Mercury instead of Artic silver IV?

[wun911]

Mercury is a metal used in to measure temperatures in Thermometers , it is liquid at room temp has reasonably high boiling point.

Would spread easily over a cpu would conduct heat very very well.

It is toxic to humans will absorb though skin and will accumulate in your body for the rest of your life.... However the potential benefits are worth it in my opnion. hahahha

Would be very easy to get mercury (just buy a thermometer from a pharmacy) break it open etc .

Has anybody tried it (hopefully with a set of nitrile gloves)

 

[dstaple]

Interestingly, mercury has greater than twice the thermal conductivity of copper. Unfortuneately, it's surface tension is extremely high (this is why it beads on table tops), so I highly doubt that it would make good thermal compound. Basically rather than spreading evenly between two surfaces, it would try to bead like crazy, and you'd probably end out with air pockets, and /or tiny beads of liquid metal in the crevices of your motherboard.

Anyway, even if you could do this successfully, nitrile gloves won't stop mercury. Rather, the mercury will pass through the gloves, and get partially trapped against your skin. Also, mercury poisoning can be caused by inhaling the vapours that would be present from having it open in your house.

Finally, mercury poisoning is disgusting. You're looking at birth defects, insanity, cancer, and death. I would never have open mercury in my house, for any reason. I don't know if you've ever tried to clean up a mercury spill, but it's not a good situation.

 

[pengwin]

yah, ppl arent crazy, but sone noob is gonna try it. i wouldnt.
i'd spend 5 dollars on soem AS5 and keep my life

 

[dstaple]

I've met some people from other countries that don't think of things like mercury as being the end of the world... pretty weird culture shock.

Funny thing happened one time, I was working in a chemistry lab with a guy from China. Basically benzene is toxic as shit and causes cancer, so people here are really careful / try to avoid using it. Another chemical I used alot, hexane, is basically a gasoline byproduct, so people didn't really worry about it, and basically just poured it all over the place.

This Chineese guy was saying that it was funny, because when he was in China everyone was really careful with hexane, and nobody cared about using benzene, which was the opposite of what we were doing. Anyway, I checked it out, and it turned out that hexane was a friggin neurotoxin, so I guess he was right to think that we were all crazy. Doesn't change the fact that benzene is like liquid death though...

 

[GherkinPekul]

Liquid metal applied to a vertical surface. Aside from the obvious health implications, this just screams bad idea. You would basically be gambling that surface tension is going to keep the mercury from slipping out when the case gets bumped. The ensuing shorts as it hits traces would be worth a video.

 

[dstaple]

Yeah seriously.

I don't know why people post this kind of ridiclious nonsense on here, or why I gave it an actual response. I guess it seemed a little less idiotic when I saw that mercury had such a high thermal conductivity (8.4 W/m/K for mercury, compared to 4.0 W/m/K for copper, and 2.4 W/m/K for aluminum).

 

[JonathanDeane]

You can kill the surface tension of mercury with clorox bleach.... but I still wouldnt recomend using it in this manner lol

 

[Anoobis]

Bleach, another highly toxic chemical.

 

[chuckshissle]

Check out this thermal coumpound. It's good but highly toxic.

http://www.frozencpu.com/thr-26.html

 

[blue68f100]

You over looked one important fact.
Hg has a vapor point around 68F. Any heat what so ever would vaporize it.

 

[GherkinPekul]

I saw that stuff. Looks like perma-weld for your cpu and heatsink. Now if the needle would fit in my boss' deskchair...

 

[chuckshissle]

I saw that stuff. Looks like perma-weld for your cpu and heatsink. Now if the needle would fit in my boss' deskchair...

Smart thinking!

:lol: :lol: :lol: yep, highly toxic also good for assasinating your boss! :lol: :lol: :lol:


Anyways, I read some reviews on it and it is only about 2-3c* lower temps compare to Artic Silver 5. Judging from benifit/risk ratio, I'll stick with my Artic Silver 5.

 

[4745454b]

Yeah seriously.

I don't know why people post this kind of ridiclious nonsense on here, or why I gave it an actual response. I guess it seemed a little less idiotic when I saw that mercury had such a high thermal conductivity (8.4 W/m/K for mercury, compared to 4.0 W/m/K for copper, and 2.4 W/m/K for aluminum).

Why are you listing the metals found in heatsinks? We are talking about TIM here, not heatsinks. AS5 should be made from SILVER. If I remember my highschool chem, silver has one of the best thermal conducting abilities when compared to most metels, including gold. (gold is better for electricity.) There are a few metals better then silver, but they are either toxic, or so rarer that they would be much to expensive to use in computing. (I've never bothered to check this, I'm assuming my HS chem teacher wasn't lying....)

 

[illuminatirex]

to be honest i would keep way away from mercury, i once gropped a thermometer on the carped and it broke, it took me a very long time to get it out of the carper(very messy those litle beads are ), using it as thermal paste as others mentioned is not so great, but what about using it in a contained enviroment , such as a water cooling system( just with mercury instead of the cooling liquid) didnt nvidia do this for one of their graphic card coolers? not necessarely with mercury, they used something they called liquid metal, but to be honest i know of no other "liquid metals" so i would assume they might have used mercury, but then yet again they claimed its not toxic, so maby it was some other substance.

 

[JonathanDeane]

They should make synthetic diamond paste I hear diamond is a very good conductor of heat.

 

[4745454b]

They should make synthetic diamond paste I hear diamond is a very good conductor of heat.

Oh sure, just come up with the formula to make it a liquid, and start selling it for $75/4oz...

The next thing you'd have to worry about are all those cheap CZ nockoff companies...

 

[linux_0]

Some ancient cultures used to ingest mercury.

IIRC at least one Chinese emperor died of mercury poisoning.

Mercury sure is great stuff, I highly recommend it.

NOT

There are much better ways to cool your CPU. Forget about it.

 

[KWH]

Yeah, the guy took it regularly, I think it spaced him out. .....he finally spaced out....forever.

 

[linux_0]

Yeah, the guy took it regularly, I think it spaced him out. .....he finally spaced out....forever.

Aye.

Mercury will drive you mad at first and then kill you.

 

[Tattysnuc]

Mercury evaporates at room temperature (albeit a warm one!), so while it would make a great conductor, it wont hang aroundvery long......

 

[JonathanDeane]

They should make synthetic diamond paste I hear diamond is a very good conductor of heat.

Oh sure, just come up with the formula to make it a liquid, and start selling it for $75/4oz...

The next thing you'd have to worry about are all those cheap CZ nockoff companies...

LOL CZ !!!! maybe Carbon 60 although it would be more of a powder you would need something to turn it into a paste... maybe silicon or something ? its all theory anyway becouse by the time arctic silver doesnt work "good enough" CPU's will be using quantum states lol

 

[Guest]

Mercury will dissolve the Al203 oxide coating on Aluminium which will cause your nice Shiny Auminium Heatsink to rust away entirely in no time at all -mercury is banned in quantity from aircraft (mostly aluminium) for exactly this reason.
see this link here

Stuart

 

[Guest]

Check out this thermal coumpound. It's good but highly toxic.

http://www.frozencpu.com/thr-26.html

Looks like its a Mercury-based amalgam (think dental work). Interesting idea.

 

[linux_0]

Check out this thermal coumpound. It's good but highly toxic.

http://www.frozencpu.com/thr-26.html

Looks like its a Mercury-based amalgam (think dental work). Interesting idea.


I'm surprised that stuff is legal given how corrosive and toxic it is.

 

[wun911]

Yes yes I undersatnd mercury is toxic this is a well established fact. Mad Hatters, mercury used to clean Top Hats people wering the hats went nuts etc etc, Queen Elizabeth used mercury in her cosmetics and lost a lot of hair etc etc.

However I wouldnt exactly eat a tube of artic silver either.

Thanks to you all I appreciate all the feed back.

The liquid pro stuff looks kinda cool just like mercury!

Gold can be made into gold leaf ie very thin 2.5-4 Amstrongs thick (correct me if im wrong)?
Gold is a great conductor of heat.
It could be made thin enough to fit between the CPU and HSF and soft enough to, fit into all nooks and crannys.
Wouldnt cost a lot because you only need a tiny amout.
Gold is not toxic!

See the things you must ponder when you buy a prescot P4 3.4?