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Comment by hmottestad | Hacker News Reader

For those who didn't notice. ASUS is using Liquid Metal instead of regular paste! It's not mentioned in the article, but you can tell from the header picture. It will be very interesting to see if it will hold after 5 years or if it will "dry up" (eg. amalgamate with the heat sink).

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> eg. amalgamate with the heat sink

I guess that would make changing the heat sink an issue but as long as you don't do that shouldn't amalgated metal give just as good thermal conductivity overall?

Sony did the same with the PS5

And that's a console sold nearly at-cost[0], so it's in Sony's best interest to keep it working for a long time so you keep buying games on it.

0: https://www.polygon.com/2020/2/14/21137615/ps5-cost-price-po...

Do you (or anyone else reading) have any idea what that white stuff is. And I mean specific. It's probably some kind of setting rubber like material. I ask because I want to liquid metal a CPU and want to create just such a seal.

Might be silicone. Usually DIY liquid metal installations just cover the tiny SMD capacitors/etc with nail polish or liquid electrical tape.

Planned obsolescence. I think manufacturers should be required to display clearly how long they think product will last and suddenly ownership turns into a subscription (divide the price by how many months product will last). I think that also should be clearly marked that you won't really own the product. Manufacturers should be required to attach bill of materials and a schematic to the product and it should be illegal to ask chip manufacturer to withdraw sales to consumers willing to repair on their own. We need to nip these shady practices in the bud!

I agree, however I think it would be simpler to require manufacturers to offer 10 year warranties (or perhaps longer) in other to sell their products. The market will be forced to respond with better engineering and also ensure that spare parts are readily available, if only to serve their own interests of making warranty repairs easier.

If you purchased this laptop in Norway you would get a 5 year warranty by law. Maybe the US should do something similar.

I do remember watching a news clip a few years ago where TV manufacturers used a cheap capacitor that would burn out in around 5-6 years. There was a repair shop that would change out the cap for you with a long duty one that would easily last 10 years. The repairman was a bit annoyed at the obvious planned obsolescence.

Here in the UK you get even 6. Problem is that when the producer knows the limit, they can design the product to die roughly just after the warranty. When I repaired some of my own equipment, I was amazed that even 40 year old capacitors were just fine and there was a service manual, with all schematics, BOM, calibration manual. Something unimaginable today.

> when the producer knows the limit, they can design the product to die roughly just after the warranty

This is a sign that the life spans of components are well understood. The problem is not there!

The problem is that legal minimum durations for warranties are jokes, to the point of being even shorter than the expected usage of most devices.

Nothing to do with planned obsolescence. Everything to do with getting better performance.

In desktops it is possible to get a hefty 10C reduction with liquid metal.

You are jumping straight from speculation about the longevity of liquid metal to speculation that it is done for planned obsolescence. Cynicism is warranted in this world but not quite this much. I've seen gamersnexus do some testing on old liquid metal and not find any aging to be happening. With laptops thermal throttling is a huge issue and liquid metal helps cool things better. It is nice to see the effort here.

>Planned obsolescence

I don't buy this narrative. Don't thermal pastes (at least the old ones) also dry up? "Repasting" old laptops/gpus seems to be a common advice on tech forums, at least a few years ago. If they're doing it for the planned obsolescence they really didn't need to go with the expensive liquid metal, they could just use the shitty thermal paste.

Yes they might, but the difference is that "traditional" paste won't form an alloy with your CPU and heatsink and you can easily replace it.

It is planned obsolescence, but not because of the usage of liquid metal thermal paste. Liquid metal is not only more expensive to buy but also to apply (it is very difficult to apply liquid metal thermal paste correctly, and also they need to take care to not spill liquid metal in exposed parts of the processor or it may short circuit the CPU; that is probably also the reason of the white plastic around the CPU). Also, liquid metal only form alloys with some types some metal and probably Asus knows this and avoided using them.

But it is still planned obsolescence because like most notebooks those parts like fans are not meant to be replaced, at all. They probably can be replaced, but is still expensive so most people will prefer to buy another notebook rather than replacing a fan or battery.

Just anecdotal, but I repasted my desktop after 5 years. With same load, same fan speed there was not a single degree change.

I repasted my Acer Predator laptop with liquid metal. It went from 80c idle 95c load to 65-70c idle and 75c load.

When I first turned it on I thought I hadn't plugged the fans back in all the way because it was so quiet. Fans didn't kick on till I was in Windows and it was loading apps, even then it was way quieter. Liquid metal is a game changer for certain computers.

What kind of metal? Mercury?

Gallium, Indium, and Tin, I believe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galinstan

ASUS is using Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut. [1][2] The metals it contains are tin, gallium and indium. This is the market leader in liquid metal thermal solutions and in high power desktop uses can reduce the CPU temperature by 20C compared to bog standard solutions, and 10C compared to high end pastes.

[1] https://www.thermal-grizzly.com/en/products/26-conductonaut-...

[2] https://rog.asus.com/articles/technologies/patented-process-...

I'd hope ASUS nickel plated the heatsink base to prevent that.

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