With consumer CPUs now gaining more cores, its become a challenge to the direct opposite of laptop designs current goal which is portability. For the most part of the last 2 year, we’ve seen a reduction of thick laptops that feature mobile processors but with the advent of the 8th- and 9th-gen Intel not to mention their Ryzen counterpart who have not made their mobile debut, its become a real challenge to cool these CPUs on laptop.
Laptops of today have favored more compact designs, doing away with the ROG GX800 and Predator 21X of yesteryear in favor of the Zephyrus and Triton of today. These laptops feature a super slim body yet as flagships, must still deliver the top-end parts. The problem of not having enough cooling is thermal throttling, something which has been an issue for many folks that are after performance in mobile form factor.
The laptop market has always had this little corner of the industry which deals with this issue. There are people who offer repasting services and manufacturers themselves have taken this into account and have offering repasting services as well. A little bit more advanced is replacing the stock TIM with liquid metal. Liquid metal like Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut or Coolaboratory Liquid Ultra/Pro, much like for their desktop benefits, still offer the same for laptops: excellent thermal conductivity.
On the manufacturing side, usage of liquid metal has been reserved to 3rd-party boutique builders but with the earlier announcement of the ROG Mothership as well as new findings in ASUS’ website, it seems this will change.
During the announcement of the Intel 9th-gen refresh lineup, ASUS announced they would be using liquid metal TIM on their ROG Mothership featuring the Core i9-9980HK.
It has also been revealed that the Core i9 version of the G703 will also feature liquid metal.
Further details reveal that Thermal Grizzly is used on the laptops. It’s also noted that to prevent overflow, fences line the CPU to prevent the liquid from flowing off.
The usage of liquid metal TIM is reserved mostly to the Core i9 models but it is interesting to see if ASUS develops a technique could finally see this method normalize and see itself trickle to more consumer options.
2 Comments
Excellent. Since laptop processors tend not to be monkeyed around by the average user, this should net some good thermal gains.