WEBVTT

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liquid metal it's a hell of a drug you know

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first you delid your CPU and then that

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high wears off so then you like liquid metal your laptop and again you're

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rewarded with amazing temps and even a performance boost and that keeps you

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going for another week or so and then

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you notice something getting kind of hot in your pants

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you know the idea it starts small but then it grows and grows getting more and

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more solid what if you could make your phone

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run cooler and faster with liquid metal

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well guess what that's a super risky maybe even bad idea

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so we're going to show you how to do it after we tell you today's video is

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so it is common for phone performance to

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nosedive during any workload that takes more than a couple of seconds with

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gaming being a common culprit so your processor starts out cool and fast then

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the hotter it gets the more it thermal throttles so

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liquid metal likely wouldn't do anything for that initial cold performance but

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it could allow us to maintain peak performance for longer so we chose the

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razer phone as our vic excuse me a test subject

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compared to most phones its thermal design is very respectable but it is

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still not perfect check this out our

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first 3dmark result puts us in the top 83

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of razer phones so that looks pretty good but then a second run immediately

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afterwards gave much worse results and

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it dropped all the way down to 20 worse

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after a 15 minute stress test that is the kind of performance impact that you

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would notice in an extended mobile gaming session

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so let's get started then you'll need a good set of screwdrivers and prying

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tools some isopropyl alcohol some paper towel some conformal coating cotton

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swabs and a heat gun because getting inside phones sucks and of course you'll

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also need liquid metal we'll be using thermal grizzly conduct-a-knot now your

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phone's disassembly process will be different unless you have a razer phone

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but we'd recommend watching this whole process anyway without skipping around

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if you plan to follow along so first we made sure the device was off

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then we took a heat gun to the speaker grilles with the adhesive softened we

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peeled them off with a prying tool next we removed this combination of regular

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phillips and torx screws we recommend always placing things like this in a

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parts tray in the same positions they came out of the phone in so you don't

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have to guess which ones go where during reassembly

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then we used guitar picks to keep the phone from snapping back together while

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we pried it apart until well it pried apart and the screen popped off then

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once we got inside and took off the cables for the lcd screen and battery

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giving us our first good look at the razer phone's heat pipe cooler it's

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insulated from the battery and actually seems to be designed to use the screen

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to increase its surface area for heat dissipation pretty cool with the stock

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thermal paste removed it wasn't entirely clear actually how to proceed we lifted

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this small copper heat spreader very carefully with a razor blade not to be

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confused with a razor blade and then had a planning session so if liquid metal

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gets on anything aluminum the gallium in it will destroy it with corrosion so

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what we've decided is to put the best thermal compound that we have between

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the copper sheet and the processor and

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then liquid metal the heat pipe to the copper

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heat spreader with regular thermal compound all around it time then to

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execute we applied conformal coating around the CPU with a cotton swab to act

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as a line of defense if the liquid metal spills off the CPU then to put our

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copper heat spreader back on we used arctic silver thermal adhesive which you

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mix up in equal parts and then spread across the surfaces that you want to

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stick together just like an epoxy we then cleaned the copper spreader and

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carefully placed it back on removing any wrinkles with a guitar pick and clamping

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it all together for about 20 minutes to make sure that it was set

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moving over to the back of the screen we applied a generous amount of thermal

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paste here and then it was finally time

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for liquid metal we put a small drop in a cleaned parts

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tray then picked up a tiny bit with a cotton swab

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this was carefully spread out over the copper heat pipe you only need a little

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bit of this stuff to do the trick time for reassembly if you are performing

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this mod on a razer phone by the way i would strongly recommend that you get

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new speaker grilles first because they don't just stick back on so we used what

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we fondly refer to as that sticky tar crap to put them back on as best we

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could um i i give it a 4 out of 10.

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anyway hitting the power button it boots

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so now it's time for the payoff or lack thereof we weren't sure given that we

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weren't liquid meddled all the way to the chip itself

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if this was even really gonna work so in 3dmark we immediately recorded our

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highest result yet but

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not by a very significant margin cautious optimism at best at this point

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then on the second run whoa

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no decrease in performance whatsoever

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also in the vulcan test which comes after the opengl one has finished

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running we went from very middle of the road performance compared to other razer

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phones to being in the top four percent

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and our other benchmarks saw modest gains in performance too so this phone

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right here it's got ugly grilles but you could game on it indefinitely and see

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virtually no drop in performance an a

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plus result so then would we recommend performing this

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operation the answer is no

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given the low mounting pressure for the cooler and the way that phones get moved

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and tossed around all the time we believe that the chances of the liquid

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metal shifting and damaging the aluminum inside your phone or even shorting

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something out and bricking it entirely are too high

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also we can't know how much of the performance increase came from the

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liquid metal and how much was simply from re-pasting the phone with a higher

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quality thermal interface material so bottom line then unless you're going

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for phone performance records it's really cool and the results surprised

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even us but i wouldn't recommend voiding your warranty over it

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speaking of things i would recommend ting is the mobile carrier that's

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focused on customer service and customer satisfaction when you call ting you

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don't pay extra for the privilege the average ting bill is just 23 bucks a

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now just 10 bucks a gig beyond the first gig so try out their savings calculator

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it's over at Linus.ting.com we'll have that linked below and find out if you

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would save money on ting when you sign up at our link you'll get 25 bucks in

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service credit or towards a new device

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so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if

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it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to

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where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description also link down

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there is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community

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forum which you should totally join no one no one needs to know if this was

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a Linus who would have made it in the video but unfortunately my incompetence

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generally goes under the radar do you actually think the editors are going to

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take the time to go through all this footage and listen to it i really

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strongly doubt it