Laptop too hot, liquid metal as a solution? What can go wrong with a barebone right from the dealer! | practice

Let’s say we’re getting a new laptop and of course we want nothing but the best for it. And we blindly trust the marketing of the providers and various forum reports about how well liquid metal (Liquid Metal) performs in laptops. With purchase prices around 1000 euros and more, you don’t want to be stingy. The 80 euro surcharge no longer matters. And if you don’t dare to do it yourself, let the dealer do it for you. Such a barebone is thankfully flexible and the specialist will know what he is doing. For real?

Buy and a sense of security and foresight?

The barebone is a product from Clevo, an OEM that other companies also rely on. Only Clevo is not just Clevo and you always get what you pay for. But I’ll come back to that in a moment. Even established companies like Schenker rely on Clevo barebones, so nothing will (or can) go wrong there either. But a barebone from Clevo is something that comes in good or cheap versions. Of course we have to talk about that soon. But let’s get back to the (example) order process and stick to the chronology (the barebone from 2019 is no longer available, but the direct successor).

What the customer sees is a nice, commercially available surcharge list, against which there is basically nothing to object at first, even if the prices of the components are more a matter of taste. But that’s none of my business and that’s why I’m not interested in the first place. Only the paragraph with the “thermal modding” caught the eye of the buyer of this notebook three years ago. You have to apply thermal paste to the barebone anyway, so the workload would have to be done in any case. Only the 40 euros for the offered thermal paste as a surcharge are already awesome. If you calculate the usual 33-gram can down to the actual consumption for the individual barebones (GPU and CPU), then you would still be well under 4 euros here. On the other hand, more than 10 times that is required, hats off.

Especially since the Kryonaut Extreme only brings real added value for LN2 overclockers because it doesn’t tear as quickly at the lowest temperatures. Otherwise, the advantage compared to a paste for 2 euros in the required quantity is exactly zero. But why mess with thermal paste when you can get the (supposed) advantage of the liquid metal right from the “factory” for double the surcharge? In order to do it properly, you need a few manual skills and what is even more important: basic knowledge of chemistry. So for the whopping 80 euros (also at a surcharge of 1:10) it is better to have a “professional” do it in advance. Which also clarifies the chronology of the purchase and the thoughts of the customer before going to the checkout. If expensive purchases are not made that often, then at least once properly. Oh well…

Creeping flatfoot

The initial performance was also quite solid, at least the cooling was comparatively good. If you then use such a notebook every day and over a long period of time, you won’t even notice certain deteriorations, which only happen very slowly, at first. That goes well until the day when you finally notice that the GPU and CPU are throttling so much (and the fans blare the funeral march into the environment like a brass band) that something can no longer be right.

After all, the solution purchased in this way lasted for almost 3 years, but for at least a year with performance losses. That’s the moment when you as a customer give up in exasperation, or grab a screwdriver yourself and submit the seemingly dead patient for an autopsy again. Three years is too long for any warranty claims and it can’t get any worse after an intervention. The picture shows the exposed interior of the damaged Clevo barebones and if you look closely, you will already have noticed that there is a serious contradiction as the primary cause. Well, are you one of them?

Actually, I could already abbreviate here, but I don’t want to give any spoilers just yet. And so there is the actual Schlachteplatte on the next page. So please turn the page quickly!