Something I should have done a long time ago ...

[Kezmark]

So, our story starts with drinking, which by the way, I advise you refrain from doing before doing something like this. Suffice to say, looking at the liquid metal application and replacing it was something I wanted to do for a long, long time as my temps have been horrible, but I kept postponing until the warranty is over. A little too much drinking and my impulsiveness got the better of me.

So I open my laptop, remove the heatsink, and what do I see....

See, the problem with Asus isn't that they don't add enough liquid metal, but that they place most of it anywhere but where it needs to be.

Fortunately for me, the fact they added so much was a blessing, as I didn't need any. I cleaned the dark bits and just re-spread the whole thing, and gave it a mirror shine, while also having to remove a lot of the lm that was unnecessary.

Now, previously with my heavily limited settings in throttlestop, lower boost, lower frequencies, etc. Also a good undervolt, I would reach about 94-95 degrees in cinebench on a 10 min test. Now keeping the same settings, after my re-spreading, I am getting a maximum of 77 degrees in cinebench.

So really, this goes to heavily prove what I've always been saying here, that laptops do not need to be loud, or hot. The problem is that the manufacturers don't give a ****** and just throw a blob of liquid metal there and hope for the best.

Now I'm not saying you should do it. If you're afraid, get someone that knows what they're doing. It's really not hard, just get some q-tips and be patient with it. You won't need more liquid metal, just pick it up with the q-tip or a seringe and nicely spread it until you get as close to a mirror shine as possible on both the gpu and cpu as well as on the heat-sink.

This is my end-of-the-year contribution, to anyone that's interested. I might do more testing with letting my cpu actually be a 13980HX and not limiting it, but who knows, I prefer better temps and my scores in cinebench have been and are still around 33000. So not like it's performing all that bad.

Oh right, for those interested, my laptop is a Rog Strix Scar 18 G834JZ with a I9-13980HX, and a RTX 4080.

[eXplode]

Good make some tests in Cinebench to see what are the scores and the temp's most important 

On my old asus laptop that i change the thermal paste and the liquid metal the condition for the CPU was the same afte 8 months so 2 year's is a long time to not change the liquid metal also i think you know do NOT INSTALL latest bios becouse that will lock the bios and you CAN'T downgrade it after this ..... Latest Asus bios s**t limit the power to 65 max in games and you score will be destroyed and you never will get 33k in Cinebench so dont Forget to not install latest bios and ffffffff this lock s*** i will say every bad things that Asus do when i can i dont care they can ban me i dont give a .....

[Kezmark]

I have the laptop for just over 1 year, and realistically, the temps were like this from the start, not like they degraded over time. So I doubt the conditions were much different to begin with. I mean clearly the way they apply it is stupid, since they put about 3 times the amount you need and I imagine just squish it like normal paste. But with liquid metal, you need a very small amount and you need to coat it with a q-tip until it looks as close to a mirror as possible. What they're doing is very bad. There is no way there should be so much liquid metal on the sides if they did it properly.

As for the latest bios, which I'm guessing is the one with the microcode update, I already have it from the start and it hasn't caused any issues for me. Granted it could be that throttlestop overrides all of that, but I don't know. 33k isn't even a great score to be honest, I could likely get 36k or more if I remove all the limitations I put on it with throttlestop.

Also, the photos don't really do it justice as it looks like a lot more liquid metal is on the die then it actually was. Even on the sides of the die, where it looks covered it was very powdery and full of gaps, it was almost baren of lm honestly.

[Kezmark]

Ok, so with my current limits in throttlestop I can reach between high 32k to low 33k scores in cinebench, with sub 80 temps.

If I take off most of the limits, I can reach 35k+, but I have to lower my undervolt a good bit for it to be stable and the temps reach mid to high 80s, even having a spike to 90, so it really isn't worth to me.

Tested in 10 min runs of cinebench.

At the end of the day 2k score on cinebench doesn't do much, I prefer quiet and cool.

[ElectroStingz]

Kezmark, your post in that other thread got me thinking about this and how build consistency might be an issue.

So what you are looking at is my Asus ROG Strix G16 14900HX + RTX 4060 which is now 1 month old.

CPU - We can see the liquid metal has not been spread well, looks like it was blobbed on from factory and not spread out prior to heatsink attachment.

CPU VRM - Reasonable but not the best

GPU - Wasn't bad but whatever was used is totally dry so I have to replace.

GPU VRM - Not so good.

Overall everything is lacking full surface area contact except the GPU, I don't have any liquid metal and with the current amount it's not enough for me to spread nicely so this will need a full clean and repaste when I have the time and bits.

[Kezmark]

Yeah, the problem with the liquid metal application, is that to do it properly, it requires very little liquid metal and a lot of time and patience spreading it to a thin mirror shine on both heat sink and die. I don't see that happening with any actual manufacturer, be it msi, asus, whatever. They'll likely have an easy and fast application method, often with more lm then required and hope for the best, that works well enough with normal thermal paste, but it will be an issue with lm. Most people will accept that laptops just run hot and leave it at that, or they'll send it in for repair, and maybe then they do a better job and the customer is satisfied.

And with modern cpus being better at handling higher temps, they don't have much incentive to change that. Mind you, all of this is conjecture from my part, as obviously I don't know their process, but I've seen a lot of cases similar to mine and yours, and considering they'll tell you replacing liquid metal breaks warranty (It doesn't really, at least depending where you live) most people won't even check.