Liquid metal in the laptop six months later

Houston, we have a problem

In early spring, for the sake of experiment, I replaced the thermal paste between the processor and the heatsink with a liquid metal. Everything was wonderful, but at the end of the summer I began to notice that under the keyboard it became somehow hotter than before. Previously, it was warm only from the left end, where the output of the fan nozzle.

I launched aida64 again, and there ...
')


Again, as before the application - the temperature of the processor under 100 degrees and throttling.
As so, in theory, after all, it should have been smeared and forgotten.

I open the bottom cover again.



A bit of dust on the fan, but nothing criminal.
I recollect responses about the accreted radiator and the processor.



But no, everything was ok. Radiator easily starred.
Well, under it ...



Hmm, more the word "liquid" is not applicable here. Everything turned into a fossil.





The surface of the processor is very hard and nothing sticks to it. Easily wiped off the remnants of a damp cloth.



But with a copper radiator it merged together. I had to use sandpaper. Still, a gray stain remains.



It was certainly possible to walk with a Dremel and cut off the upper layer deeper, but decided to try to leave it that way.

Some life teaches nothing

And again a magic drop.





I collect everything back and run aida64 -> system stability test



To evil haters, everything is wonderful again. No throttling and the temperature is below 70 degrees under full load.

Debriefing

So what was it?

Version # 1 of the comments to the previous article - “LM is badly getting on with pure copper (without nickel plating) and is degrading”. It may well be, which means that every half a year you will have to do an audit and update. Well, or next time I will try some good ordinary thermal grease to compare the maximum temperatures. Since there is no nickel-plated radiator.

Version # 2 mine is an open air connection. Perhaps under the cover of a conventional processor, if you seal the perimeter, everything will be fine in a year.

The same LM in my hospital under the cover of 7700k is about the same in time. But there was no change. He always at 5 GHz under air cooling, I think if the thermal conductivity also fell, it would be much more noticeable.

Sometime later I will look under its cover, is there still liquid metal there? ..