I just started to clean old thermal paste off my laptop and noticed that theres this nice border around the chips. It looks a lot like the insulations people use with their liquid metal setups. I've never used LM but wouldn't this be the perfect place to try?
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So the only thing I would say is a lot of laptops have limited cooling. As long as you have decent airflow you should be fine.
Usually a foam barrier is used to stop the liquid metal seeping out, like the one on the heatsink here:
[https://pbs-prod.linustechtips.com/monthly_2023_03/20230329_171053.jpg.342204b9a13e3c216b5342da2a6ca9df.jpg](https://pbs-prod.linustechtips.com/monthly_2023_03/20230329_171053.jpg.342204b9a13e3c216b5342da2a6ca9df.jpg)
Leave the Liquid Metal idea and go for Honeywell PTM7950. It beats every single thermal paste (especially in diredie low mounting pressure high temps application like in laptop) without having the needs to insulate anything because it’s not electrical conductive. It also have 3/5y of service life with no pump out or dry effect
No foam seal?
No deal.
If this is a laptop you need or care about, don’t use it as a training ground for LM. As others have suggested PTM or just a higher quality paste should do the job. Laptops are rarely limited by transfer but rather thermal mass.
I am guessing the cooler is not only copper, usually there’s aluminium involved which doesn’t play nice with liquid metal.