Liquid metal thermal paste

[Sailindawg]

http://www.frozencpu.com/thr-26.html?id=KAGmsSCh

Any body try this stuff yet ? Sounds interesting, may be the next best thing since AS5.

[hixie]

"will cause damage to aluminium parts, do not let this product come in contact with aluminium parts."

Doesn't sound too good already. :(

[Cooper]

Tried it on my CPU(with IHS on) and GPU. If you have only copper sinks - no problem at all. Just be carefull when aplying this stuff - it`s conductive ;)

[uwackme]

Makes you think, if you wanted to screw someone bad, who had an aluminum engine in thier car...OMFG.... that stuff is dangerous as hell.

[topaimz]

The new 2006 Audi's are almost entirely made from Aluminum...
(Chasis, Engine casing, etc.)

Guess what you can do to your rich bastard neighbour's ~$150,000 A8
with this stuff ;)

[NickS]

The new 2006 Audi's are almost entirely made from Aluminum...
(Chasis, Engine casing, etc.)

Guess what you can do to your rich bastard neighbour's ~$150,000 A8
with this stuff ;)

Hehe, I have a tube of this stuff but I'm way to much of a chicken to use it, SOO, I'm going to re-sell it on eBay and get like $20 profit haha. People pay rediculous amounts of cash for it on eBay, it's funny. :woot:

Nick

[WC Annihilus]

Cheaper here: http://www.svc.com/coolab.html

[NickS]

That is where we got it from :).


It's on eBay though, as neither me nor my father trusts it. He accidentally bought it, and didn't know it killed aluminum lol.

Nick

[adamwinn]

I'm not terribly afraid of it, especially after learning to prep a system for phase cooling. With a little bit of varnish or clear nail polish I think this could be a pretty safe way to go. (As long as it doesn't eat varnish...)

[weezer134]

maybe im retarded, but i don't quite understand how metal can eat metal.

thats why i hate chemistry!

[Cooper]

Well it doesn`t exactly eat it. Aluminum just corrodes under this substance.

[Freebo]

Stuff looks nasty. ill stick with my Shin-Etsu

[Cooper]

Well this stuff improoves load temps about 3-5C on air - ain`t that bad for just thermal compound :D

[Celeron Gamer]

I love this part :D :


"NOTE: If you manage to inject yourself or a friend with the Liquid PRO, we will be quite happy to submit a description of the event to the Darwin Awards as the Liquid PRO is highly toxic."

[Freebo]

I love this part :D :


"NOTE: If you manage to inject yourself or a friend with the Liquid PRO, we will be quite happy to submit a description of the event to the Darwin Awards as the Liquid PRO is highly toxic."


hahahaha.. thats good! :slap:

[jsriolo]

Aluminum is very reactive even though it seems almost inert under normal conditions. It's just that when exposed to air a thin layer oxodizes very quickly on the surfance and makes a kind of shell that protects the rest of it. However, then exposed to mercury this shell doesn't form. It just oxodizes like crazy. So I'm just going to assume that this stuff has mercury in it... That probably has something to do with it being toxic too.

[Black Phoenix]

If it have mercury it can't be sold on any part of europe... the rest of the world i don't know...

[Sailindawg]

If it have mercury it can't be sold on any part of europe

In don't think it has mmerrcury in it, it just acts like mercury in that it's a liquid. How was that stuff to put on ?? Does it run or droop ?? For only a 2-3 degree gain, I think I'll stick with my Ceramique : ) Or I'd be inclined to try the Shin-Etsu stuff. Or just add a really obnoxiously loud fan.

[Repoman]

Are naked cores Aluminum? Don't think so but it's worth asking.

a 3-5C drop could mean a lot in my current setup

[Thrilla]

I wonder what's their formula ;) 8'C drop on mine vs. AS5, and doesn't eat aluminium, hehehe
The following pics are my paste on alu hs, and the paste on my tongue
I guess their's is gallium based, with some tin, but how on earth did they make it toxic...
http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/1290/dsc004664zi.th.jpg (http://img158.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc004664zi.jpg)http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/2154/dsc004674mm.th.jpg (http://img158.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc004674mm.jpg)http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/8760/dsc004683of.th.jpg (http://img158.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc004683of.jpg)http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/2881/dsc004709tk.th.jpg (http://img220.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc004709tk.jpg)

[adamwinn]

Its Gallium for sure with an addition of tin and who knows what else. But they claim its 100% metal alloys.
The nice thing about that is it means no solid particles at all. IE: You can lap your heatsink to a mirror finish and get fantastic results, unlike with traditional thermal paste. Even AS5 or Ceramique suffers when used on a mirror finish heatsink because of the size of the suspended particles in the compound not having anywhere (pits & holes) to go to when the heatsink is compressed against the processor.

Gallium doesn't technically eat aluminum, it melts it, forming an interesting alloy. If used VERY sparingly you can cold-weld aluminum peices together with gallium.

Coollab's says that if used on a mirror finish heatsink then the ideal application of their thermal interface material will be so thin its transparent. Pretty cool eh?

[Repoman]

I wonder what's their formula ;) 8'C drop on mine vs. AS5, and doesn't eat aluminium, hehehe
The following pics are my paste on alu hs, and the paste on my tongue
I guess their's is gallium based, with some tin, but how on earth did they make it toxic...
http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/1290/dsc004664zi.th.jpg (http://img158.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc004664zi.jpg)http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/2154/dsc004674mm.th.jpg (http://img158.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc004674mm.jpg)http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/8760/dsc004683of.th.jpg (http://img158.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc004683of.jpg)http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/2881/dsc004709tk.th.jpg (http://img220.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc004709tk.jpg)

Where did you get it? I want :cool:

[STEvil]

I wonder what's their formula ;) 8'C drop on mine vs. AS5, and doesn't eat aluminium, hehehe
The following pics are my paste on alu hs, and the paste on my tongue
I guess their's is gallium based, with some tin, but how on earth did they make it toxic...
http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/1290/dsc004664zi.th.jpg (http://img158.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc004664zi.jpg)http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/2154/dsc004674mm.th.jpg (http://img158.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc004674mm.jpg)http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/8760/dsc004683of.th.jpg (http://img158.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc004683of.jpg)http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/2881/dsc004709tk.th.jpg (http://img220.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc004709tk.jpg)

arsenic is my guess.

[adamwinn]

they actually claim its non-toxic on their website

[Sailindawg]

8'C drop on mine vs. AS5

Thrilla, are you using air cooling ? if so, what HS ? 8 degrees is inline with the advertisement. How thin did you apply it ?

[Thrilla]

I made that myself, lol
It's been over 12 hours, I spread it around, no trace of any damage or reactions... I still don't get how theirs ate that zalman so easily, :P
http://img235.imageshack.us/img235/8301/dsc004736km.jpg

EDIT: ya I used air cooling on a64 2800, with tt silent boost, it was a while ago using Folding at Home after an hour, stock no OC, stock fan speed as well.

The good thing about liquid metal is sensitivity, for AS5 it takes a few seconds to have a temp change, but for liquid metal it's almost instant (when I closed F@H, the temp dropped after just a second instead of 5-7 seconds on AS5)

Removal of this stuff is even easier, on lapped surface you can actually take it off and re-use it without any performance loss. But some of it sticks to un-lapped surface, fills the microscopic valleys.
http://img365.imageshack.us/img365/5274/dsc004742sw.jpg

[Sailindawg]

http://www.frostytech.com/permalink.cfm?NewsID=44900

Here's a pic of what this stuff did to the aluminum on a Zalman HS.

he good thing about liquid metal is sensitivity, for AS5 it takes a few seconds to have a temp change, but for liquid metal it's almost instant (when I closed F@H, the temp dropped after just a second instead of 5-7 seconds on AS5)

That's interesting. It took me a second to fully understand what you meant about "sensitivity". Heck it takes my Typhhoon with Ceramique a minute or 2 to cool down to stock temp after something that's been very cpu intensive.

[Thrilla]

That first pic is taken from Sci-Toys:
http://www.scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/thermo/liquid_metal/liquid_metal.html

LoL I had a huge discussion and log thread on overclock.net, then I tried selling it on there, and got banned, they even deleted my log...

That's interesting. It took me a second to fully understand what you meant about "sensitivity". Heck it takes my Typhhoon with Ceramique a minute or 2 to cool down to stock temp after something that's been very cpu intensive.
Both paste didn't cool all the way down to idle temp, but rather a 2'C drop or so.

[Sailindawg]

"If a drop of water is added to the resulting bead of liquid metal, the water combines vigorously with the aluminum, making a hot solution of caustic aluminum hydroxide."

Taken from the article you posted Thrilla. I can see it now, using that liquid metal TIM on a water cooling system, spring a leak and the whole shootin' match melts into one molten mass...........lol......

[Thrilla]

I used it with my last WC loop, I tried washing it off, no reactions, and since it doens't melt aluminium, there still isn't any reactions when water is present ;)

[NickS]

"If a drop of water is added to the resulting bead of liquid metal, the water combines vigorously with the aluminum, making a hot solution of caustic aluminum hydroxide."

Taken from the article you posted Thrilla. I can see it now, using that liquid metal TIM on a water cooling system, spring a leak and the whole shootin' match melts into one molten mass...........lol......

Spray some water on it!! :D

Nick

[Cooper]

Thrilla you made something similar to that GaIn alloy (Indium surely ain`t good for health) ? What metals did you used ? Did you compared your stuff with this one ?

[Thrilla]

Mine is also gallium based (probably the only choice for liquid metal), and some other metals, but no, I haven't tested any TIM from cool lab yet, too poor for a sample lol.

[adamwinn]

Spray some water on it!! :D

Nick


The 'genius' at frosty tech did! Did you read his review? When the Zalman started to melt he tried running it under the sink to stop the reaction...

Do people have any common sense? He's probably the kind of guy who'd try to wash off lye with water... o_O Fight-Club anyone?

Anyway, I was doing some research on the most likely alloy of Gallium, Indium and Tin (GaInSn) and it appears that gallium actually expands when it freezes, much like water does. Further more, gallium can be supercooled to be forced into a liquid state below its freezing temperature.

Now going by what CoolLabs have said about this becoming a solid after a day or two seems to make sense. The material they are selling is supercooled and stored in the syringe to keep it from solidifing. After its applied, something starts the reaction which begins with a single crystal forming and the rest of the alloy follows lead and crystallizes and expands accordingly.

So you apply a small amount and after a little bit of time it begins to solidfy and expand to 100% fill any gaps between the two surfaces. Seems like a pretty solid idea to me.

But to the best of my knowledge, only mercury reacts to aluminum like that. Unless something about the GaInSn alloy gives it a similar property.

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/how20/09550e0796b84010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html

check that out. its a sweet article on how to destroy an airplane w/ mercury O_O
By the way, Gallium

[Thrilla]

Gallium and fields metal was used to replace mercury in thermometers and similar setup, and also coating glass to make mirrors.

It was fun playing with a chunk of gallium :P it melted in my hand.

Anyways, is expanding metal safe for the CPU?? I was afraid it might crack the core, so I only used mine for air/water setup, never tested with phase or LN2/DICE.

[Sailindawg]

The material they are selling is supercooled and stored in the syringe to keep it from solidifing. After its applied, something starts the reaction which begins with a single crystal forming and the rest of the alloy follows lead and crystallizes and expands accordingly.

I bet it's simply air exposure that helps to cure it. It may need a bit of ambient moisture to help it set-up and cure. Sounds like some very cool stuff. I may grab a tube of it from FrozenCPU.

[adamwinn]

its only $15 at svc- prolly cheaper than frozen

[BucNastyHater]

I made that myself, lol
It's been over 12 hours, I spread it around, no trace of any damage or reactions... I still don't get how theirs ate that zalman so easily, :P

Maybe your heatsink is not 100% Aluminum, and maybe the Zalman HSF was 100%. I'm not sure, but if an alloy is say, 50% aluminum-50% copper, a substance that is reactive with aluminum won't react with the 50/50 alloy because its an alloy and the composition is changed. The liquid pro may only react with pure aluminum. Just a thought. Please correct me if i'm wrong.

[amd3001]

IS there any CPU with a aluminum heatspreader?? it could be trouble if there is. I know some are tin plated copper.

[Thrilla]

I think all of them are tin plated copper for some heat-spreading action ;)

[Cooper]

ANd it`s not tin plated - it`s nickel

[maverik-sg1]

2 questions regarding this stuff - supplied a free sample by local enthusiast shop:

1) Is it suitable for sub zero cooling (phase)

2) I see the term adhere being used byt them - does just mean as an interface or is it actually real adhesion, therefore difficult to remove the cooler from the CPU once used?

Mav

[Cujo11]

can i use it with my asetek micro and silencer rev.6?? they arent copper but base is copper

[Sailindawg]

I see the term adhere being used byt them - does just mean as an interface or is it actually real adhesion, therefore difficult to remove the cooler from the CPU once used?

That's a good question. Thrilla, you seem to tbe the only one to have used this stuff, how is it to remove HS from the ncpu after this stuff has been on a while ?

[Ray_GTI-R]

...Now going by what CoolLabs have said about this becoming a solid after a day or two ... Seems like a pretty solid idea to me.
If you're an expert at ripping your CPU out of it's socket & potentially ruining your CPU and/or MB this stuff is really good. NOT :stick:

Avoid. :banana:

Avoid like the pague :banana: :banana:

Believe this http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?p=1393466#post1393466, specifically mesage #109 (by moi).

Any anyway - who wants metal that's liquid when you apply it then after 48 hours, becomes superglue :confused:

[DPGX]

Ok, i used some earlier and was deathly afraid of getting it on my LGA bracket on the motherboard. Any clue what these are made of? I obviously didnt put enough on, I figured wiping it with a cuetip until nothing was coming off would be adequate but I turned the computer on and was greeted with temps 15C hotter than with Arctic Ceramique. So my question now is, how much should I put on? And should I spread it on the processor or on the heatsink? Debating trying it again as I went back to ceramique. Also is there anything I should worry about regarding the LGA bracket?

[Ray_GTI-R]

If you are running cooler using something other than the now infamous un-Liquid Metal ... that's telling you something. Right? :stick:

Is the base of the heatsink badly finished? If so, you'll need more thermal interface material - or you will need to lap it. Yes, lapping can be done on an LGA heatsink :woot: - see this result http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?p=1423793#post1423793 (please reply there to ask how-to, as this thread might be going off-topic :fact: ).

Also, as I've found, correct fixing of the the LGA heatsink to the motherboard is very tricky due to the truly awful design of the Intel fasteners. If one fastener is misaligned you're heading for high temps. Check the following ...

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h216/Ray_GTI-R/PC/Dscn2413a.jpg
This one is of the upper part of the fastener and I've highlighted the main areas that need to be snug (no gaps).

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h216/Ray_GTI-R/PC/Dscn2412a.jpg
This pic shows the bottom of the fastener to illustrate how it should appear from under the motherboard.

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h216/Ray_GTI-R/PC/Dscn2414a.jpg
This shows the general orientation of the fasteners prior to, during AND after the install. If the fasteners aren't in this position then they are probably loose or broken.

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h216/Ray_GTI-R/PC/Dscn2415a.jpg
This shows the moulded arrrow on the top of the fastener and the correct orientation the fasteners prior to, during AND after the install.

NOTE - you should only ever twist the fastener in the direction of the moulded arrow if you are DISASSEMBLING the heatsink.

Final warning - read message #45 above and use un-Liquid Metal if you're feeling brave and never have to remove your heatsink from your CPU. :nono:

HTH, Ray

[DPGX]

Im just concerned about the intel brace that holds the cpu in the socket. Im using a Scythe Ninja with it, and its mounting perfectly because with the ceramique the temps are good. Im just not sure how much to use. I wiped it off to the point that no more would come off on a cuetip so im assuming I removed too much. I just dont want it to run onto any other hardware.

[DPGX]

I mustnt have used enough the first time I applied it. My temperature dropped 4C from my ceramique so far and it isnt cured yet. I did get the Scythe today too though so that is part of it im sure. Anyways Im looking foward to pushing this a little more tommorrow, im afraid to set my case upright lol ive got it sideways overnight priming so that should speed the process up. Im loading right now under 2 instances of prime at 35C although my PD805 is at stock speeds. Im interested to see how this will run oc'd after the liquid pro cures. Anyways thats all for now Ill post another update tommorrow.

[cromwello]

send osme to me and i will run an NMR and Mass Spec on it.( research labs of a chemdepart ment at uni). that will tell us exactly wats in it down the the particular proton shifts.:):):)