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.
I built a PC in 2019 with a graphene pad. I have been too lazy to check its integrity. I rely on the lack of airplane sounds coming from my tower as indication it's working
> Although I've never been conscious of pump out as a problem, and have never reapplied thermal paste,
I’ve had problems with both pump out and other thermal paste aging problems.
The problem is very different across thermal pastes. Some of the high performance enthusiast market pastes I’ve used have started out great and then degraded until I was having problems a few years later.
My feeling is that the engineers and OEMs understand these tradeoffs better than the hobby market. All of those boring pastes that came in OEM configurations but underperformed the latest $20 tube you could buy in the aftermarket were just making different tradeoffs.
The newer pastes have been better for me so far. The person who made this video also does some testing that’s supposed to simulate pump-out and maintains a database of pastes which has been helpful to finally have after all these years of relying on forum anecdotes for everything.
And they talk in the video about how expensive it is now, because of gallium export restrictions in China, and that people shouldn't be using it because it's not cost effective. Only the most hardcore of overclockers should even do it.
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.
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.
> PTM thermal paste—most famously known as Honeywell PTM7950—is a Phase Change Material (PCM) used as a high-performance alternative to traditional CPU and GPU thermal paste
I never really understood why you would risk using liquid metal versus something like Honeywell's PTM with the effect size in temperature difference indistinguishable from statistical noise. The only drawback I've seen for the PTMs is that the paste is extremely sticky to the point that I've ripped pins off an old 3600 when I tried to remount the cooler without warming it up first.
From what I've seen the whole PC review industry operates on emotional narratives rather than scientific measurements. When is the last time you saw a cooler spec'd by its thermal conductance (Watts per degree C) as opposed to a whole rigamarole of we used so and so RGB motherboard with so and so PC case and this version of Windows with so and so benchmarking software. And every cooler in the limited set we compared it to was worse, but of course we left a whole bunch out. Like sure integration testing can be useful, but it doesn't beat characterizing units in isolation with hard numbers. And they never reduce the number of variables enough to do that.
Part of the problem is that any given cooler doesn’t have a single W/K value. It depends on the temperature gradient across the heatsink which depends on airflow over the heatsink (and both the heat and heat density of the CPU being cooled), and the airflow depends on the case (and fans). And airflow temperature matters too (are you cooling the CPU’s heatsink with air that’s already been warmed by a GPU?)
Note as well that I said heat density - different benchmarks (or applications) will load the CPU differently, and the same amount of power consumption will result in very different heat outputs (heavy single core use will result in part of the die and heat spreader getting really hot, whereas heavy multi core use will result in the whole die and heatspreader getting kinda hot). If the heatsink has a very high surface area and high airflow it might have the ability to dissipate quite a lot of heat, but if the contact surface sucks (or is aluminum) it might not actually be able to transfer heat away very effectively without a massive temperature delta - resulting in high CPU temps for single core use even with a high cooling capacity for multi core use, for example.
Your average person can’t understand all of these variables, and the average reviewer can’t control for all of them. So, “this CPU with these benchmarks in this case with this fan configuration” is the best you can really expect. Because otherwise, what reporting are you actually going to do? “This cooler with 3.2CFM of 26C airflow on a CPU dissipating 80W on one core and 10W on the other 7 cores results in a peak core temperature of 87°C and a package temperature of 81°C” is not useful reporting. Especially because, when the average person doesn’t understand it, they’re gonna buy a case fan that says 3.2CFM on the box and then wonder why their CPU’s throttling.
Sure, but the goal of science is to distill these variables down into a model of what matters. Define a reference contact patch that's supplying the heat, and you've suspended all of the concerns about single core vs multi core. Then for more in depth articles, there could be a few to represent single core (smaller area), multi core (consumer processor), and multi core (larger server packages). Same with the airflow over the secondary parts of a cooler.
Another in depth article could then even analyze CPUs and how they themselves differ from that reference contact patch, and their own thermal resistance from each core to their surface.
And yeah, I know this is more work. The point is that doing the work allows the results to be used and compared across articles, even when some things are subtly different (eg contact patch). The problem is we're missing a strong incentive for these things to be objectively comparable, rather than having to read article after article and getting tripped up in the details.
> LM on untreated copper (which I thought wasn't really advised).
I think the supposed issue is nickel (the most common waterblock coating) has a much lower thermal conductivity so you might lose a degree or two under load vs a bare copper block.
Which kind of makes sense: people who know what they're doing use liquid metal to squeeze out that last couple degrees vs PTM/graphene so going bare copper and dealing the the buildup problems maybe makes sense for them too.
He mentions in this video that liquid metal really should just be for the extreme overclockers who don't mind changing it out and resurfacing their waterblocks regularly which is good advice. The fact liquid metal is even semi-mainstream and comes standard on any consumer hardware is kind of stupid.
they're slightly less efficient than a good paste and need a higher pressure interface to seat well, but I like the zero mess aspect, ease of application, and knowing they'll never dry out
I wouldn't call them "reusable" since they do get crushed onto the chip or heatsink pretty hard and tend stick
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.
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
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.
OP meant the risk of liquid metal acting amorphic and slowly leaking/shifting, moreso because with the console being vertical, the gravity force is pulling on the metal very strongly.
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.
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.
I thought ptm was all the rage anyway as it can't pump out and is very very long lasting, but I'm probably outdated in that respect.
I’ve had problems with both pump out and other thermal paste aging problems.
The problem is very different across thermal pastes. Some of the high performance enthusiast market pastes I’ve used have started out great and then degraded until I was having problems a few years later.
My feeling is that the engineers and OEMs understand these tradeoffs better than the hobby market. All of those boring pastes that came in OEM configurations but underperformed the latest $20 tube you could buy in the aftermarket were just making different tradeoffs.
The newer pastes have been better for me so far. The person who made this video also does some testing that’s supposed to simulate pump-out and maintains a database of pastes which has been helpful to finally have after all these years of relying on forum anecdotes for everything.
But it was a very informative video regardless.
Even if true, which it's not, who cares?
Does it really simply not stick and is held in place by pressure alone?
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.
Both seem to regularly face laptops and GPUs respectively that have BGAs shorted out by leaking liquid metal.
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.
> PTM thermal paste—most famously known as Honeywell PTM7950—is a Phase Change Material (PCM) used as a high-performance alternative to traditional CPU and GPU thermal paste
Application Demonstration: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y60A_589wj8
Note as well that I said heat density - different benchmarks (or applications) will load the CPU differently, and the same amount of power consumption will result in very different heat outputs (heavy single core use will result in part of the die and heat spreader getting really hot, whereas heavy multi core use will result in the whole die and heatspreader getting kinda hot). If the heatsink has a very high surface area and high airflow it might have the ability to dissipate quite a lot of heat, but if the contact surface sucks (or is aluminum) it might not actually be able to transfer heat away very effectively without a massive temperature delta - resulting in high CPU temps for single core use even with a high cooling capacity for multi core use, for example.
Your average person can’t understand all of these variables, and the average reviewer can’t control for all of them. So, “this CPU with these benchmarks in this case with this fan configuration” is the best you can really expect. Because otherwise, what reporting are you actually going to do? “This cooler with 3.2CFM of 26C airflow on a CPU dissipating 80W on one core and 10W on the other 7 cores results in a peak core temperature of 87°C and a package temperature of 81°C” is not useful reporting. Especially because, when the average person doesn’t understand it, they’re gonna buy a case fan that says 3.2CFM on the box and then wonder why their CPU’s throttling.
Another in depth article could then even analyze CPUs and how they themselves differ from that reference contact patch, and their own thermal resistance from each core to their surface.
And yeah, I know this is more work. The point is that doing the work allows the results to be used and compared across articles, even when some things are subtly different (eg contact patch). The problem is we're missing a strong incentive for these things to be objectively comparable, rather than having to read article after article and getting tripped up in the details.
I think the supposed issue is nickel (the most common waterblock coating) has a much lower thermal conductivity so you might lose a degree or two under load vs a bare copper block.
Which kind of makes sense: people who know what they're doing use liquid metal to squeeze out that last couple degrees vs PTM/graphene so going bare copper and dealing the the buildup problems maybe makes sense for them too.
He mentions in this video that liquid metal really should just be for the extreme overclockers who don't mind changing it out and resurfacing their waterblocks regularly which is good advice. The fact liquid metal is even semi-mainstream and comes standard on any consumer hardware is kind of stupid.
They are used on the Supermicro Power9 platform weirdly.
I wouldn't call them "reusable" since they do get crushed onto the chip or heatsink pretty hard and tend stick
I don’t think I’ll put anything liquid on my electronics ever again.
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.