Liquid metal is superior to traditional thermal pastes, but at the same time it has certain disadvantages. Firstly, for its safe application, the area around the CPU / GPU die should be prepared to prevent leakage and short circuits, for example, in the factory, manufacturers use special sponges (as in the PlayStation 5). And secondly, it is far from compatible with all cooling systems, in particular, this applies to solutions with an aluminum contact plate.
The notorious enthusiast Roman “Der8auer” Hartung suggested in one of his recent videos to evaluate the consequences of liquid metal contact with an aluminum cooler. He received a GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card from one of the subscribers who complained about the high temperature of the GPU. It turned out that a gallium-based liquid metal was applied to the GPU, which, during operation, turned the contact area with the aluminum cooler into dust.
To eliminate this defect, Roman decided to mill the damaged area, removing about 0.5 mm of defective material. For correct installation on the video card, we also had to reduce the height of the cooling system mounts and use thinner thermal pads. Thermal Grizzly Hydronaut was applied to the GPU. After all the manipulations, the GeForce RTX 2060 video card worked in an acceptable temperature regime.
A source:
VideoCardz
