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Is Sony's liquid metal TIM the new standard to follow for others in the industry (console and/or PC)? Poll Inside!

Is Sony's liquid metal TIM the new standard to follow for others in the industry (console and/or PC)


  • Total voters
    257

JimboJones

Member
I think for a stationary space limited console it's a great solution but for PC which tend to be bigger and will have better air flow there are other options to consider before resorting to using it. I guess you would also have the option for water cooling instead if your concerned with thermals?


Laptops maybe be an area going forward but might be an issue as their ment to be mobile.
 
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skneogaf

Member
I hope some tech youtuber is going to take their PS5 apart and replace the liquid metal with plain old Arctic Silver just to see how it affects temps. I don't think the liquid metal hype crowd would be all too pleased with the results.

Ask Steve from gamers nexus, he'll definitely be interested in testing the difference.
 

reksveks

Member
It might be interesting but honestly doubt it will have an impact on pc gaming. The other solutions are great already and just alot more easily applied so there isnt the enough reward to overcome the risk.
 

Grinchy

Banned
There's a lot of variables at play, so it's hard to make a definitive statement. I just hope that Sony did the proper research and long term testing of their liquid metal solution with the heatsink they're going to use on the PS5 because incompatible metal combinations can lead to corrosion or degradation.
Something tells me that the people in charge of the multi-billion dollar venture know everything we do from watching 3 YouTube videos on the subject plus a little bit more!
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
Something tells me that the people in charge of the multi-billion dollar venture know everything we do from watching 3 YouTube videos on the subject plus a little bit more!
They said this was in development for 2 years, and Sony generally does good engineering work, so I'm decently confident that they've come up with a viable solution. That still doesn't mean that they've come up with a fool proof solution, however. Regular thermal paste is a tried and true solution that doesn't have some of the risks that come with liquid metal. Even if Sony has developed this for 2 years, that must mean they're real life longevity testing has been less than that. It'll probably still hold up after 5 to 8 years, but as of this point we can only compare it to PC test cases which aren't going to be the same. Metallurgy is a tricky science and what looks good on paper doesn't always manifest 100% in real life.

The new mechanical issues like potential shorts on the motherboard or higher risk of user error if anyone tries to open their PS5 and fix it themselves must also be taken into consideration.
 

TBiddy

Member
I found this poll option funny:

"Flat out No. Prefer the other solutions - don't care about huge shells (PC cases or consoles)"

Considering the PS5 is gargantuan, OP must certainly be mistaken...
 

skneogaf

Member
Long term I'm interested as an awful lot of pc users say it needed replacing due to drying out.

I'm quite sure that's what sony spent 2 years doing, working out how to use it without it drying.
 
At one point I considered going liquid metal for my CPU. Things looked beneficial at first, from simply seeing temperature comparisons alone. But then reading all of the maintenance and issues that come with it, I said hell to the nah. I've never had heat issues, even with a pretty sizeable OC on cpu/gpu.
 

Ironbunny

Member
I've had liquid metal under the hood for 5 years now. No problems what so ever and the temps havent changed. Bequiet just came out with a water cooling aio that you can use liquid metal with so I think this will be the next trend.
 
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smbu2000

Member
The gallium in liquid metal can also corrode or dissolve the metal in your heatsink and turn the liquid metal into dust as it bonds with the heatsink.
Aluminum is definitely a no-go. Copper will corrode more slowly. Nickel plated materials tend to do better against the gallium.

That combined with the risks of leaking onto other parts of your components and shorting them out are some of the reasons why liquid metal is not in widespread use on PCs.
You only gain a few C difference versus quality thermal paste so why bother in a PC unless you are doing extreme overclocking (or delidding your older Intel IHS.)
I believe intel switched back to solder with 9th gen cpus, so even that is unnecessary.
 

regawdless

Banned
Liquid metal is great. I delidded my 8700k and got rid of the normal thermal paste. With liquid metal, it runs between 15-20C cooler.

But applying it during a real production comes with challenges because it's got some attributes that have to be taken into account.
I think Sony went with a very good approach here though.
 
Liquid metal is great. I delidded my 8700k and got rid of the normal thermal paste. With liquid metal, it runs between 15-20C cooler.

But applying it during a real production comes with challenges because it's got some attributes that have to be taken into account.
I think Sony went with a very good approach here though.

Thank you for contributing your experience. And to others as well who have done the same. I think the thread has gotten a nice contrast of PC folks who have actually worked with it, personally, and can vouch for its effectiveness and others simply doing dismissive troll posts on it.
 
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mrmeh

Member
Ugh. Comments. If anyone has already explained this apologies for repeating...

The smaller the chip the less surface area it has, with the advances that we get every year in transistor size chips are getting smaller which allows for smaller chips at the same power.

The PS5 CPU/GPU uses allot of power for a small surface area as it runs at a high frequency and to extract the highest frequencies out of a chip the chip uses a disproportionate amount of power related to performance gain.

The PS5 chip has a relatively small surface area to the amount of energy it uses/heat it gives out.

Most normal TIM has a limit to how much heat it can transfer per mm2 so can bottle neck heat transfer of small chips using allot of power. Liquid metal TIM can solve this problem and is especially useful for helping heat transfer in small high power chips.

It is less of a boost to bigger chips with a larger surface area as the normal TIM's heat transfer limit will not reached so is just a slightly better TIM (couple of degrees cooler). On high power smaller chips that do reach normal TIMs Heat transfer limit it can be much more beneficial.

Using liquid Metal TIM is Sony's solution to having a small highly clocked chip and may have been the only way there design was viable, a good solution to the specific problem.

For other scenarios having to deal with the issues of Liquid Metal TIM is not worth a few degrees drop in temp.
 
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kuncol02

Banned
We don't typically have the cooling issues that consoles have because the form factor is larger, fans are more abundant, and liquid cooling in becoming more common.
It's not about size of cooler, but ratio of power used by chip to it's area. It's not needed on PC unless you have some really heavy OC.


Liquid metal is great. I delidded my 8700k and got rid of the normal thermal paste. With liquid metal, it runs between 15-20C cooler.
And how much of that is because of LM and not getting rid of shitty Intel paste?
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
It's a new standard indeed for clocks to jump higher in both CPU/GPU parts. Now 5.0GHz Zen3 might be using it? Also RDNA2.
 

ghairat

Member
Liquid Metal has been available to the PC market for a very long time already, there's a reason it's not commonly used. The PS5 using it isn't going to change that.

LOL, why comparing the PC market with the console market? For example, SSD is a new thing in the console market as a standard and has already changed not only the direction of the console market but also the PC market.
 

mrmeh

Member
PC CPUs are user changeable and do not come with heatsinks attached. As Liquid metal is conductive if young jimmy cack hands gets it all over their motherboard or inappropriate parts of the CPU it will short and break them.

So its not something that would come as standard from Intel/AMD. One approach they have been doing is to solder a heat spreader on to the CPU to increase surface area. More chance of it happening on Graphics cards but then the more expensive ones tend to have big chips with large surface areas.

May be seen in laptops but as it took Sony two years to be happy with it and Liquid TIM has been around a while I'm guessing it was nailing the manufacturing and application that was the issue.
 
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Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
Laptop manufacturers have started using it. Wish people would stop acting like it's new and a game changer that the PS5 uses something that's been around for a while.

It's a new thing for pre-assembled computers. And we're seeing different approaches, Sony went with a proprietary mix using a containment setup while Asus is buying thermal grizzly and masking the pcb with a protective layer (that's what I see in the video).
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Of course, everything Sony does is da best!

tenor.gif
 

Yoboman

Member
Well, some people make it so easy to spot their fanboyism it just makes me lazy to even point it out.

We are reaching such a level that I'm questioning myself why should I. It's already self evident to anybody not caught in the super fanboy mentality.



I knew you would love that post, Bo.

OhgOv73.jpg
 

gspat

Member
liquid metal brings with it a lot of issues.
for example, you have to make sure it's not leaking and you have to make sure it's not evaporating/replace it when evaporation is becoming an issue.

that is simply not an attractive solution for basically any normal PC user or any normal consumer product.
I've never heard of it evaporating?
 

sublimit

Banned
There's so much salty "concern" in this thread for a high-end solution that Sony has been working on it for two years that i absolutely love it.😁
 
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I hope some tech youtuber is going to take their PS5 apart and replace the liquid metal with plain old Arctic Silver just to see how it affects temps. I don't think the liquid metal hype crowd would be all too pleased with the results.

Don't you think sony would have thought about that?
They aren't going to use liquid metal for the sake of using it!
 

skneogaf

Member


I can't imagine it be put on much different than this as we are told Sony have a fully automated building ps5 system or something.
 

cormack12

Gold Member
ejetgq7etur51.jpg


Sony tackled the issue by sealing the die and the compound hermetically under the radiator. We've seen this on their patent, but couldn't interpret it earlier.

You can see on the pic that there's a seal around SOC chip with a tiny gap around.

Gap is for the thermal expansion of LM. If it was sealed flat, there would be constant pressure build-ups during heating up which might have lead to die degradation.

It's clearly visible on the patent, that this tiny gap creates a compartment around the SOC, and all conductive elements are sealed under and around it.



Providing the CPU has around 40W TDP and GPU can be estimated up to 140W, this is a really nice solution. I think that PS5 has to run cool, not for the sake of being quiet, but for the necessity of high clocks speed. OC 1.0.1 - to increase the clock you either push more voltage or lower the temps, usually both until you hit the wall.

Sony had to keep the temps low, to be able to hit 2.23 GHz without pushing more voltage. And it's very much connected to the SOC architecture approach they took (vide Mark's explanation on Road to PS5 presentation). The variable clock rates and the AMD smart shift are limiting clocks to a fixed power budget, but when you keep the temps at bay, the same power budget allows you to crank the clocks higher.
 
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