You can’t cool a contemporary processor with out utilizing utilizing thermal paste (ideally one of many finest thermal pastes) to assist switch warmth from the CPU to a heatsink. And most thermal pastes are produced from both a mix of zinc oxide and silicone or some type of liquid metallic, as a result of these supplies are extremely conductive. However what if there are different substances you may have mendacity round the home that would both be substituted for or added to thermal paste to supply higher cooling?
A TikTok person by the title of @mryeester, has been experimenting with all kinds of foodstuffs to see if they are often substituted for off-the-shelf thermal paste. He has greater than half a dozen movies exhibiting his makes an attempt to get home goods resembling powered sugar or maple syrup to assist cool a CPU, however in nearly each case, temperatures which a lot larger. Nonetheless, when @mryeester added salt to some thermal paste, he noticed temperature enhancements of two to 3C over thermal paste alone.
@mryeester has had much more failures than successes. He tried shaping thermal paste like a field on the IHS of a CPU to see how dangerous the unfold can be, however discovered that the thermal paste solely unfold in the direction of the outer edges of the CPU, leaving the central space untouched. On Intel chips a minimum of, this may be a horrible software because the CPU die sits straight in the course of the chip, and would make the die further sizzling as a result of lack of direct thermal paste contact proper on high of it.
Nonetheless, altering the location of your paste would nonetheless be rather a lot higher than having none in any respect. A case may be made for utilizing this outer-edge strategy with trendy AMD Ryzen chips because the central compute die and IO die should not within the heart of the chip. Nonetheless, lack of protection on the middle would nonetheless lead to larger temps – in comparison with having your complete IHS coated.
In a few his different thermal paste movies, @mryeester did not essentially goal higher temps, however did attempt to present attention-grabbing paste placements and alternate substances. In a single, he tried shaping a Discord emblem out of thermal paste straight on the IHS, and this time the IHS was coated absolutely after spreading the thermal paste out. However clearly, the discord form itself attributed no benefit to the unfold in any respect, because the unfold was completely even throughout your complete IHS.
In one other video, he tried changing thermal paste with powered sugar, pondering that the fine-grained materials would offer sufficient contact between the IHS and the CPU. Sadly it didn’t, with temps being about 60 levels larger than with thermal paste.
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One in all his worst performers was changing thermal paste with maple syrup, the place temperatures had been very dangerous, together with his Intel CPU hitting 69C instantly within the BIOS.
@mryeester additionally tried including liquid metallic straight in the course of the CPU, with a circle of thermal paste utilized across the liquid metallic, performing as a barrier to forestall the liquid metallic from spilling onto the sides of the CPU (and killing the CPU). However sadly, after making use of a CPU cooler to the chip then eradicating it, he discovered that the thermal paste unfold over the chip completely and pushed all of the liquid metallic to the sides, making it utterly ineffective.
However one in all his experiments succeeded in really outperforming regular thermal paste. This experiment concerned salt, since salt has the next thermal conductivity than most thermal pastes available on the market in the present day.
At first, @mryeester tried mixing iodized salt with thermal paste, and seeing what would occur. However sadly on this first run, he was unsuccessful. However subsequent he tried grinding down the salt right into a superb powder, then combined it in together with his thermal paste, and surprisingly this compound combination labored. Together with his regular thermal paste his CPU was solely hitting 49C, however with the powdered salted combination, temps dropped by 2 to three levels C.
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Whereas that is cool to see, we can not say if this combination will work in all conditions. There may very well be numerous the reason why this combination labored on this explicit scenario, together with if @myyeester added an excessive amount of or too little thermal paste in his check setup, or if his paste was not one of the best compound to start with.
After testing greater than 90 totally different thermal pastes, we have famous that some merchandise have 1 to 2 diploma higher thermals than others. So this 2 to three diploma drop mixing in salt is perhaps matched simply by utilizing higher-quality thermal compounds.
Nonetheless, its cool to see a really uncommon experiment like mixing salt with thermal paste work in any respect. Who is aware of, if TikTokers like @mryeester proceed to experiment, they could discover a new thermal compound combination that truly works much better than the common thermal paste merchandise that now we have in the present day.