Chosen Solution

This isn’t my first time putting liquid metal between the CPU and the heat sink. In fact, I’ve done it to several laptops. But this time around when I did it to this current model that I have, and it appears to have died. My guess is that a bit of the liquid metal may have gotten on the board and shorted something out. However, a detailed inspection reveals the board to be as clean as can be. I actually took it to an Apple store to see if they could investigate. They weren’t able to find anything wrong and quoted me $500 to ship it off for further investigation. I’m wondering if there’s any hope for it at all at this point. I don’t know if anyone has any ideas. Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

You shorted the CPU out and in turn, trashed the board. You’ve treated yourself to a new board or a board-level repair (if it’s even viable) using Liquid Metal. It shouldn’t be in laptops for this exact reason. Pray the damage done to the machine isn’t fatal and beyond repair, or you get to replace the motherboard using a metal thermal paste. More then likely you’re looking at a board repair at the minimum here. It destroys aluminum coolers and slowly corrodes copper - but it doesn’t ruin it right away. Essentially what you do when you use Liquid Metal is you are signing an early death certificate for the cooling system and you will eventually need a new heatsink every few years if you keep it long term. This cooler damage isn’t a problem in a PC desktop where coolers are pretty universal and can (often, check on Dell/HP/Lenovo prebuilts to see if it uses standard mounting plates or a custom system that can’t be replaced with off the shelf parts) be fixed when it happens in most cases. HOWEVER, on laptops, the cooling is always custom and the damage can mean needing to spend days locating the right heatsink! Apple often uses 2 versions so unless your heatsink is still available you cannot reverse the damage without pulling one from a dead laptop with the same heatsink. I’ve also heard it ruins the CPU die given enough time as well. It’s not a mainstream product for a reason! Stick to a good thermal paste like Artic MX-4, and let the enthusiasts with more money then brains destroy hardware. Is it really worth losing the entire system over a few extra degrees gained by risking everything?