Tested for a Year: How Often Should You Change Liquid Metal? 

I would test copper vs nickel plated copper contacts. IHS and or cooler coldplate. In terms of deterioration, I've read the nickel is far less prone to staining or just bad chemical reactions.

i had a no boot problem with my radeon R7 260x that has a cooler with a cooper base plate i had to put more liquid metal on it because the copper absorbed the liquid metal be aware this card was being used for basic internet tasks, gaming, and mining when the system was idle. after 3 - 4 months i got the card to refuse to work until i added more liquid metal

@GamersNexus I decided my 7700k with conductonaut about a year ago and haven't encountered any issues with it as far as I can tell. One thing I'd be interested in finding out is how the application with bare copper affects long term aging. I know that liquid metal doesn't react with copper like it does aluminium, but it still leaves a layer. I've heard stories of this mild interaction actually drying out the liquid metal itself over time unlike zinc covered surfaces and this accounts for the change in temperatures. Could you check out the longterm effects of this? I recall your video on the replacement pure copper IHS replacements by rockit and I suspect they would be susceptible to this kind of drying over a stock IHS.

Hey, wo ist den Deutsches Interview, Alter? Dein Deutsch war doch ganz gut!

I got a different question i could not find an answer to anywhere. What is better for heat transfer, a soldered CPU, or a CPU with Liquid Metal between it and the IHS?

I 2nd that!

when ? its a long wait...

4th

@@gamingknight8514 5th

1 year isn't long enough :-(

Timmy Joe!

I love you Timmy Joe!!!

Hey Timmy Joe! Love your channel! Hope your sub box blows up soon!

Everytime Steve says he doesn't seal the IHS because it negatively impacts performance I have to say don't put it between the IHS and substrate put it around the IHS like caulking a window or sink.

timmy joe reviews your wife

TheWereCat deliding is the gift of the pc gaming gods. Its crazy what dropping temps do to performance.

or if intel did it right from start and soldered them wouldn't need to do this.

Jaggsta or if you knew anything liquid metal still yields better temps then soldering. Yes soldering is prefered for the rest of us. But deliding is best for the best overclocks and temps. But thats why im excited for the new i9. If its soldered and reviews show the OCs and temps are awesome, then im jumping there from my 6700k in a heart beat.

The issue is not really the lack of solder, its the amount of space between the CPU die and IHS. By deliding, you also remove the glue which makes it able for the IHS surface to be closer to the die, you also remove the excess amount of thermal compound and replace it with really thin spread of liquid metal. You will have a huge improvement in temperatures even if you used a normal paste during the delid its just that once you decide to delid, why not go all the way and slap LM on it as well as that will improve the temps even further.

TheWereCat yup this. I really want to delid my 6700k to do 4.9ghz. I can currently do 4.8ghz at a mere 1.325v fully stable. But temps hit 80 to 85c at full load. In normal gaming loads, it is kept well below 80c. Never hits 80 during gaming. But if i delid i can further drop temps and increase clockspeed. But im a coward and dont want to risk that 1% chance of failure.

Please dont call what they do science, it isnt. This isnt a bash of gamers nexus, its just that scientific method exists and GN doesnt follow it, I would think because its impractical to do so. For example for this test they would need a large number of identical setups, then publish their methodology and findings for peer review, then separate independent teams would need to do the same tests and find the same results, only then are we getting close to science. GN does great work, but they dont do science.

@@kidShibuya nice gatekeeping!

Thanks, taipei 101!

+Nathan Brown: You are confusing scientific method with academic publishing. Related, but not the same thing.

@@GamersNexus thanks, I love your work, just hate what has happened to the name of science in the media due to its loose usage. It's my trigger lol.

This is the kind of comment I like to see, nice!

That's from our Patreon backers!

they have a good taste!

Snowflake!

that's what I was thinking

lol I thought you meant stuffed as in taxidermy, glad to see it's only a stuffie

I see black q-tips , they are specialized one for that task ??

@@danbigboss6484 I believe so

Whats the temperature on those cpus?

@@famousfighter2310 I wolud have to dig up old screenshots but from what I remember in the mid to high 60s in gaming and workloads without avx.

@@d3nso_ any repasting over 4 years?

@@tr0ublem4kerWZ switched to another platform a few years ago but until then still no problems with the original LM application. The temps did rise a bit after 5 years but I think a simple repaste with fresh LM would have solved that.

That would have been interesting to see, but I don't particularly care what it looks like if the performance is the same as new.

They neclver show that shit

I assume because theres probably not much to show. I would think that it doesn't look very.

@@dustinandtarynwolfe5540 Not good enough. This GN not LTT he should show the full details.

@@therealb888 what does appearance have to do with performance

Same. Just replaced the liquid metal on my 8700k after 3 years. Temps were steadily going up after 2.5 years. Started at about 25c idle and went to about 50c idle. Back to normal now. Longer term testing would definitely be beneficial for viewers.

@@chrisbryan89 hey, was there any kind of corrosion?

Go 5.0GHZ! Noctua ND15?

At first I thought you ran Prime for 7 months, I was like "what madlad does that"

@Legiro The T-800 is on its way a year late because of time travel weather. It will optimize your system.

The T-1000 (Terminator 2) wanted to kill John Connor. The T-800 from Terminator 1 wanted to kill Sarah Connor.

@@angolin9352 I bet you're a riot at parties

Why would a man be carrying a red dwarf with him?

man bat what motherboard are you using?

Yes! But, still completely killing contrast in the image. Get it higher up and add some better barn doors for the camera and light!

I agree, but didn't want Steve to yell at me. :-)

We can't get it higher up and we are still working on the shot. We just moved.

Sorry, I was just nitpicking about the hair light contrast! The office and everything else looks amazing. Congrats on the upgrade!

Yep, all meant to be helpful. Not hacking on GN.

For me, it was looking for hype-free information about the difference between the 4GB and 2GB GTX 960 cards.

What difference in temps did you see on the GPU?

In that time period or from going from the stock cooler to the water block? Hard to say if the temperature actually fluctuated in those 2 year because i never wrote down my initial results, i also modded the card so that the power limit is open. At an ambient temp of 26°C my idle gpu temp in the warmed up loop is around 28-29°C and in furmark i reach around 45-49°C. Note that my GPU reached top 1 of the GPUPI 32B benchmark scores on HWBOT in its class so when i say its modded i really mean it. :)

I use thermal grizzly's liquid metal on everything. No problems so far

lame

It just goes to show the lack of intellectual integrity by Gamer's Nexus.

Just how many people use a computer case that's just a skeleton?

For you to some how to insinuate that all gamers are fat nasty slobs is fucking ridiculous.

I use an IC Graphite thermal pad on my Ryzen 1700 and preforms on par with the old liquid metal I was using. Was not expecting graphite to work as good as it does. I love it because I can reuse the same pad unlimited amount of times which is great for me since I take apart my custom loop and clean it on a regular basis.

I'd like to see the graphite thermal pad compared to things like regular

I asked about this a few months back and he said in an ask GN episode that they'd try to do it. I don't expect it to be any time soon now that RTX has released though. I'm also super interested to get tech Jesus' take on them so hopefully they eventually get around to it.

I tried Panasonic soft pgs with the wraith prism cooler and results were similar to thermal paste (1 or so worse degree worse). The cooler applies a lot of pressure, but the surface of the cooler didn't look very smooth. There were some small marks on the cooler and gaps around the heat pipes that are not ideal for graphite.

Yeah, would be nice to watch that rn

The reason to re-test with fresh liquid metal and thermal compound is to show that any degradation (and there was some) is due to the cooling system itself becoming less effective.

You have to drink it to get it behind your ihs

Aw, now I gotta start over.

You surely wouldn't get old.

If you are lucky you may not hit another birthday ever again.

What temps do you get? Also, do you get really big temp spikes when near idle? I occasionally see a 10*C spike on my 7700k, but obviously much better temps compared to Intel's compund. I used Coollaboratory Liquid Pro

@@fieldcar sits around 43c in games. I've got a corsair water AIO on it. It's been mining at night. Gets closer to 50c when mining.

Not true, not in my case anyways. I noticed repasting every 4 months is the best for Thermal Grizzly Liquid Metal.

@@richardhe5973 Yes the same for me in my Gtx 1080 Ti

@@richardhe5973 Agreed. I change every 4 months as well.

I just repasted after 1 year because temps were 90+degC and now is 60+degC...so i guess LM has to be changed after certain period

​@@EdAlvar Do you use liquid metal on a "nickel plated copper heat spreader" or on a "copper heatsink"? (for KillerKiKi's Gtx 1080 Ti I assume a copper heat sink, but neither you, nor Richard He nor 良否 RNG clarified this in my view important point) I think liquid metal between a silicon die and an IHS (which is a thin sheet of copper plated by nickel) shows few aging effect if any at all as shown by this 1 year thermal cycling test and following 4 comments (more can be found): TheWereCat: 2y delided 4770k, used Conductonaut. Temps haven't changed ExceptionalWorld: desoldered and delidded a X5675, runs now 10 years with the same liquid metal with 4,4 GHz every day, no change, always max. temp til 63°C sancus: Silicon Lottery has been selling thousands of LM CPUs for 3+ years now and has stated on their forums that they don't recommend ever changing the LM and they haven't seen or heard any reports of aging impact on performance. Ageo1111: Delid 3770k OC 4.8 for approx 5 years. Never reapplied liquid metal. Still have extremely low temps under load. But applying liquid metal on PURE COPPER will show strong aging effects as follows: The gallium in the liquid metal will migrate into the copper to form a thin sheet of CuGa2 alloy. This sheet thermal conductivity is lower than that of copper, but due to its thinness it has practically no effect (the CuGa2 thermal effect is similar to the effect of plating the copper by a thin layer of nickel). However, the percentage of Gallium in the liquid metal is permanently reduced by this migration process and a lower percentage of gallium means the melting point of the remaining liquid metal is permanently increasing, the liquid metal is becoming a solid (hard) metal because the migration of gallium only stops when all gallium is gone into the copper to form CuGa2. The reaction of gallium with copper is in my understanding the reason why some people experience a "dry out", a hardening of the liquid metal, an increase of temperature, ultimately thermal throttling. In my understanding you need to separate liquid metal into 3 application scenarios: 1) Aluminum: Absolutely forbidden/dangerous (the aluminum reacts very fast with gallium and the resulting alloy is not only a thermal isolator, but is also not solid/stable {gets "eaten away"}) 2) Copper: Possible to use, but the liquid metal need to be renewed regularly (each 6 months or whichever period the liquid metal is still possible to remove easy enough under the certain application case) 3) Nickel plated copper: Nickel is known to act like a barrier for many materials, this means the migration of gallium into the solid metal is very much reduced {in case of high quality thicker plating completely stopped?} resulting in very long usage time (I think it is save to assume several years, but only long term tests can show any long term limitation and dependence on the nickel layer thickness/quality) Concerning the silicon die it looks there is no reaction at all with the liquid metal, but when the liquid metal becomes hard it sticks quite strong on the die, because even though the surface looks flat for our eye there are tiny scratches/holes into which the liquid metal penetrated when it was liquid and which act as holding points once the liquid metal remain became hard. As silicon is brittle one has to be careful on physical damage to the die when removing hardened liquid metal by force. Unclear to me is, can the CuGa2 layer on copper act like nickel as a barrier to stop or at least reduce the speed with which the gallium is migrating into the copper. If so, an ever thicker CuGa2 layer may allow longer use time, like first reapplication of liquid metal after 6 months, 2nd after 1 year, 3rd after 2 years, ....?

On which of both interfaces did the liquid metal become hard? I assume no problem on "die - IHS", but on "IHS - cooler" the liquid metal got hard. Furthermore I assume the cooler is copper only (not nickel plated like the IHS)?

The way he spread it in another video was nothing to brag about.

We want to!

Speaking of they sell die guards on eBay to hold your processor in socket without the IHS

pretty sure De8auer has been working on a direct die guard, probably what Steve is waiting for since he knows the quality will be top notch

@@smokeyninja9920 I'm sure he has one for socket 2066 but I'd like one of his for my 8700k

mechanical forces cat near 90ºC could crack the die, micro-cracks and will be destroyed, any direct contact therefore should be avoided IMO

Damn, that would increase their technical information beautifully, I would love to see this too!

Your experience (15° increase over 2 years) is unusual, most people experience no change for Conductonaut/liquid metal applied on a delided CPU between die and IHS over many years. Have you applied Conductonaut between die and IHS? Is your IHS nickel coated where the liquid metal is in contact? Do you see any direct contact liquid metal - copper? Have you removed the silicone glueing the IHS to the PCB, so that the liquid metal can be minimum thickness? (In my understanding 15° increased temperature over 2 years associated with the liquid metal being hard/difficult to remove happens only when the liquid metal has direct contact to copper, which is normally not the case, unless you do something special)

did you apply the LM over the ihs? what is the result after 3 years? corroded the copper? did you notice something different? in temperatures and on the surface?

If you use Liquid Metal with Bare Copper, it'll have a reaction and from Copper Gallium alloy, ergo the "Few Months" it takes for that to happen. You really need a Nickel Plated Solution to work with Liquid Metal for long term (Many Years) use to prevent any real reaction. Yes you will get staining, but it doesn't affect temps.