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Is Liquid Metal Killing Our PCs? Scientific Analysis and a 2-Year Test [video]

33 points zdw 16 hours ago 11 comments

sanex 1 hour ago | parent

I have a Thinkpad x1 extreme gen 5 with an i9 and 3080. Liquid metal. Overheats like crazy. I want to get in there but I hear it's such a pain to deal with I've been putting it off. Definitely will be swapping to one of the thermal pads when I do it.

Tempest1981 13 minutes ago | parent

After how long? I.e. did you get a few good years with it?

vanschelven 39 minutes ago | parent

I was wondering where the liquid metal would come from but apparently it's an alternative to thermal paste.

SloopJon 36 minutes ago | parent

This video is by the owner of Thermal Grizzly. They make thermal pastes and putties, but I think they're best known for their KryoSheet graphene pads.

Although I've never been conscious of pump out as a problem, and have never reapplied thermal paste, I did use a KryoSheet on a 9800X3D in my most recent build. So far, so good.

Kirby64 18 minutes ago | parent

They also make Liquid Metal themselves. Pretty sure that’s a substantial part of their business actually…

chickenbig 35 minutes ago | parent

Another liquid metal you have to watch out for is mercury. A former employer of mine traced elevated RAM degradation in a particular datacentre to mercury contamination in the canal the used for cooling water. Mercury has an interesting way of migrating through other metals.

jordand 33 minutes ago | parent

There's been concerns for a while with the PS5 and the use of liquid metal in that. Especially given it stands vertically, and that liquid metal can "shift" downwards

simoncion 6 minutes ago | parent

> Especially given it stands vertically...

FWIW, you can set it horizontally. You need to use the -heh- stand they include for the purpose, but it's how I have mine configured and it works fine.

I get that size and shape of the case may make this the least popular way of orienting the hardware, but -unless they've decided to save ten cents by not including the stand- it's just as doable as the vertical orientation.

thomasjudge 25 minutes ago | parent

There is a youtube laptop repair show I follow that specializes in Dells and he *HATES* liquid metal, causes soooo many problems when it leaks

smallmancontrov 5 minutes ago | parent

Are we not allowed to speak northwestrepair's name or something?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNjoREOH80Y

He's a beast at BGA replacement, if you want to learn how to handle big chips he's the one to watch. But yeah, liquid metal sure seems to kill a lot of them, though typically just for the prosaic reason of getting somewhere it shouldn't and shorting something out.

bitwize 11 minutes ago | parent

Man, I hate it when my gaming rig turns out to be a T-1000...

drdexebtjl 6 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]