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

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.

This video seems to be about LM on untreated copper (which I thought wasn't really advised).

Now, I personally have had two builds with LM. One with LM as the material for a CPU re-lid, and another for a direct-die application. Neither touched aluminum or untreated copper.

The re-lidded CPU is still going strong, no issues. But with the direct die application, I found the performance to significantly degrade after two years. Apparently there's a pump-out effect.

I ended up switching to PTM. Same temps as LM, but zero degradation so far.

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

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

Tangential but people might think it's neat - there's reusable indium pads for replacing thermal paste - https://www.indium.com/products/thermal-interface-materials/...

They are used on the Supermicro Power9 platform weirdly.

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.

I have a dead mini PC due to liquid metal leaking. Never opened it before it died, never kept it upright.

I don’t think I’ll put anything liquid on my electronics ever again.

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

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

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.