I re-did my GC Extreme re-lid with Silver King

[chameleoneel]

Re-lidding with liquid metal is old news. But, I tried a newer product. So, I thought I should tell you about it.

Thermalright has a liquid metal product out, called "Silver King". I think its pretty new. It claims 79 W/m-k, which is a little higher performance than Thermal Gizzly's Conductonaut at 73 W/m-k. I also got their TF8 thermal grease, because I'm nearly out of GC Extreme and I have seen TF8 test up to 3c better. There is also a TFX, but its way too expensive, for only about 1 W/m-k increase over TF8.


Back when FrgMstr did de-lidding/re-lidding videos/articles for 7600k; I de-lidded my 7600k and re-lidded it using Gelid GC Extreme. The temperature benefit was ok (similar to what his article showed for a re-lid with thermal grease). But seemed to degrade over time. I had simply sealed it with a couple of drops of super glue. I thought maybe I should re-do it with silicon gasket sealer, like Kyle did. So, I recently re-did it with GC Extreme again and sealed it with a gasket sealer rated for high torque and temperature. No noticeable temp benefit, compared to when I had sealed it with drops of super glue.

My temps have been much higher than I would like. So I did a lot more research on liquid metal and how to apply it. Decided to try it.

I also picked up a larger Rocket Cool IHS on Ebay. I normally wouldn't have bought it, but I had an ebay coupon so it was only $5 and free shipping.

Silver King was very easy to use. Based on videos I have seen, I think it may spread more easily than Conductonaut. Less likely to stay beaded up, more like Liquid Ultra. I used one of the special cotton swaps they give you, rather than the tiny brush. I forgot to take pics of the liquid metal itself, but here are the other pics I took:

De-lidded my Re-lid

comparison of the new, larger, flatter lid. The intel stock lid is also copper, it just nickel plated. The weight difference was very noticeable.

New method to seal the lid. Super clean, with minimal height off the core. No more sealant gushing out the edges.

My Mugen 5 Rev. b

Here’s my temp drop. Running Handbrake on the same 10 minute section of a legit Blu-ray, with the same settings saved to a preset.

Look at the max temp. The new results pic was taken at idle, after the job had fully completed. I guess I took the old results while the job was still running.

Tests were with 1 fan. For these liquid metal temps, the fan didn’t even have a chance to hit 100%. As my fan curve is set for 100% at 69 degrees. The heatsink can really do its job, now.

I was getting 65 - 70c on my CPU, while emulating Breath of The Wild in CEMU. Now I’m getting 45 - 50c.

*this is completely open bench, by the way. I did it in the morning, to avoid the currently higher ambient temps during the day. However, ambient temp this morning was still likely higher than when i did the original temp test like a month ago, during early evening.

So, I used Thermalright Silver King liquid metal on the CPU core. Re-lidded with a larger IHS. Improved how I seal the lid, so the “Z” height on the core is lower. And I used a new thermal paste (Thermalright TF8) instead of Gelid GC Extreme, for between the CPU and heatsink.

From all of my research, at least 15 degrees of the improvement, is from the liquid metal on the core. The other stuff is just gravy.

Thermal Grizzly’s “Conductonaut” has been considered the best liquid metal, for awhile. I decided to try this “Silver King” from Thermalright. Its new. It claims even a little better heat conduction. Based on the temp results, it seems at least as good as Conductonaut. We’ll see how the long term is. I’ve seen follow up tests on Conductonaut being absolutely fine after 1 year, suggesting it could be fine for much longer.

TF8 was great to work with. Zero complaints. I also put some TF8 thermal paste under the heatsink for the motherboard chipset.

 

[hititnquitit]

Thanks for sharing. If i ever delid my 8086k ill give silver king a try.

 

[chameleoneel]

I put Silver King on my RTX 2060 today. knocked 10-13c of temps during near max GPU utilization. And tonight is much warmer and more humid, than last night. I used the FFXIV Shadowbringers benchmark and Unigen Superpostion, for temp testing. In superposition, I just stood in the room with demo mode and stared at the floating objects with 98% GPU utilization. and just let the heat crank. the last two scenes of the Shadowbringers benchmark are particularly heat generating.

My GPU holds a higher boost clock, too. My RTX 2060 can hit 2050mhz in overclocking. But in the really high utilization moments, it would drop down to 1990something. It pretty much held 2040-2050 through testing today.

 

[chameleoneel]

Heat also flys off your stuff once you go idle, with liquid metal.
My CPU has such a large heatsink, it basically instantly rebounds to minimal idle temps. There's almost zero time for cooldown.
My GPU cools down about 4 times faster than it did. It was actually quite slow for cool down. But now its a nice, brisk pace on the cool down.

 

[Vengance_01]

I put Silver King on my RTX 2060 today. knocked 10-13c of temps during near max GPU utilization. And tonight is much warmer and more humid, than last night. I used the FFXIV Shadowbringers benchmark and Unigen Superpostion, for temp testing. In superposition, I just stood in the room with demo mode and stared at the floating objects with 98% GPU utilization. and just let the heat crank. the last two scenes of the Shadowbringers benchmark are particularly heat generating.

My GPU holds a higher boost clock, too. My RTX 2060 can hit 2050mhz in overclocking. But in the really high utilization moments, it would drop down to 1990something. It pretty much held 2040-2050 through testing today.

that some balls... This stuff is conductive correct?

 

[chameleoneel]

that some balls... This stuff is conductive correct?

Yep. Its liquid metal, similar to Conductonaut or Liquid Ultra. I used a really minimal amount. I think most youtubers use too much anyway. But I was really careful about only using juuuuust enough to get it to spread over the die.

Yeah, the RTX chips are surrounded by little bits you don't want to get liquid metal on. I covered them in silicon gasket maker goo. In contrast, my 7600k simply had two little gold parts near the die. So that was a much less stressful application.