Liquid metal on GPUs

hey guys bill zoid here and this will hopefully be a rather short video about uh liquid metal on gpus um and uh yeah let's just get right into it so first of all uh this what we're looking at right here is a very low quality picture of an hd7972 vapor x uh three gig card that i got sent as fan mail because it doesn't run and i think it's pretty obvious from this picture why it didn't run i mean it might still not run i've cleaned it there's no more short circuit on the memory power rail but um that doesn't mean it runs yet there could still be like liquid metal bridging uh data lines or something and then it's like okay well i guess i'm using the card as a parts card or for practicing desoldering memory chips whichever i find more interesting um but hopefully it just works after the clean that would be ideal if it just works after getting clean that would be perfect but uh yeah so i don't think like personally i don't put liquid metal on gpus um i do put liquid metal on cpus i think putting liquid metal on the cpus is a perfectly sensible thing to do um but i don't think it's worth it on gpus because uh when you put liquid metal on a cpu you get your you know five to maybe 30 degrees celsius temperature reduction actually possibly more like it really depends how much heat you're trying to you know run through the cp like how much power you're trying to run through the cpu and the more power you're pushing through the cpu the bigger the the cooling improvement that you get out of switching from thermal paste to liquid metal um but the thing is after you get your you know temperature reduction on a cpu you can go and crank up the voltage and you get more overclocking headroom out of that and therefore putting liquid metal on a cpu is in my opinion at least somewhat worth it and relatively low risk because you can always take the cpu out of the motherboard uh if like if you spill the liquid metal on the motherboard uh you know like yeah i guess you'll have to get a new motherboard but it's not as bad as if you spill liquid metal on a gpu where literally the entire thing becomes useless um i mean it would still be better if your motherboard didn't die but yeah i think uh motherboard like cpus are in my opinion a little bit lower risk applications of liquid metal than gpus even though i think if you got liquid metal into the cpu socket you'd be completely screwed anyway so i don't know um maybe maybe that's uh not really the correct way to think about it anyway but that that's how i think about it like it's easier to deal with liquid metal on cpus than it is to deal with liquid metal and gpus now um on a gpu if you put liquid metal on it you get your 10 to 20 degrees celsius temperature reduction and that's it because on modern gpus you don't get voltage control so i don't know why you're putting liquid metal on it because you it's not like you can use the extra thermal headroom to push the clocks higher or at least not significantly higher yes the uh typical gpu boost algorithm will give you like 10 20 megahertz more core clock uh just by reducing the temperature you might be able to push the slider like you know one step higher than before um i don't really think putting liquid metal on on gpus is worth it um because you don't have voltage control if you had voltage control and the gpus did scale with voltage then i'd say hey you know like not not a terrible idea but um i really think for modern gpus it's a total waste of time now um that doesn't mean i i'm gonna like you know like you shouldn't do it um i'm just saying you're wasting your time so um but what you should know when putting liquid metal on gpus is that um it's not enough to just protect the smds directly around the core and admittedly the owner of this card didn't even do that right like um there's no protective uh anything over the uh multi like actually this is all ceramic capacitors isn't it yeah this is all multi-layer ceramic capacitors so yeah they they didn't put anything uh all over the the smd components around the gpu core and you know that's bad and most people like you know you show them this picture and their immediate reaction is like oh they didn't you know protect the the smd components around the core but the thing is there's really not that much of a problem in my experience with liquid metal spills because the main concern with liquid metal is that it sticks to solder and the reason it sticks to solder is that it's based on gallium and tin and indium and other metals that are added to um you know tweak the uh physical properties of the liquid metal alloy but the main point is that liquid metal contains tin lead-free solder is basically 99 tin at least most lead free solder is like 99 tin um and so that means when you have this like tin based alloy meet this other tin based alloy uh they just kind of like well the liquid metal just readily dissolves solder right because they're they're kind of the same thing um and so the main concern with having liquid metals spill on your you know smd components is like yes it'll you know short them out and then the card won't start um or maybe it will start and die which would but generally it probably won't start like most power like most gpu vrms have some kind of short circuit detection mechanism uh so that they don't boot up with like a massive short circuit on them um so yeah but anyway so you know you have your short circuit but the bigger concern is that the liquid metal could dissolve dissolve the solder that's holding the components in place and so when you go to clean it you're gonna take off the components but the thing is uh that takes a while um and this card which uh you know like it took a couple months for me to take like get a look at this thing um like none of the components came off when i cleaned it like i've cleaned the cart up and and yeah all the components are still there honestly you can't even tell that anything really interacted with them even though they are like just bare solder um you know and some of them really got like a you know quite quite a lot of liquid metal exposure over here and there and the thing is they're fine like none of them came off when i cleaned them and it wasn't like i was being super delicate because i do have an awful lot of hd797ts a lot of them are dead so you know if i needed spare capacitors i i don't didn't really see that as like okay i didn't see that as a loss so i really wasn't being super gentle with them and everything stayed in place there's nothing fundamentally wrong with it so the smds here actually handled the liquid metal spill really well i mean yeah the car didn't run but this was fine no the part i was really concerned with when i saw this card was this right here and immediately it might not look like this is really a problem it's mostly just covering up the solder mask and this one test point over here but you know pcbs like uh traces and pcbs are made of copper so that's not going anywhere it's not like liquid metal is going to reduce a test point like that into a into a puddle there's not quite enough liquid metal to completely dissolve away that you know little copper test pad over there so that's not really much of a concern now the real concern is that that streak of liquid metal is because of this right here and now this is very bad or at least it could be really bad because after i clean the card there's no obvious short circuits on it anymore yeah short circuits on it anymore so maybe this didn't really get anywhere um but the main concern with something like this is if you get liquid metal under a memory chip or under the gpu core it's not coming out right because it sticks to solder and there's no way to get at it if it gets far enough under the memory chip or at least i'm not aware of any way to get it out if it gets under a memory chip and so if you get liquid metal that like bridges a couple solder balls under your memory chip or under your gpu core the only way that's getting fixed is if somebody you know desolders the core or desolders the memory chip and then reballs it and put it puts it back on the card and if you have a large liquid metal spill you know it makes it very hard like it'll be very difficult to know if like is it the liquid metal under the memory chips is it under the gpu core so you know then then you end up potentially having to like desolder like all of the memory chips and the core because it's just like well where did it go because the thing is liquid metal behaves a bit like mercury in that it likes to you know form little balls that roll all over the place and get stuck under things and cause havoc um on electronics um and so that like so the thing with putting liquid metal on gpus is the the typical advice of like oh you should just you know protect the smds directly around the core that doesn't really achieve anything in my opinion like you know yeah it'll to stop the whole like oh the smds are shorted out the card doesn't start situation but it doesn't fundamentally protect the most fragile part of the gpu which is you know the solar balls under your memory chips the solar balls under your gpu core if if liquid metal gets there you're super screwed um so if you're going to be putting liquid metal on your gpu you need to do something about the gap under the memory chip and under the core and personally i'd probably just put like plasti-dip around the memory chip um like just enough to sort of stick to the sides of the memory chip and and sort of go a little bit under under the memory chip and hold it uh stay in place uh you could probably also use like high temperature silicone uh i guess if you were very handy with hot glue you could probably form a little barrier around all of the chips with just hot glue that could also work um now there's like there's a lot of options you just need something that's not conductive and doesn't have any like one of the concerns would be especially on like high speed memory standards like gddr6 and gddr6x with gddr5 i don't really think like gddr5 shouldn't be too sensitive but um gddr6 and gddr6x might be kind of sensitive to like changes in the capacitance like if the material has some weird capacitive properties that might be a problem uh if you use it on to like protect ag dddr6 or gddr6x memory chip or even the core because like ultimately the data i don't think the data signals run on the outer edge they're probably like a couple rows in but i don't know like i i'm unfortunate well i've not really studied the pin out of a uh gpu cores bga that much but anyway um yeah the point is if you're gonna put liquid metal on your gpu which i don't really think is worth it because you can't change the voltage after the temperature reduction you need to protect the vga um with something i don't care what it is but something because this is the second time that i've had somebody send in a card with a liquid metal spill um and i think this card got lucky because the other card had a short circuit and it was actually under the core like it just wouldn't go away with any amount of cleaning until i went and you know just sort of desoldered the core if because my theory at that point was like okay evidently the liquid metal has to be under the core there's there's no other reason that the card would still be shorted um and yeah it was um so yeah that's kind of the thing is just like if you're putting liquid metal on your gpu um you need to protect the bga um so yeah and this yeah and that's kind of that like you really need to protect the bga and obviously it's still a good idea to protect the smds but i i'm far more worried about like memory chips and stuff because like admittedly finding a replacement capacitor for the ones around the gpu core is generally going to be very difficult because i don't know how you'd even get the specs for a lot of them and some of them can be like signal coupling capacitors and so if they aren't the right value that's going to be a major problem but uh like the worst case scenario with liquid metal getting some of these components is mostly that the component is going to fall off the card whereas liquid metal getting under the chip memory chips or gpu core is like well good luck getting it back out so yeah and that's that's all i really well that's most of what i wanted to cover in this video other than that um yeah the heatsink for this card is uh well i'm not gonna trust it anymore because this all of this is like cast aluminum and uh gallium basically diffuses into aluminum and then breaks up the like crystal structure by sort of like the atoms of gallium basically get in between the the aluminum atoms and then the whole thing just sort of turns into dust uh so this is probably pretty structurally compromised in this area and also it just sort of keeps spreading through the the aluminum over time so yeah this this heatsink's probably gone at this point um but hopefully the card still works and yeah that's that's the main thing i wanted to say in this video is like personally i don't think putting liquid metal on your gpu is worth it but if you still want to do it please protect your memory chips and your gpu core um and the smds too like honestly if i was serious about running liquid metal on a on my one of my own gpus i'd probably prep the card like i'm planning to run it in a pool um because water is actually less dangerous to electronics than liquid metal is because water doesn't stick to things and water does dry liquid metal doesn't dry so um yeah anyway um that's it for the video uh hopefully this is somewhat helpful um oh i guess i should have also mentioned if you're like if you get if you apply liquid metal and it spills like this much you applied way too much okay like you basically want your liquid metal application to be just like if you apply way too little it's going to look very dry you want it to look just barely wet you don't want a puddle of liquid metal and i know if you've seen like tear downs of the say the playstation 5 or something uh those like like uh mass-produced liquid metal applications they use what i would consider a lake of the stuff but the thing is they always have like a gasket to make sure that it doesn't escape and spill all throughout the system and destroy everything um and i guess you could well if you can figure out how to make your own gas kits uh to you know prevent liquid metal from spilling all over the place uh good for you i have no idea what i would use to make them or like how yeah i i don't i've never looked into that so i don't know anything about doing that um but basically if you're hand applying liquid metal you want to uh it like it's better to have too little than to have too much because if there's too much you're gonna have a mess to clean up and that's never fun right because this is like like liquid liquid metal is just like you know like water and electronics don't mix well liquid metal is so much worse than water for electronics so yeah i don't really have like a good good comparison um for for like a substance that it's like oh yeah if it gets on something it's almost like if it gets in the wrong place it's almost instantly ruined um like water can kind of act like that but like you know water on things that aren't running is fine liquid metal on a turned off gpu is just as dangerous as liquid metal on a running gpu um so yeah that's that's kind of the thing anyway uh this video is getting now longer than it really needs to be so uh yeah that's it thanks for watching uh like share subscribe leave any comments questions suggestions down in the comment section below and if you'd like to support what i do here with actually hardcore overclocking i have a patreon there's a link to that down in the description below there's also the ahoc teespring store where you can pick up shirts uh hoodies posters you know the usual youtuber merch both patreon and teespring help out immensely with running the channel so it would be much appreciated if you check them out and that's it for the video so thanks for watching and goodbye

Channel: Actually Hardcore Overclocking

Views: 20,940

Keywords: Overclocking, PCbuilding, Buildzoid, AHOC, Actually, Hardcore, Hardware, OC

Id: MM0kVXU1rjA

Length: 17min 28sec (1048 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 19 2022