Comment by sanex
3 days ago
I have a Thinkpad x1 extreme gen 5 with an i9 and 3080. Liquid metal. Overheats like crazy. I want to get in there but I hear it's such a pain to deal with I've been putting it off. Definitely will be swapping to one of the thermal pads when I do it.
Go at it, I have a 1st gen Zephyrus 14inch and had bad heating problems, liquid metal there also initially that just didn't work due to bad application or whatever, repasted it and it's behaved way better.
I was quite nervious, but check Youtube, there's guaranteed some people that has documented the steps, do check multiple ones as some people are more detail oriented or just know what parts can be dangerous/tricky. Good tools can be a lifesaver also (isoprop alcohol for cleaning, lotsa q-tips, good screwdrivers and plastic picks like the fixit toolkits to pry gently).
This, I repasted my wife's Zephyrus laptop which had liquid metal for the Ryzen APU (6900HS), regular thermal paste for the GPU (3080) and thermal putty for VRMs.
Redid APU and GPU with PTM and VRMs with paste. -10C on average on the APU with way lower idle temps, and GPU went from being thermally throttled at 60W to being able to push until 110W. Fan is basically silent for 3 months now, whereas previously I could hear it from the next room.
Not the end of the world to deal with, you just have to be very careful. No harder than mobile phone repair if that’s something you’ve ever done
After how long? I.e. did you get a few good years with it?
Not OP, but it launched in June 2022, so less life than I'd like to see from a Thinkpad regardless of how you slice it.
It's at most 4 years old. For that high end of a laptop I have pretty high expectations, I think it was over $4k retail.