My Liquid Metal Experience

[WarDaddy]

A couple fo weeks ago while rendering a video 100c on my cpu caught my eye, I knew that it was time to do something about it and after a nice research on google I decided to try them all. Undervolting, fan profile and replacing thermal paste, but I still wasn't happy with the results. Then I heard about this magical compound that would drop 10c even on a cleaned system! So, I was like, let's go for it! Today I got my tube and was really happy about it and after applying kapton tape and the lm the temps were even worse than before I knew something wasn't right therfore opened notebook again and while I was changing the tip 3 tear sized drops landed in my opened notebook, FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU, one splashed in the gpu, another one in the battery bay another one on the heatsink. Ok, I can fix this, tried to suck the lm back in the tube but popped the plunger out and more lm spilled all over the place So I unscrewed the tip and slowly pushed the punlger back in the barrel then put the tip back on and sucked in more lm and did this for 30 mins. Surprisingly I didn't loose any lm, anyway after applying more the second time temps were better but not what I expected. Too be sure I didn't put too much I opened it up again one last time and it was all fine, as last I made a new fan curve and flashed it and now everything is working as expected, no more fans at 100%

RESULTS HERE:

The laptop is an msi gt70 barebone from medion.

-0.090v repasted with prolimatech pk-2 twice and fan set to 100% when gpu/cpu hits 80c Also, there is 1c difference when the gpu is not overclocked.

Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut with cpu undervolt and fan set to 100% when gpu/cpu hits 80c

Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut with cpu undervolt and new fan curve!

If I'm not mistaken it looks like that the gpu heatsink is not making proper contact.

Well, thanks for reading I hope you had fun and if you have any suggestions let me know!

 

[R-T-B]

Copper heatsinks and LM aren't the best bedpartners... they work, but eventually some chemical process causes the LM to harden and sometimes notebooks dislike this, just FYI.

 

[biffzinker]

Copper heatsinks and LM aren't the best bedpartners... they work, but eventually some chemical process causes the LM to harden and sometimes notebooks dislike this, just FYI.

Found it still react with nickel plated copper from my experience.

 

[R-T-B]

Found it still react with nickel plated copper from my experience.

I've heard that, but haven't seen it on my TG conductonaut at least.

It STAINS everything mind.

 

[WarDaddy]

I've heard that, but haven't seen it on my TG conductonaut at least.

It STAINS everything mind.

Found it still react with nickel plated copper from my experience.

If you take look at the gpu heatsink you see that it didn't make good contact if I'm not mistaken, how would I proceed to fix that?

 

[fullinfusion]

Copper heatsinks and LM aren't the best bedpartners... they work, but eventually some chemical process causes the LM to harden and sometimes notebooks dislike this, just FYI.

There isn't an issue with a copper HS as long as the user re-pastes a few times.. The LM compound will be absorbed by the copper but in time will saturate and this issue wont happen any more.. Like a sponge will only soak up so much.. the base compound is gallium... coppers sponge.. once saturated there isn't a problem.. also with nickel no issues at all from my findings of a year now.

The principal component of liquid metal is Gallium, a soft metal that melts at slightly higher than room temperature (29C). It's nontoxic, unlike mercury. When combined with Indium and other metals, the melting/freezing point of the finished gallium alloy drops to nearly -19C. This means that at normal temperatures, liquid metal remains liquid. (And it shouldn't evaporate significantly, since the boiling point is 1300C[1])

To be more accurate, the liquid alloy is called "galinstan" - and the exact ratio of gallium, indium, tin, and other metals is proprietary.

When you buy liquid metal, whether it's coollaboratory liquid ultra (CLU), thermal grizzly conductonaut, or just straight up galinstan - you don't know exactly what's inside. (And there is reason to believe that the formulations are different since CLU and conductonaut have different viscosities)

But regardless, any liquid metal brand works well as a thermal interface material/thermal compound (TIM) because the stuff is temperature stable and has a high thermal conductivity of 16.5 W/(mK) {versus solder at 32-94 W/(mK), and corning TIM at 0.5-3 W/(mK)}.

Unfortunately, the problem with LM is that it's electrically conductive. Combined with its very unique consistency, this makes LM a potentially difficult material to work with. And - LM is very reactive to aluminum, and erodes copper and nickel to a lesser degree. Be careful with both how and where you apply it.
@MrGenius