Removing the residue is tricky, and he recommends Thermal Grizzly’s TG Metal Polish & Restore, with a chemical that lowers gallium’s surface tension. The company’s Sept. 30 blog post describes it as a surfactant that binds gallium to stop it from re-sticking. It costs $22.11 direct for 30 g of paste, a polishing pen, and microfiber cloths. His demo showed fresh film coming off bare copper. A PC Games Hardware forum user used it to clean an Aqua Computer block that had run liquid metal on a delidded Skylake-X since 2018, with removal taking about an hour.
This isn’t a TIM for the average user, and he recommends that it should “stay in the enthusiast bubble,” intended for very high power density components like a manually overclocked CPU. Thermal Grizzly aims to replace nickel with new coatings, “hopefully next year.” It also plans to release a new version of its KryoSheet graphene pad for bare dies shortly, which he says is maybe three or four degrees worse than liquid metal but worth a try, “especially if you look at the pricing.”
For cost, he points out that his company pays almost 10 times as much for gallium after five years, from €300 per kilogram to €2,500–3,000. Prices have more than doubled since the start of 2025. China supplies 99% of the world’s gallium, and its ban on gallium exports to the U.S. is suspended only until Nov. 27, 2026, with export licenses still required.
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Shane Downing Social Links Navigation Contributing Writer Shane Downing is a Contributing Writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering consumer storage, PC hardware, and AI.
MrN8 I have seen the tests and the charts and I am fully aware that liquid metal cooling compound beats traditional thermal compound by a large margin. I have also seen how easily it can destroy expensive hardware in seconds. It is too risky to use in my opinion. Even when it is applied correctly with good quality seals and dams damage often occurs. Thermal cycling of the system over time causes "pump out" where the liquid metal eventually gets squeezed out from behind the dam or seals and the second it contacts any metal conductive parts, your system fries often spectacularly. Too much risk. Just get a liquid cooling loop. Works very well and have much less risk of destroying your system. With hardware prices what they are now, it is an even bigger investment you risk for what? Reply
EzzyB MrN8 said: I have seen the tests and the charts and I am fully aware that liquid metal cooling compound beats traditional thermal compound by a large margin. I have also seen how easily it can destroy expensive hardware in seconds. It is too risky to use in my opinion. Even when it is applied correctly with good quality seals and dams damage often occurs. Thermal cycling of the system over time causes "pump out" where the liquid metal eventually gets squeezed out from behind the dam or seals and the second it contacts any metal conductive parts, your system fries often spectacularly. Too much risk. Just get a liquid cooling loop. Works very well and have much less risk of destroying your system. With hardware prices what they are now, it is an even bigger investment you risk for what? Yeah, I've looked at it in the past. It always came down to me asking, "do you really want to risk having to be absolutely perfect with this stuff?" The answer and always been "nope!" Reply
Rand0m_Guy The answer are the Graphene sheets, these never dry out, easy to apply with no mess and perfect coverage, performs better than pastes. 2022 (COVID time) I used Kyronaut on my CPU, 5800X3D with an older EK-Quantum Velocity block from my previous CPU. In July I just replaced the TIM with a Kyrosheet, temps dropped 6C using OCCT. Peaks with Kyronaut were 86.1C, Kryosheet 80.3C Reply
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- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cooling/experiment-shows-liquid-metal-tim-doesnt-dry-out-it-turns-solid-two-year-electron-microscope-test-finds-gallium-bonds-with-copper-coolers-and-nickel-plating-keeps-the-layer-about-10-times-thinner#main
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