IMHO they should just call it what it is, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galinstan instead of the vague "liquid metal" term, which probably evokes mercury and its negative connotations for a lot of people.
Also, it's slightly odd to see the prominent country of origin markings on the CPU --- I've not seen recent Intels marked in the same way.
"Liquid metal" is a relatively well-known term within this niche (i.e. those that would care about the type of thermal paste on their CPU), so it should be fine.
No they should not, because:
1. There are different liquid metal thermal interfaces on the market which has different alloys(i.e. Gallid ZHM-6).
2. Galinstan is a trademark of some company.
Gallium is liquid to 30C. The alloy Galistan used in this application is liquid to -19C. Unless you plan on storing your laptop outside on a bitterly cold winter day, letting your laptop drop to room temperature isn't a big concern.
No, the tin in it might be paramagnetic and be effected slightly by a super strong magnetic field, but both gallium and indium are diamagnetic so you ain't going to be able to do really anything to it.
I would also be worried if you did manage to effect it with some crazy strong million dollar electromagnet, you might cause it to wet to material you don't want it on and make it even more difficult to remove, but maybe that wouldn't happen.
Im my limited experience putting it on my computer, it is fairly difficult to get it to wet to a surface, so any extra stays beaded up like mercury and can be kind of moved around and brushed away with a cotton swab without too much trouble. But once it is wetted to a surface it would be fairly difficult and labor intensive to completely remove unless it is a mirror finish because it will want to stay trapped in the very bottom of even the tiniest little sanding scratches or machining marks.
Excellent write up! I also have a G15 (GA503RM), and the post made me wonder if I ought to be doing this as well. The temperature improvement makes a strong case. How much of a danger is the (nearly) escaping liquid metal on the CPU? Is this is something that could be frying a lot of Zepheri if it's not addressed?
The LM escaping shouldn't be an issue with silicone over the on-package capacitors and foam around it. If you aren't throttling I wouldn't really bother.
If you do end up attempting it removing the LM is easier with a syringe that can suction the larger blobs away. Could even just try to reapply the same LM you removed if it's just a pumpout issue
I would say if your laptop starts doing sudden thermal shutdowns then liquid metal should be your first suspect. However, I do have a slightly older all-amd variant (G513QY) which may behave differently. Comparing my case with the article, they noticed CPU throttling and had dark/black marks on the CPU, whereas I was encountering GPU thermal shutdowns with marks on both GPU and CPU.
Rough timeline for my laptop was:
14 months in, manually under-clocked discrete GPU to prevent thermal shutdowns
20 months in, complete cooling failure on GPU, replaced liquid metal with PTM7950
> There’s a thicker, different paste used for the eight GDDR6 memory chips around the GPU - make sure you don’t remove that from the chips or the heatsink, as it’s perfectly reusable. The thermal paste was quite dry, but isopropyl alcohol dissolves it and a good soak got it off easily.
I'm confused, are we reusing it or dissolving it off with alcohol?
I always get rid of the old, dry gunk and apply fresh.
This article also inspired me to order a Honeywell PTM7950 thermal pad for next time I need thermal paste. Research shows it's just as good or better than Arctic Silver.. worth a shot, especially if it'll dry out less quickly.
I took a leap and used a graphite thermal pad on my last build. Never going back. no paste to muck with and if I upgrade I can reuse it and not make a hellish paste mess.
If you have to put literal liquid metal in a laptop.... I think I'd rather have something with a lower TDP... Seems like it could be a reliability issue and leak eventually.
Where else are you getting $800 laptops with Nvidia 6gb vram?
I've been using them for 1 decade for professional, personal, and gaming purposes. I only have added RAM/SSDs and changed batteries over the last 10 years.
I wonder why they aren't so widespread. I imagine its a marketing thing, they just don't have the connections to US big business/schools like leveno/apple/hp does.
Well, they may be cheap, but that alone doesn't seem enough to me. I guess different people look for different things.
I had a Asus ROG Zephyrus G15, and I'd rank it as one of the worst laptops I've ever owned (edit: don't even think it was that cheap). Including the awesome "feature" that it can't be run in clamshell mode, otherwise it will overheat and shut down. That took a while to debug.
I also know of at least 2 other people who were not happy with the thermal performance. They were able to mod it, which is cool (pun intended), but it's disappointing that's even necessary.
I've yet to find a _good_ laptop. There's always something wrong with them, from 'poor trackpad' to 'nonexistent linux support' to 'doesn't have a decent GPU'... and of course the crowd favourite, 'nvidia GPU randomly fails to shut off, sucking 10W extra at all times'.
I don't know where I'd even start. I've bought several that had excellent reviews, yet didn't work.
I bought the 2020 model of the G14, which has the absolutely cursed combination of both an Nvidia and AMD GPU. The fans never shut off, it randomly fails to wake up from sleep, the touchpad requires an inconsistent amount of force to click, and the battery life is really only 2 hours rather than the advertised 10.
I had a 5900HS/3080Ti version of the G15, and probably the most underwhelming parts were the screen, which was on the dim side, its heat/noise output, and how you wouldn't get the full potential of the GPU unless you were running outdated, ASUS-specific Nvidia drivers which Windows constantly wanted to update. The white exterior looked cool, but the paint they used for it was so fragile that gently removing one of the factory demo stickers pulled a bit of it off.
It was frustrating, because I really wanted to like it. That laptop got returned towards the end of its return window and replaced with a combination of a ThinkPad Nano and custom built gaming desktop, which have both served me far better for their respective uses.
2022 G14 owner... it is a Windows laptop. Thermals are poor to the point that gaming on it makes the keyboard uncomfortable to touch, there's no battery bypass for USB-C PD so using it plugged in that way cycles the battery, the speakers are meh, the keyboard is mushy and the left ctrl key randomly stopped working, the trackpad is small and cheap feeling, in Linux the GPU management is tedious where I can choose between "integrated GPU" or "constantly hot and noisy with one-fifth as much battery life as my MacBook Air when just sitting there on the desktop" and switching between these modes requires logging out first.
That said, it's a reasonably priced gaming laptop for travel and you can definitely do worse.
I'm not sure that's an accurate interpretation. They are cheap, and thus more popular, so repair shops will see more of them in comparison to more expensive brands.
On the contrary, I've had terrible luck with Asus laptops. Most of my issues have been with their gaming laptops but I have had at least one Zenbook die on me as well. But I've had four other gaming laptops, from multiple different market segments.
Desktop hardware I've had better luck with, but between my own experience and the multitude of reports online about warranty issues people have faced with other products, I can't in good faith recommend them to people.
Asus is a pretty large brand, not really "hidden". Also, they don't have the greatest reputation for warranty repairs. They were on the shortlist for my current phone and I opted for something else due to that (a while before their media attention).
Worked out great. Previously I had been on Debain family distros like Ubuntu and Mint. I had no idea those were so outdated/crappy until I tried Fedora.
Now I'm a complete Fedora convert. Fedora is sooo nice.
Got a 2021 G14. Running Fedora Kinoite, everything works except fingerprint reader. Super stable, KDE Wayland on AMD iGPU and running Steam games using the Nvidia dGPU. Battery life not great - it's a gaming laptop! But fans are quiet. It's a great portable workstation, especially with 40G RAM. And it was _cheap_.
Generalny shitty and depends on the line. Their newest Zenbook line had multple non-working components (sound amongst them) for years. And they came with partially broken BIOSes which aren't going to be ever fixed.
Also my OLED screen unglued itself 2 weeks after the warranty ended.
I love the g14. The build quality isn’t perfect but the trackpad is awesome and price to performance is great, especially if you stick to the previous year model and get it heavily discounted. Shame they moved away from user upgradable memory.
I can't speak for anyone else, but when I've used Asus devices in the past (tablets, a watch, etc), they've been hot garbage that didn't last more than 18 months. Maybe they've improved with their laptops, but I've been burned enough by them that I don't care to drop the money to experiment.
I would argue that all laptops run like that. I've never owned a laptop that didn't have overheating issues, you just can't fit a desktop sized heatsink into something 1-2 inches thick.
Readit News
Also, it's slightly odd to see the prominent country of origin markings on the CPU --- I've not seen recent Intels marked in the same way.
Deleted Comment
Worse, this is what happens when a small amount of gallium contacts aluminum.[1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeghGhVdt9s
I would also be worried if you did manage to effect it with some crazy strong million dollar electromagnet, you might cause it to wet to material you don't want it on and make it even more difficult to remove, but maybe that wouldn't happen.
Im my limited experience putting it on my computer, it is fairly difficult to get it to wet to a surface, so any extra stays beaded up like mercury and can be kind of moved around and brushed away with a cotton swab without too much trouble. But once it is wetted to a surface it would be fairly difficult and labor intensive to completely remove unless it is a mirror finish because it will want to stay trapped in the very bottom of even the tiniest little sanding scratches or machining marks.
If you do end up attempting it removing the LM is easier with a syringe that can suction the larger blobs away. Could even just try to reapply the same LM you removed if it's just a pumpout issue
Rough timeline for my laptop was:
14 months in, manually under-clocked discrete GPU to prevent thermal shutdowns
20 months in, complete cooling failure on GPU, replaced liquid metal with PTM7950
I'm confused, are we reusing it or dissolving it off with alcohol?
I always get rid of the old, dry gunk and apply fresh.
This article also inspired me to order a Honeywell PTM7950 thermal pad for next time I need thermal paste. Research shows it's just as good or better than Arctic Silver.. worth a shot, especially if it'll dry out less quickly.
I adore graphite thermal pads for desktops.
I will never attempt to use graphite thermal pads in a laptop again.
The only downside appears to be they're thermally conductive.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=niAQs8dZohE
Deleted Comment
Where else are you getting $800 laptops with Nvidia 6gb vram?
I've been using them for 1 decade for professional, personal, and gaming purposes. I only have added RAM/SSDs and changed batteries over the last 10 years.
I wonder why they aren't so widespread. I imagine its a marketing thing, they just don't have the connections to US big business/schools like leveno/apple/hp does.
I had a Asus ROG Zephyrus G15, and I'd rank it as one of the worst laptops I've ever owned (edit: don't even think it was that cheap). Including the awesome "feature" that it can't be run in clamshell mode, otherwise it will overheat and shut down. That took a while to debug.
I also know of at least 2 other people who were not happy with the thermal performance. They were able to mod it, which is cool (pun intended), but it's disappointing that's even necessary.
I don't know where I'd even start. I've bought several that had excellent reviews, yet didn't work.
It was frustrating, because I really wanted to like it. That laptop got returned towards the end of its return window and replaced with a combination of a ThinkPad Nano and custom built gaming desktop, which have both served me far better for their respective uses.
That said, it's a reasonably priced gaming laptop for travel and you can definitely do worse.
The one in this article is actually a Quanta NJP.
Desktop hardware I've had better luck with, but between my own experience and the multitude of reports online about warranty issues people have faced with other products, I can't in good faith recommend them to people.
I had to use modern linux (Fedora).
Worked out great. Previously I had been on Debain family distros like Ubuntu and Mint. I had no idea those were so outdated/crappy until I tried Fedora.
Now I'm a complete Fedora convert. Fedora is sooo nice.