Ah okay that makes more sense
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I knew I’d missed something and I randomly remembered today. I forgot to measure the position of the CPU die relative to the entire chip. Oh well, I guess I’ll go back in for measurments when I go to conformal coat the motherboard. Speaking of, I ordered some Kapton tape, conformal coating and paintbrushes yesterday.
My plan is to conformal coat the entire board, both as waterproofing (probably closer to moisture-proofing) and as a test to see whether it’s a good idea. I intend to use conformal coating and Kapton tape on Copperheart as emergency barriers in case the liquid metal seeps out from under the heatsink. I’ll probably test the conformal coating on an arduino before I cover my motherboard in it, just to see what it’s like.
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And way at all?
Way do you need it waterproofen in the long run?
Just curious.
I don’t need it waterproofed, it’s just extra protection in case something happens. If for instance I have a friend or someone else using it and they spill something on it. Or if my bag for some reason decided to stop discriminating against rain. My main concern with the coating is heat, I don’t see there being much of a change as it is incredibly thin, but you never know.
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That I get.
Just not really the necessity, cause in all my years I had never a water issue with my laptop.
But it only travels a lot with me, not daily in a bag.
I will read how you develop. 
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Neither have I. I only spilled half a can of pepsi on my old laptop once. It vanished into the keyboard so quickly. It wasn’t until I opened it earlier this year that I found out why. It turns out that the intake of the fan was through the keyboard for some reason, so I had just poured the coke into the fan and it must’ve shot striaght out the side of the laptop. 
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That would be more of my concern. That closing it more, moisture couldn’t dry that good …
I’m not sure we’re on the same page here. Conformal coating is a very very thin layer of a silicone compound that you put on the motherboard. Kind of like nail varnish. It shouldn’t impede the performance, the substance is used all the time to waterproof all kinds of other electronics.
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Ok. But then the heat shouldn’t be a problem either 
as you already said.
In theory, yes.
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Quick update:
I’m trying out the conformal coating on Lazarus’ old parts to see what happens, I don’t want to sacrifice my good laptop. I’ve also started working on the PC branch of my site, hopefully it will be done soon.
For anyone interested in a basic explanation of Thermal Interface Materials (TIM)…
@theearlywalker, you were asking what liquid metal seepage was, I’m going to try and answer it here. If this gets long and boring to read, remember, it’s your fault since you asked.
Before I can explain what it is, I have to explain how a CPU and GPU are cooled. Like with all electronics that need cooling, the CPU and GPU are cooled by a heatsink and a fan. The heatsink is just a hunk of copper or aluminium with a finned design. This increases the surface area to volume ratio. The sole purpose of a heatsink is to take heat, spread it across itself and dissipate it into the environment. A fan is usually bolted on to help with the dissipation.
What I’m going to focus on here is how the heatsink is usually mounted to the dies. If you bolt it on directly (i.e. metal to metal) you won’t get the best thermal connection due to miscorscopic imprefections in the surfaces of the heatsink and dies. This means that there are tiny air gaps and thermal conductivity isn’t maximised and thus the heatsink isn’t as effective as it could be.
This means that something has to go between the dies and heatsink to conform to the surfaces and to still conduct heat. The two main TIMs (Thermal Interface Materials) that can be used. The first is a thermal pad, these are soft, flexible and rubber-like (I think they’re made of silicon, but don’t quote me on it) pads that you place between the die and heatsink. They’re readily availble and completely safe, however, their thermal conductivity is fairly low and so should not be used when you need to dissipate a lot of heat quickly. The blue things in the pic below are themal pads.
The second TIM is thermal paste. This is the more popular option, it’s a grey paste that you sandwich between the heatsink and die. Thermal paste is also fairly safe as most of it isn’t electrically conductive. A bit of extra care has to be taken when applying it though. If you apply too little, your components will run hot. If you apply too much, it will seep out when you tighten the heatsink and make a mess of the surrounding circuitry. On odd occasions, adding too much also causes an increase in temps as it starts to act as a thermal insulator. Thermal paste is typically 2 to 3 times more themermally conductive than a thermal pad. Below is an example of too much thermal paste.
The third and far less common TIM is liquid metal. It is exactly what it says, it’s a metal that is liquid at room temperature and for a range on either side of that. It’s thermal conductivity is about 5 to 6 times more thermally conductive. There are many disadvantages to LM (more than there are advantages if I’m honest). Such as the fact that it is electrically conductive, so if it seeps out from under the heatsink and gets on any circuitry, it will short circuit it and destroy it. LM can’t be used with aluminium heatsinks as it reacts and eats straight through the aluminium. LM has to be replaced more frequently as it dries out. LM costs more than paste or pads as well.
This is why I mentioned that I need conformal coating on my motherboard, to protect it if any of the liquid metal seeps out. Technically I’d only need it around the CPU and GPU dies, but I figured I might as well do the entire board and have protection against accidental liquid damage too. I won’t be using LM on Carbon Mamba as it doesn’t need it since it doesn’t run hot, but I’m planning it for Copperheart. I’ve also got other defences against it such as designing containment walls in the custom heatsink (which I need to start working on) and putting a layer of Kapton tape over the conformal coating as well.
Hopefully that made sense, if you have any questions, now’s the time to ask.
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Ok - first of all I understand a tiny lil bit of it immediately 
and this is a biiig compliment to your explaning abilities 
and if I got it right the goal is optimizing the cooling of the Central Processing Unit of a laptop/ computer … and you explain three diffrent options how to approve it- and you chose the hardest to apply and most expensive methode for your testing- which is Liquid Metal (very interesting that there is a metal exsisting that is liquid in roomtemperature - weird enough as fact itself!! ) and therefore you coated these old ram stick of your laptop with conformal coat to protect it from the LM?!
I feel so intelligent rn 
Aaaaand : on top I found a spelling mistake … now I feel almost genious …
I made this screenshot because it was way to complicated to quote - I’m on mobile…
Thank you for the explanation Rob, I really appreciate this
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Yes
Yes, because I’m something of an idiot. LM will be used on the next laptop I get in a year or so. I’m sticking to paste on my current one as it’s fine.
Mercury is liquid at room temp, but LM is a compound of gallium and other metals. I don’t think it contains mercury.
No. The RAM sticks were my first victims for testing the coating in general. It’s just to see if it would work or destroy everything. If the the LM seeps out down to my RAM sticks, I’d be very concerned as to how it got that far. The final goal if the CC is to protect the are immediately around the CPU and GPU from LM, but also act as water/moisture-proofing on the rest of the motherboard.
Took me a while to see it since you highlighted a bunch of word that were spelled properly. You could have just highlighted the wrong one. lol
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Lol- I made a square around it- because I didn’t know if it would be visible if I highlighted the word itself…
And maybe the former story of the coating can be added here too?
It will be, I just need to finish first.
I just realised that it doesn’t need to be as I said I’m doing it in the previous posts.
An update on today’s coating:
I’m currently typing this from Lazarus with the old conformal coated 2GB RAM and everything seems to be working fine for now. This gives me a bit more hope for Carbon Mamba. I might get around to it in the next few days if I feel like it.
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Just played a bit of Tomb Raider (2013) on ultimate settings. The laptop handled it surprisingly well given the not-so-great cooling. The 1050 managed to maintain between 40 and 60 FPS depending on what was happening. The laptop wasn’t too happy, but it was handling it, temps didn’t exceed 70C both on the CPU and GPU. TR is getting a bit dated as a game by modern standards, but I also have Rise Of The Tomb Raider waiting to go. I also have Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Crysis Wars and Crysis 2 waiting as well. For some reason Crysis 3 is only available on Origin. I’m still considering a GPU overclock, but first I want to get baseline runs for each game.
Another observation I made is just how utterly hopeless I am with a mouse and keyboard.
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Clear your way
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Game controllers for the win 
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I’m starting to get used to it. I got an emulator so I can connect my old PS3 remotes. It works, but it emulates an Xbox remote, so somethings are a bit different and sometimes the games default to really stupid button mapping that can’t be changed. At least with a keyboard and mouse you can map everything as you want.