22
That time I had to clean liquid metal off a motherboard
Last Tuesday I got a customer's PC where they spilled thermal paste all over the socket, but it was the conductive kind with silver in it. I spent three hours scraping it off with isopropyl alcohol and a toothbrush before it even booted. Anybody else dealt with a mess like this and found a faster way to clean it up?
3 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In3 Comments
ivan7741mo ago
Yeah, I've dealt with that metal paste situation once. I read somewhere that some guys use a heat gun and thermal pads to draw the liquid metal out of crevices before cleaning. Worked way better than just alcohol and scraping for me. The trick is to get the board warm enough so the metal loosens up but not hot enough to damage anything. Your toothbrush method probably got the job done though, just takes forever.
5
keith_bennett1mo ago
Man the heat gun trick is genius, I wish I had thought of that when I dealt with a laptop that had liquid metal all over the CPU pins. I spent a whole afternoon dabbing at it with a q-tip and alcohol, but it kept smearing around instead of lifting off. Next time I'm definitely trying that thermal pad method to pull the metal out of the tiny gaps first. Did you have to worry about the paste seeping into the socket holes at all?
2