how frozen thermal paste can DESTROY your PC #shorts

when liquid metal thermal paste gets super cold, it becomes solid and brittle - posing a potential threat to the fragile cpu integrated circuit it may rest on top of! although in practice you don't really have to ever worry about this happening unless you're going for some extreeeeme overclocking.

[Exzticy]

When your power goes out for 7 days and it’s 3 degrees outside is when you should be worried my friends.

[innovationtalk]

“You pretty much don’t have to worry this happening with your personal computer”
*Laughs in Alaska*

[AI-Idiot]

The past week's average temperature where I live was -3°c... Plus, I use a home-made sub-ambient cpu-cooler, so... It is a possible concern

[skilly-]

1. Liquid metal aka Galinstan solidifies at -19°C.

2. The liquid metal is just a small layer between the die and heatsink, it doesn't matter if it's liquid or solid, it's impossible to form bubbles, dislocate or similar...
nevertheless a operating cpu will always produce more than enough heat to be above -19°C for sure.

3. Why would solid liquid metal be bad at all, cpu die can be soldered to the ihs

4. CPU clock records are made by people putting liquid nitrogen with a temperature of -196°C ontop of the CPU and it doesn't harm the CPU.

[placeholerwav]

New fear: room reaching 0 degrees celcius

[Eli-zbyj]

When liquid metal freezes, it's become T-1000 from terminator 2

[Ki_Adi_Mundi]

This was an enormous hurdle I didn't realize I was tripping over in my "outdoors in wild Canada" build from a few years back.

[justin]

Now I’m getting scared of bringing my laptop to school since it’s about -15°C when I go out in the morning and I have Liquid Metal in it

[tbu_drachenkater]

If you think 0 degrees are extremely cold, then you know nothing

[ARandomNerdyGuy]

“Super cold”
“Sub-Zero”
A bit of an understatement, quantum hardware runs with some error at 12 microkelvins.

[ReformationRamblings]

Ok but I can see this happening. Like in the winter if someone left their laptop in their car.

[jayturner]

0°c is not super cold, it's just outside temperature. Go touch some frosty grass

[fsdds]

It sounds so weird hearing that quantum computers uses thermal paste at all, if cryogenic temperature is required its usually as low as 10-15mK or 0.01-0.015°C above absolute zero, the hotter ones operates at somewhere around 1-10K, it would be considered as insanely hot anywhere above 100K/-173°C for things like superconducting/trapped ion or solid state qubits, and for trapped ions, a special technique called laser cooling was used to further cool the ions to micro Kelvin level, or above absolute zero. For those that doesn't need cryogenic temperature, it usually uses light and mirrors so thermal paste is just useless for cooling.

[William.Kelly]

It's important to note that metal contracts when it freezes, so the risk isn't that it would damage the component. Once it warms up it'll perform exactly as needed once again.

[shanillaabdul]

It most likely wont damage anything if it solidifies. The size wont be much of a difference and as it is under pressure its not likely to crack, don't know what metals they contain so I cant tell if it will expand or retract but metals doesn't have the radical difference as water and ice. If it does crack its probably no problem either as it will only make those parts not conducting heat until it gets warm again. That temporary loss of heat conductivity is no issue as it will begin to liquify well before any cooling of the component is needed. It will only scratch the component if its lose enough to jiggle about which is a worse issue in itself.

Also, most of the liquid metal for this application on the market seem to solidify at about 10°C, well before water freeze.

[SpeedyGwen]

My room going sub 0 has happened like 4 times over the last 5 years, it's more common than u think

[Best.World.of.Tanks.Replays]

Liquid metal (gallium) is completely unnecessary for me. I use thermal grizzly cryonaut, the temperature dropped by almost 10C and it is completely safe, which does not apply to gallium.

[hellomiakoda]

My PS5 has liquid metal. It got to well below freezing in here during a cold snap and power failure. It was fine

[pcoverthink]

There's no liquid metal on Intel and AMD CPUs. Their TIM is very different to it chemically. It has worse conductivity and it's solid since the day you buy it. LM stays liquid if there's no metal that it can eat through and mix with

[manypath]

Oh this is why my pc broke a few winters back it was so cold the heater couldn't heat the house lol