaniccia]

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.

[@JakeDownsWuzHere]

sometimes i watch these videos at half speed. stoner's nexus

[@Globespy]

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?

[@billbird3833]

Thanks for this.

[@thomasd5248]

So wait, using liquid metal will make my computer explode?!?!

[@4fiHysteria]

what? no, how did you... no

[@thomasd5248]

@@4fiHysteria But that's what Der8auer said!!!

[@fourtysix4646]

Only if it comes into contact with oxygen 💣🙃

[@zombieswitapple]

Aluminum powder is not liquid metal

[@zombieswitapple]

5:44 did you not even understand him

[@railfanningstuff8333]

now don't go putting liquid metal on the lockers locks @ school

[@tisjester]

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..

[@zeratulrus142]

@@tisjester btw, why not make your own liquid metal? Can't imagine indium being that much more expensive. And definitely not tin.

[@Azzalus]

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?

[@johntorset3314]

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.

[@smokeydops]

Yep.

[@charlesballiet7074]

a very good point

[@RJT80]

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.

[@DaedalEVE]

PITTING not plating...

[@SpeedWeed97]

hey guys great video! but i think the table should be a little more tall if possible, anyways big fan.

[@aethertech]

Cool informative video. _________________ Request for CoolerMaster Elite 110 content tho. How much power can you shove it one of the things, and make sure it stays cool>?

[@stopndrop4588]

I had to find out the hard way long time ago however, this is nice.

[@danielrouw2593]

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.

[@Nedrozak]

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?

[@Nedrozak]

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.

[@alexdriscoll9854]

#askgn Was there any difference in appearance in the year old liquid metal? Was the staining on the IHS worse after a year?

[@GamersNexus]

Good question -- no, it looked about the same as all the others.

[@kennethmeyerson1165]

After two years, yes. My i9 - 9900x with conductonaut is stained. Tried cleaning with acetone and iso. Its permanent.

[@azhanazhan6852]

Such fine metal. Even Eorland Gray-Mane couldn't forge this

[@MoraFermi]

If you want to see how pure gallium affects aluminium, check out this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gHmremWCoJxsmbs

[@hisenburglar9132]

Great video! What about on the other side, the mirror like chip? Does the staining differ among chips?

[@steve8339]

At least you said aluminium correctly once

[@jacobrzeszewski6527]

He should pronounce alu with the American pronunciation and minum as minium, that way no ones happy.

[@mwnciboo]

Say "Purified Bauxite" let me guess we brits say "Bawk-site" with a silent k, yanks say "Bow-site" or some other such nonsense.

[@firstnameIastname]

@@mwnciboo it's almost like different parts of the world have different dialects & pronunciation shocked face dot jpeg

[@NepetaLeijon]

@@jacobrzeszewski6527 "aloominyum" makes me angrier than I thought it would

[@Igor_servant_of_Philemon]

Just a question but... why do americans (note: not british nor australians) drop the second i?

[@jort93z]

"Breaking news: Overclocker says your computer will explode"

[@CoalitionGaming]

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.

[@ericdeltoro8484]

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.

[@JustOneGuy]

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

[@ericdeltoro8484]

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%.

[@jackdavidson8708]

I really appreciate Snowflake's remote presence, making sure we keep things impartial from afar

[@spidey3164]

I would like u to do a video on your favorite PC components for a complete build

[@kennethmeyerson1165]

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.

[@SaccoBelmonte]

Using LM between my 1800x and with my AIO copper plate resulted in both being glued quite strongly. I had to remove them both out of the socket. Not a good outcome. Sanded both and used normal paste form then on. (shame cause temps were awesome)

[@MegaGordon2011]

NZXT's new age 500 case , sounds esoteric :)

[@simple359]

Thank you for such an informative video! I was wondering about this because this directly pertains to my use case, which is direct die cooling with a copper waterblock on top. Hopefully Intel will stop messing around and actually use solder in their heatspreaders. That will reduce the need for having to do these things just to have decent thermal performance.

[@falldragon]

Hello! I've been researching this stuff and was hoping you guys might know, does the Razer 15 2018 heatsink use the nickle plated copper type? Someone else said it uses a copper-aluminum mixture and to not use liquid metal on it. Any thoughts? Thanks!

[@MrGeesikser]

Steve, i love you my brother!! :)

[@cesarnono13]

I have the RockitCool 8700k Solid Copper IHS and used liquid metal on the die and on the AIO side. Temperatures are amazing.

[@exposer3339]

Aio suck

[@cesarnono13]

I like sucky sucky.

[@rizwanmohammed5339]

Explosion 😁 Thanks for helpful video

[@ktasuja]

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.

[@lyco5251]

Is it a good idea to do nickel plating over copper laptop heatsink for liquid metal? Thanks for sharing!

[@lajus-debattheo1745]

If you want to clean the (permanent) oxyde on nickel plated copper Try baking soda (bicarbonate de soude en français) instead of alcohol

[@HexDan]

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.

[@flyt129]

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?

[@frqgrenade]

Gallium penetrates atomic structure of the copper but thats not galvanic corrosion and has nothing to do with electrochemical potential of involved metals.

[@flyfaen1]

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...

[@matthewb1601]

So... when comparing a lapped IGS to an unlapped one, what difference, if any, does it make to cpu temps when you use liquid metal between the IHS and the heatsink?

[@Aqarrion]

Interesting! I am still not sure if I will use liquid metal on the EK tec cryo cooler (which is bare copper) Usually I am all in for extra cooling performance but I also don’t want to ruin a 350€ cpu block

[@martincassidy2102]

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

[@frederick8o8]

Your background seems a bit busy. Miss just seeing the blue background with your tools. 👍

[@TheMicah97]

How long did your testing periods last on the Nickel plated IHS?

[@Iammorph]

5:45 --> You got it wrong: Aluminium reacts with water (H2O), the O (oxigen) bonds with Aluminium creating AlO (aluminium oxide), and then, the H2 is released (and potencially flammable)

[@mmmhorsesteaks]

to balance the equation you need 3H2O+2Al->3H2+Al2O3 I think.

[@timjrrutz9184]

There are some cpu blocks from aquacomputer with .925 Silver plating. was hoping that material was covered as well. otherwise, good information

[@Silveraga]

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?

[@peterkiss1204]

It probably would help as the console manufacturers usually cheap out on anything they just can...

[@peterkiss1204]

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.

[@mjc0961]

Helped my PS4 be slightly less of a noisy piece of shit. Unplugging it and never using it again was more effective, though.

[@ThePeters2010]

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.

[@uetzel]

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