liquid metal 6700k

porina · August 28, 2017

First time using liquid metal, here with Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut. The CPU had previously been de-lidded but I had thermal stability problems with it. I don't have numbers any more, the delid certainly helped a lot, but temps rose after a few months. Initially I used Noctua paste, 2nd time round I found some old MX-2 which was thicker, but that eventually started hotting up too.

After taking some "before" temps, I applied Conductonaut sparingly and... found while 2 cores were icy cool, the other two were baking under stress. Not good. I feared I was a bit too sparing, and put more TIM on, and that did the trick. I think the mistake was the 1st time it was a smear, 2nd time there was enough to give a visible coat. So while you don't want to over-do it, don't under do it either.

Before core temps were 80, 76, 78, 73C. After was 72, 69, 71, 68, giving differences of -8, -7, -7, -5C. Same stress test was performed, in the form of 8 threads of 64k in-place FFT Prime95 29.2. It was left to settle for 17 minutes with the 120mm AIO on it. Ambient was around 27C at the time of the "after" results, I forgot to check on the "before" but it might have been slightly cooler as it was earlier in the day before the sun kicked in.

Let's call it an average drop of 7C compared to the previous de-lid. I was kinda hoping for more. Are those reporting 15-20C drop comparing pre-delid to after with liquid metal? What is a more reasonable delta post delid with conventional and liquid metal TIM?