Liquid metal removal

Live fast, die fast

Liquid metal is a FANTASTIC replacement for thermal paste, in terms of raw performance. A eutectic mixture of gallium, indium, and tin, LM is a runny, beady liquid at room temperature with an insanely high thermal conductivity of 73 W/mK (normal thermal paste has a thermal conductity of less than 13 W/mK). With a bit of pressure from a Q-tip, it wets metal and glass surfaces. When freshly applied, it provides performance unrivaled by any other thermal interface material (TIM) until recently.

Unfortunately, LM's practical risks and aging characteristics are far worse than ordinary TIM.

LM is electrically conductive, so a protective barrier has to be set up around wherever it's applied. This barrier can fail and kill the device, something we've seen in a lot of laptops.
LM ruins surfaces it's applied to. It doesn't matter if you nickle-plate the copper heatsink surface. LM creates considerable pitting and surface roughness, which impedes heat transfer.
LM oxidizes quickly, ruining performance. With heat and time, LM oxidizes and de-wets, resulting in air gaps that spread from the center of the processor. This ruins heat transfer, creates large temperature gradients between the wetted periphery and unwetted center of the chip, and shortens the lifetime of the device.

LM begins to degrade in performance as soon as a month after application, resulting in dried, crusty messes like what you're seeing below. That means devices with LM need periodic maintenance to maintain adequate levels of performance.

Live almost as fast, die never

If you want your device to last more than a few months without performance tanking to unusable levels, the only feasible option is to remove the LM and replace it with traditional TIM.

Traditionally, LM has been an incredibly difficult substance to clean off. It doesn't stick to common solvents, so the only way to remove it is through hours of elbow grease. If we offered this method as a service, it would cost hundreds of dollars and use an incredible amount of consumables.

We're now able to do it for $20. We clean the die and heatsink contact area of LM, moving it beyond the perimeter of the contact area but within the LM seal. We then apply PTM7950, which provides performance shockingly close to that of LM, but provides the same great performance for the entire life of the device.

Live fastest, die even more never

Providing ALMOST the same performance as LM? That's a compromise...which we've already worked around.

If you combine LM removal with a Flagship Tuneup to polish the heatsink contact area to a nearly perfectly-flat finish, we significantly exceed the thermal performance of brand-new LM! There's no other way to describe it other than magical.

If you're interested or have any questions, contact us at berkeley.the-it-club.org!

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