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whether it's your laptop your PC or your phone personal electronics get hot and

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we're always looking for new ways to make them more comfortable to use which

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led us to a fascinating new trend on Reddit some Intrepid users have been

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buying industrial grade cooling pads and putting them in their laptops and the

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more I learned about these things the more I needed to know see the thing is

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they go on like a normal thermal Pad but

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they're designed to melt as soon as your device heats up then return to a solid

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state once it cools and this is without seeping out and frying your circuits

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like we've seen with other exotic thermal interface materials but there's

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always a catch isn't there yes there is

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and PTM 7950 here has got a few of them

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and I'm going to show you what they are but first I'm going to catch you off

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items today

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PTM 7950 comes to us from multinational conglomerate Honeywell and while it's

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designed for industrial use and they don't sell it directly to Consumers

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there are obviously ways to get it as

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evidenced by the fact that I'm holding some and by this post we found on the

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framework Forum where user Michael underscore Wu posted some impressive

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thermal results after swapping to PTM 7950 from a more traditional thermal

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paste and right out of the gate the spec sheet raises some serious questions most

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importantly what the heck is a PCM or

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phase change material well simply put it's a substance that can change from

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one state of matter to another you know like how a liquid like water becomes

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solid ice when cooled or gaseous steam when heated with that said the fact that

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water can do it is an indication that changing phases is not that special what

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is special about this particular PCM though is the temperature at which it

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changes from one phase to another its melting point is 45 degrees Celsius

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which happens to be a perfect sweet spot where it would never accidentally melt

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in a controlled environment like a manufacturing plant let's say but

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pretty much the second an electronic component started to do any real work it

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should immediately begin to change from a solid to a liquid dramatically

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decreasing its viscosity aiding thermal transfer it's not that different from

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the operating principle of liquid metal whose biggest Advantage aside from being

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metal and therefore very thermally conductive is that it is so thin and so

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viscous that it's able to easily fill any tiny air voids between your CPU and

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your heatsink air is an extremely poor

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heat conductor which is why our fluffy retropolar fleece is so great at keeping

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you warm before we go any further I want to see this thing in action because I'm

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just curious like how much exactly does it melt what do you feel in Brandon a

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strip or a square hip to be square

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oh spoke cut my thumb off there it's

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like oh oh no all right I didn't do it right okay let me give it a little stick

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then for a comparison we'll take some regular old nth2 maybe I'll just kind of

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spread it around a bit or something I don't know sure

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um can confirm fire is hot and let's see

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what happens to the my little pens here

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oh we're already at uh

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around 75 degrees 16 45 okay

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oh it's starting to sweat Brandon come check this out

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given the surface it's sitting on is well over 45 degrees that's not as melty

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as I expected it to be why don't we give her a little more juice

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okay now she's liquid come check this out see that

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actually I think we might have gone a little too far it's uh

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greater than 130 degrees

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two is still quite pasty I mean that's not really as

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liquidy as I expected it's certainly different than it was before but we've

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been informed that it's at its most liquid when it's under pressure which

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would be the case if it was installed between a heat sink and a processor

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okay

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see oh yeah it get Interesting Man the

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second you touch it it does get quite liquid there we go

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oh oh my cold stick was carrying away too

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much of the Heat it does turn liquid

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that was super interesting but it doesn't necessarily indicate that

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PTM 7950 is going to work well so for

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our performance comparison we obtained not one but two samples of PTM 7950 from

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two different sources and I will explain more about that later for now we just

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want to see this phase changing in action versus a standard thermal paste

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to start with we'd recommend storing it in your fridge for at least a couple of

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hours before you begin maybe you could keep it next to your photo film it helps

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make the material a little bit more workable the first thing you'll need to

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do is clean both the core or heat spreader of your processor and your

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cooler then after measuring the approximate Dimensions cut up your pad

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with a pair of scissors you don't have to get this exactly right because PTM

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7950 is non-conductive and shouldn't damage anything if it seeps over the

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edge next peel one side of the pad and we recommend sticking it to the

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processor rather than to your cooler apply pressure evenly over the pad to

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help with the next step then peel the other side with a pair of needle nose

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pliers or or tweezers finally install your cooler compared to my experience

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with liquid metal particularly clean up if you make a mistake this was not bad

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but there's no doubt in my mind that it is a lot more finicky than just

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squirting out some thermal paste even in an unmelted State I feel like the term

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PAD is being used pretty generously here

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PTM 7950 seems to me more like a thin

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layer of schmoo between two pieces of plastic film that make it a little

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easier to work with and by a little easier I really do mean a little easier

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but if the performance is good enough we

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know that enthusiasts won't hesitate to go through a process like that so to

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find out we sent this knock to Edition RTX 3070 over to our lab where they put

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our PTM up against not to his finest thermal paste their nth2 and thermal

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Grizzly conduct a knot and if the conventional wisdom holds true that pads

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do not perform as well as pastes and certainly not as well as liquid metal

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then it should lose to both of these pretty handily and it does until it

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doesn't look at this for the first five minutes PCM 7950

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totally sucks like you might as well put cheese whiz on your GPU but then the

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magic happens you can see it it starts to change from solid to liquid and five

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minutes later it's on par with the nth2 then five minutes after that it pulls

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ahead we tried it on a desktop CPU as well and

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while we couldn't show any difference in temperature thanks to Intel's 80 degree

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Target we did see a measurable increase

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in power draw as the pad liquefied which

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allowed our chip to maintain its turbo speeds ever so slightly more

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consistently now to be clear all of

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these are very high performance solutions and the difference between the

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best and the worst of them is so small that unless you're chasing every

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possible Edge you'd probably consider it to be a tie but

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that alone is very impressive and it

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comes without the risk of getting liquid metal all over your stuff which can kill

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it and guess what it gets even better take a look at the industries that are

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using this product laptops graphics cards sure but also lighting and

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Automotive all of which have one thing in common very long service intervals

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that means that even if you don't care about a degree or two of extra

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performance the real win here is that you won't need to replace this pad for

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the entire life of your device and we're pretty confident about that one good

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thing about products that are designed for highly regulated Industries is that

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you can expect extremely detailed manufacturer test reports and the one

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that Honeywell provides for PTM 7950 is

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a doozy of interest to us in particular

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is the temperature cycling test which alternates between negative 55 and 125

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degrees Celsius 1000 and times PTM 7950

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not only passes this test easily but actually manages to improve its thermal

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impedance after those 1000 Cycles

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compared to when it was new that's probably why Lenovo started

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pre-applying this stuff to their Legion 7 laptops in the last year or so to our

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knowledge they were the first to use this product in a personal Computing

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device but given how secretive the industry tends to be about material

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sourcing it actually wouldn't surprise me if other vendors have been quietly

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using it for years the earliest data sheet we found from Honeywell

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referencing PTM 7950 is actually from all the way back in 2016 which is great

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but there are a couple of loose ends that we haven't tied up yet starting

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with how the devil you're supposed to get it well remember how I had two different

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versions of the pad well all the results we've shown are

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from the better one of the two which we believe is the authentic Honeywell

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version the thing is unless you want to actually

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order a thousand of these your only choice is to buy it from someone who did

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order a thousand of them with the markup that comes along with it and most of the

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ones that we found are from Rando third-party Marketplace sellers our

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slightly worse one came from AliExpress while our slightly better one came from

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E by seven but your mileage may vary and

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if you guess wrong it might be a pretty tough pill to swallow because problem

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number the second PTM 7950 is not cheap

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a single eight centimeter by eight centimeter pad like this one that might

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get you what a handful of applications cost the same as a whole tube of nth2 or

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cost as much as three tubes if you want to take the safe route and go for a

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definitely authentic one from Mod DIY finally I mean it's not like we

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reinvented the wheel here if you're after the ultimate in thermal performance liquid metal is still the

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way to go even if it's only by a hair but if you want something that you can

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apply once and have almost Peak tier

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thermal results for the entire life of your device well maybe it's time for a phase

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changing material like PTM and maybe it's time to end this video with a

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check it out I really think the science behind this material is fascinating I hope you did

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too if you like these kinds of weird thermal solutions that come from other

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Industries maybe check out the time we lowered temperatures by smearing paste

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all over our laptop and a GPU that stuff was very messy good but very

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messy