[wuttman]

I recently switched back from Conductonaut to Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra and I'm never going back to Conductonaut lol.

Hi, did you have experience with bare copper surfaces? Which one is less reactive?

 

[Imprezzion]

Conductonaut is easier to clean off of copper but they both stain it. Liquid Ultra tends to form hard patches on copper which are harder to clean off which is why it comes with a scuff pad lol.

 

[wuttman]

Can't decide whether to use LM on gpu or not. Seems like it will turn solid no matter what you try, which is not a bad thing on it's own, but indium-tin layer appears to be fragile to any mechanical impact, which results in losing thermal contact over time and bad temps. But what is it most exposed to? Vibrations, or impulse from strong random kick, or perhaps thermal expansion cycles? Can tighter mounting prevent it? Can it actually be better to let it build a stronger bond with bare copper, or thermal cycles will damage inner structure anyway?

 

[Falkentyne]

Can't decide whether to use LM on gpu or not. Seems like it will turn solid no matter what you try, which is not a bad thing on it's own, but indium-tin layer appears to be fragile to any mechanical impact, which results in losing thermal contact over time and bad temps. But what is it most exposed to? Vibrations, or impulse from strong random kick, or perhaps thermal expansion cycles? Can tighter mounting prevent it? Can it actually be better to let it build a stronger bond with bare copper, or thermal cycles will damage inner structure anyway?

The most longevity for liquid metal requires:

1) tight mounting pressure (so if the LM does harden up a bit or some gallium gets absorbed, you maintain good heat transfer)
2) sanding the heatsink / heat block block to "roughen" it up rather than having it smooth. 1500 grit sandpaper works well here. Then after you sand it, when applying LM to the heatsink, spend about 10 minutes continuously wiping it around the surface evenly, but without applying a lot of downwards pressure. This will help gallium get absorbed into the micro sand cracks you created and will greatly help longevity. Liquid metal HATES fully polished surfaces, unlike regular thermal paste, although both love nice and flat surfaces. LM likes it rough (also it makes LM much easier to spread and break the surface tension between a LM drop!)

There is another method, which works perfectly for delid IHS (when applying LM to the IHS underside), and that is baking the IHS in an oven at about 100C for about two hours. This causes accelerated absorption and a silver stain will be left. Remove the IHS and wipe the old LM off, leaving the silver stain fully intact (do not attempt to clean the stain!). Then apply a new layer of LM On top and the stain you baked in will greatly reduce the rate of future absorption.

This works for SOME copper heatsinks as well, usually laptop ones, or anything without electronics. Clearly this won't work on a block due to plastics (so just do #2 above).

LM is a pain to maintain if you are repadding or needing to repaste though. That's what gets really annoying. If you have old hardened LM causing an uneven surface roughness, you need to sand the surface with dry 1500 grit (you're not really 'sanding, just getting all that hardened crap off the block!) until it's smoothed out and that gets VERY messy VERY fast!

 

[Falkentyne]

Getting this stuff tomorrow.
Opinions?

Boron Nitride Paste

 

[o1dschoo1]

Getting this stuff tomorrow.
Opinions?

Boron Nitride Paste

Let me know how it goes compared to lm

 

[wuttman]

The most longevity for liquid metal requires:

What your thoughts on silver coating?

 

[Memmento Mori]

...

 

[T.Sharp]

Getting this stuff tomorrow.
Opinions?

Boron Nitride Paste

Interesting. Based on the MSDS, it's a high temp mold release agent.

Definitely curious to hear how it works.

 

[Falkentyne]

Interesting. Based on the MSDS, it's a high temp mold release agent.

Definitely curious to hear how it works.

Terrible. Beyond terrible. So terrible you shouldn't give your worst enemy this stuff. Avoid unless you want Thermal throttle in seconds (throttles faster after the first 3 minute run!!!) and slightly burned heatsink with extremely hardened calk type powder material to scrape off. R9 290X survived and now has Thermalright TFX on it.

 

[T.Sharp]

Terrible. Beyond terrible. So terrible you shouldn't give your worst enemy this stuff. Avoid unless you want Thermal throttle in seconds (throttles faster after the first 3 minute run!!!) and slightly burned heatsink with extremely hardened calk type powder material to scrape off. R9 290X survived and now has Thermalright TFX on it.

Good to know! Wonder how they measured the W/mK rating of that stuff. In the datasheet, it says it's a water based suspension, designed to cook off and leave a dry coating of boron nitride.

How does the TFX compare to Gelid Extreme / Kryonaut? Seems like some good stuff.

 

[wuttman]

What is coollab liquid EXTREME? It's like 3x cheaper than Ultra, what the catch?

 

[Kana Chan]

Appears to be graphene/diamond mix but it doesn't look like a high wattage test though. What language is that?

 

[KENJI512]

I have Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut EXTREME - which is upgraded version of Kryonaut and comes with nice paste dispencer.

Is it good?

Hard to tell. Maybe I give too much of it... maybe my CPU is not a good bin...

But my Ryzen 5950X + Kraken X73 top mount exhaust, at mostly 35% (idle) 40-60% (high cpu usage) have this temps:
idle: 50'C
Chrome browsing: 55-60'C
COD:Warzone: 71-73'C (with spikes when loading a map to 82-85'C
Cyberpunk 2077: 80-85'C

Low CPU usage temps went a bit higher with F34 BIOS on X570 Aorus Master 1.2. Previously I had about 40-45'C at idle.