[SOLVED] Thermal Grizzly liquid metal unsafe for some AIO cold plates?

[bumblebee953]

Hi all! I'm looking at getting the cooling kits from Thermal Grizzly but I've read that the liquid metal would not be safe on certain AIOs like Corsair H100i that has outer copper ring but aluminum center on its cold plate. This was completely news to me and I've never seen this mentioned. Kinda surprising this isn't in giant red capitalized writing on the top of the Thermal Grizzly's site. Is this true?

I've already bought a Deepcool Castle 360Ex but I'm unsure of what material it uses. Would it be unsafe as well?

While on this topic, I'm not sure which offering from Thermal Grizzly to get. Conductonaut? Kronaut? Aeronaut? What's the difference?

 

[hotaru.hino]

The Conductonaut does appear to come with a warning label: https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/guru3d-thermal-paste-roundup-2019,7.html . Thermal Grizzly's website also has a note at the bottom of the product page to not use it with aluminum heat sinks.

If you want an easy answer though, just get Kyronaut. It's a traditional thermal paste and Conductonaut doesn't provide enough cooling performance to justify the effort you need to do to use it.

 

[rubix_1011]

The baseplate of most AIOs is copper, though. That being said, the IHS of the CPU does often contain aluminum, though.

That being said, I agree with hotaru.hino above...there will not be a huge issue to choose an alternative.

 

[bumblebee953]

If you want an easy answer though, just get Kyronaut. It's a traditional thermal paste and Conductonaut doesn't provide enough cooling performance to justify the effort you need to do to use it.

Hmm thought I had read somewhere the performance gain with liquid metal is 4+ degrees. If it's just 2 degrees then yeah probably not worth it. I wonder also if it's worth it going for Kryonaut if the tried-and-true Noctua NT-H1/2 isn't far behind in performance for much cheaper?

 

[hotaru.hino]

Hmm thought I had read somewhere the performance gain with liquid metal is 4+ degrees. If it's just 2 degrees then yeah probably not worth it. I wonder also if it's worth it going for Kryonaut if the tried-and-true Noctua NT-H1/2 isn't far behind in performance for much cheaper?

Get whatever works for you, but the amount of effort you need to install and use liquid metal TIMs safely for what amounts to maybe 10-15% better cooling isn't worth it to me.