LM on GPU with water block safe?

[Tonberry]

Hi all...

 

I know that LM is bad for bare coper and aluminium,

but LM between a nickel plated coper GPU water block and the GPU die itself, is it safe and worth to have rather than a high rated thermal paste like Kryonaut?

 

Should I just use Kryonaut or fk it and go all out with LM for it? What are the pros & cons with LM in a custom loop GPU? It will be mounted vertically if this thing matters.

[GrockleTD]

IIRC it’s not really worth it, but I believe it should be fine

[Windows7ge]

I wouldn't use LM here because with a lot of GPU dies there's small capacitors surrounding the die itself. If you apply too much and it drips out when the GPU gets hot it may short these and could possibly kill it. With a vertical mount the LM will also try to follow gravity and could seep out all the more.

 

There's plenty of non-conductive compounds. Arctive Silver Polysynthetic Ceramic comes to mind. Do be careful if you go with that though. I found if you use that and run the system like a crypto-miner the paste will dry, adhere to the die, be very difficult to remove and may kill the GPU. So just watch your temps.

[5x5]

LM is not worth the risk. Use Kryonaut

[Cyracus]

Due to it being direct die cooling you don't see as much of an improvement, and given the risks as others have mentioned it really doesn't make sense to use liquid metal on a gpu, with a good paste you're looking at maybe a 1ºC difference. The real use for LM on graphics cards is shorting shunts to get more power, but you probably don't want to do that unless you don't mind the card dying on you

[Mick Naughty]

With the voltage ran on some cards it can be worth it on a great wc loop. But the long term pitting on the block and diffuser, I don’t like it. Especially as I tend to keep my hardware awhile and want it decent shape to sell when the time comes. 

[Zando_]

14 minutes ago, Mick Naughty said:

With the voltage ran on some cards it can be worth it on a great wc loop. But the long term pitting on the block and diffuser, I don’t like it. Especially as I tend to keep my hardware awhile and want it decent shape to sell when the time comes. 

^^^ It's never really fully removable, is just a headache to apply, and if applied wrong it'll kill the card. Unless you're really, really pushing the card I doubt it's even close to worth it. 

I run my Radeon VII on an EK block with Kryonaut paste and Artic thermal pads. Hotspot (the important part, what it throttles based off of) hits about 90C at 1.218v which is the safe max, I could probably push 1.3v for benching runs if I wasn't worried about the longevity of my card. The GPU hotspot normal max is 110C or so on the stock cooler, it throttles at 115C so I'm well below that. LM would at most gain me a couple degrees and IMO that's not worth the risk to a card that cost me $699. 

EDIT: oof just saw in the OP you're mounting it vertically, would defo avoid liquid metal. Like the name says it is more or less a liquid, vertical would have too much risk of it heating and flowing somewhere it doesn't belong if you applied even a tiny bit too much (you can use extremely small amounts and there's still excess, a little bit goes an extremely long way). 

[Tonberry]

All voted for no LM.. Approved!

Thanks for the inputs

 

Off to the build!

[Zando_]

4 minutes ago, PotatoCanDo! said:

All voted for no LM.. Approved!

Thanks for the inputs

 

Off to the build!

Hell yeah! What GPU and block BTW? 

[Tonberry]

2 hours ago, Zando Bob said:

Hell yeah! What GPU and block BTW?