Can we put a liquid metal on the P2 max or should I just use a better thermal paste to avoid risk?
I really wouldn’t, unless you’re an experienced hardcore overclocker with the requisite tools and are ready to sand down the CPU and heatsink every six months… which is a bit more difficult when the CPU is soldered to the motherboard.
Liquid metal destroys aluminium heatsinks and can potentially reduce the the effectiveness of copper heatsinks.
Read more here.
I’ve been tempted to use Kryonaut, or a Minus Pad 8, but I’m not itching to do so as I don’t have the time right now. If you do it, please let us know how you fare!
After reading this thread, I think I’ll go with the Arctic MX-4 when I do it as it allegedly lasts longer.
Then again, I don’t intend to push my P2 Max so I’ll probably not bother. OEM paste is designed to last much much longer than aftermarket ‘pro’ pastes because the manufacturer doesn’t want to have an endless stream of support/repair requests related to it.
I honestly wouldn’t bother even repasting it. I repasted mine with thermal grizzly kryonaut, which is one of the best performing non liquid metal pastes out there, and I didn’t see any difference in temperatures. MAYBE 1 or 2 degrees C lower. Not worth it.
Repasting makes sense if you feel like your CPU overheats easily. While I don’t have this issue myself, I expect some devices might have this due to manufacturing defects. It’s like with keyboards and glue. Normally your keyboard works fine, but in some cases a different person was manning the assembly line and simply used too much glue.
I suggest you open HWINFO utility and check what are your temps under full load (fan policy standard in BIOS, max performance in Windows, charger attached). I expect that CPU temps will be fine, but VRM temps might shock you (they get over 90C easily). This is probably the issue that needs to be solved in order to get more performance, I’ve seen people using termopads on P2 non-max for that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQFXjbW_3Js
It all depends on what problem we’re trying to solve. Repasting makes sense if your CPU hits 80s easily (not true in my case, it sits barely above 70 under full load, and even lower with undervolting). I would want (maybe) to push more than 8W to CPU, but that will fry VRMs for sure.
Thanks, @MutableLambda. The VRM temps are what concern me - they’re okay for now but I’d like them to be lower for future peace of mind. Some months from now I’ll try something stupid and forget about it. Where is the VRM on the P2 Max board?