 So if you've ever owned a laptop, you've probably got experience with your CPU getting hot enough to boil water, causing your fans to spin up to blow dryer levels, and your performance to fall as a result. But what can you actually do about that? Well, in the fringe PC performance tuning scene, swapping out generic, manufacturer provided thermal paste for high performance alternatives has been found to improve CPU and graphics card temperatures significantly. So we took one of the best products on the market, a liquid metal based material, to find out if we could improve the cooling and performance of a gaming laptop. And, spoiler alert, it worked really well. And we're going to show you guys how to do it, after we show you EK's modular liquid cooling Phoenix lineup. This is their next generation of modular and all-in-one liquid cooling solutions. Check them out at the link below, and thanks to EK for sponsoring this video. Liquid metal has a thermal conductivity of 73 watts per meter Kelvin. This is a staggering 16.2 times higher than even a good aftermarket thermal paste like IC Diamond. So then with performance like that, why is everybody not using it? Well, there's one big problem. Liquid metal is, well, metal. And that makes it not just thermally conductive, but also electrically conductive. So if you have a slip-up during application and it gets onto the capacitors, resistors, or traces on your CPU, GPU, or motherboard, the only thing your device will be good for is making black smoke. And even that, only for a short time. So with all that in mind, we decided that the best laptop for this job was the $3,000 Acer Predator Triton 700. This 18.9 millimeter thin laptop packs an Intel Core i7-7700HQ and a GTX 1080 Max-Q. But while it's out-of-the-box thermals are genuinely impressive given its size, under a combined load, it does experience thermal throttling, giving us an opportunity to not only improve temperatures, but also potentially performance. So before we began, we needed to establish a baseline, so we ran a fairly comprehensive battery of tests. Then it was time to head down to the workshop and get started. This is everything you'll need. A set of screwdrivers, we recommend the iFixit ProTech Toolkit, some conformal coating, electrical tape, cotton swabs, and of course, liquid metal. We chose Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut, a tin, gallium, and indium eutectic alloy for its insanely high thermal conductivity and its endorsement from overclocker extraordinaire, Der Bauer. Now disassembly of your laptop, if you're following along, will be different. Please consult a guide online. But the Triton 700 requires the removal of the bottom screws and actually the keyboard area up top. One pro tip is to always be careful when lifting pieces away from a laptop, because there may be fragile ribbon connections that need to be removed first. With the heat shield and the fans from either side of the heatsinks removed, finally we can get to what you've all been waiting for, removal of the heat pipes and fins. Always undo the socket mounting screws in reverse order of the numbers by the screws, and then very carefully lift up from both sides, slowly working it until it all comes off at once. From here then, it's goop removal time. For us, this took an especially long time, because we were trying to get it out from all the resistors and capacitors surrounding the GPU die. But patience here is important. These are not only extremely fragile, but they're also the most likely thing to get shorted out if our liquid metal application goes poorly. Some isopropyl alcohol on a cotton swab will help you get in between them. Next step is to apply some conformal coating to the areas around the CPU and the GPU dies. This stuff forms an insulating layer that should help prevent short-circuiting if our liquid metal seeps out. If you feel like masking all day, you can spray this stuff on, but to save time, we applied two coats 15 minutes apart with a cotton swab. Bringing us then to the do or die moment. Application of our liquid metal. It is crucial that you only put a super small drop on top of the die so that it doesn't seep out. Very carefully put- Oh, f*** me. Whoa! Um... Okay, you know what? We meant to do that. Because without some liquid metal to clean up for you, how would we show you what to do in the event of a spill? Sure, that's it. So anyway, since it's metal, you can't just soak it up with a cloth. But as it turns out, wiping it with alcohol can be successful. So after about half an hour of cleaning, we were ready to give it a second go. We cleaned out this parts tray to allow us to get the right amount just on the tip of the applicator and then moved over to the die. And... actually that looks about right. Now we're back on track. So then the next step is to spread it around using the included cotton swab until it makes a very thin film. You want it to be fully covered, but it shouldn't look like pooled up water. Then what you do is rub any excess on the bottom of the heat sink where it contacts the die. The process was similar for the GPU. Liquid metal on, spread it around, and we're good to go. We also added some last-minute electrical tape just because we were a bit sketched out and a physical barrier is always a great second line of defense. So then with the machine slapped back together...... Wow! Ah, that super stupid boot sound. I never thought I'd be so glad to hear it. The laptop works. Although that's not much of a surprise if you guys have been paying close attention to the video. Now anyway, let's talk results. Now we were expecting our temps to be a little better, but to be honest, at least for me anyway, like, I kind of thought the main limiting factor was the dissipation capacity of the tiny heat sinks that you find in laptops, not the thermal resistance between the processors and the heat pipes. I was so wrong. In AIDA64, we got a 20 degree improvement to CPU temperatures under full synthetic load. And under a combined CPU and GPU load, it still gets hot. Sure, I mean, it's a lot of heat. But nowhere near the overheating that we saw before. 3DMark saw modest performance gains and then, I mean, did you guys really think we were going to stop there? We fired up the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility, upped the turbo boost time to as long as it will allow, then we hopped into MSI Afterburner to see how much we could get out of the GPU. And with everything said and done, we had our GPU clock at 1950 megahertz and over 5 gigahertz on the memory, bringing us up to real GTX 1080 specs. I mean, that is proper crazy stuff in a laptop as thin as this one. So, recommended? Absolutely. As long as you don't mind risking your device. Speaking of recommended, Squarespace. Squarespace is the easy way to build your own beautiful responsive website. It starts at just 12 bucks a month and you get a free domain if you buy Squarespace for the year. And they've got tons of great features including their logo designer, their built-in commerce, every website comes with a free online store, cover pages which allows you to set up a beautiful one-page online presence in minutes, and the ability to publish content in Apple News format directly from the Squarespace blog. So start a trial with no credit card required and start building your website today. Then when you decide to sign up for Squarespace, go to squarespace.com forward slash LTT and use offer code LTT to get 10% off your first purchase. So thanks for watching guys. If this video sucked, then you know what? I actually don't have much to say. This is a cool video. You did it wrong. But if this video was awesome, hit the like button, get subscribed, or check out the link to buy the stuff we featured in the video description. Also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally join.