20/08/2026
Hi everyone!
Today's post is a bit of a rant against manufacturers using liquid metal (LM) as a thermal compound in their devices. It's long, sorry, but there's a lot to unpack. You can skip to the pictures if you don't want to read, no hard feelings. 😜
We are aware the subject is divisive. Some hardcore enthusiasts swear by it as the best solution to lower temperatures on mainstream gaming machines. We agree, in terms of temperatures when it comes straight out of the factory. But at what cost does it come long term?🧐
Today's case is a shining example of why we are against it. This Lenovo Thinkpad P1 Gen5 came in because it was badly overheating. To the point that we didn't have the time to run a test monitoring temperatures: the laptop had already shut down. The customer contacted Lenovo who looked at it, twice and wouldn't touch their own cooling system and offered a full motherboard replacement for about £1,500. 🤯🤬
The customer contacted his local repair shop who refused to touch it. We must admit that once we were made aware of the background of this machine we were reluctant to work on it. But we still wanted to help if we could. The initial assessment showed what we were dreading/expecting: the LM had run all over the place and some droplets had found their way to the motherboard. 😨
The problem with LM is that it is incredibly messy. It doesn't stay on the chip shield causing it to overheat badly. It runs. And when it hits the motherboard, in most cases, it's game over. I finds its way between the chips and their socket on the motherboard causing all sorts of short circuits and surges frying everything. Thermal paste on the other hand, doesn't run and even if it did, is non conducive. Throughout tests we've done in our workshop, the temperature differences under load tend not to exceed 3°c to 5°. In our view, such a small gain in performance isn't worth the trouble and risks associated with LM.
The very interesting point with this case is that the fans were very clean. So dust was not the problem. The only thing that could explain the overheating was either the LM or faulty chips. At this stage, we knew it was bad and we couldn't guarantee any results. But given the current state of the machine, the refusal from Lenovo to deal adequately with the issue at a reasonable price and the refusal of other shops to even look at it, we agreed to give it a go. 😬
It took us a few hours with the microscope to clean up the board and chips to the best of our abilities. We had to go through a fair bit of isopropyl 99%, a dozen of cotton buds and at least as many microfibre wipes in the process. We then applied Arctic MX7 to the CPU and GPU. We reassembled the machine and this time the CPU didn't go over 70°c under load. The computer is now fully usable, thus, saving a lot of money to the customer. 🥰
For all your computer troubles, call us on 0131 555 5782 or stop by the workshop at PC Repair Man Edinburgh, 28 Crighton Place, EH7 4NY.
