Liquid metal for PC cooling – asset or liability?

[neonkev]

Hi all,

Just finished up a project where I learned quite a bit about thermal interface materials (TIMs) as used in modern electronics. It involves voiding the warranty on a brand new computer of course.

This includes a look at the use of liquid metal (room temperature gallium based alloys), which is becoming increasingly popular.

Wrote up some of my findings here, maybe a few folks will find it interesting:

https://neonkev.com/2025/01/20/liquid-metal-for-pc-cooling-asset-or-liability/

Cheers

 

[mackerel]

Interesting read. I do wonder how the CPUs I've applied LM to in the past are doing now. They've been sold long ago. We're looking mainly at Coffee Lake era, maybe Haswell/Skylake too but I can't remember. "drying" wasn't well understood in enthusiast circles at the time but I had bigger problems with pumping of pasts on delid CPUs. Then again the stock IHS is nickel plated so not such a big problem there?

Still have a tub of home brew gallinstan somewhere.