MSI GS65 Laptop Teardown and Liquid Metal Mod - 20C Lower 

Wonderful video, I did the same and now under the stress test, I got nearly 20 degrees down as well. There is no throttle at all under AIDA64 FPU test for 10 minutes!!! Cinebench from 989 to 1116

I am still amazed that manufactures put a lot of time in the design of these laptops but still don't thermal past correctly or as you shown us the liquid metal. its like having a fast car and using low grade fuel.

To all of you who did this liquid metal mod... Gallium reacts with copper as well, it doesn't destroy it's molecular bonds like it does to aluminium, but it does get soaked up by copper. Remember this! At one point your temp curve will start to go up, dramatically so. That's when you need to apply more liquid metal. You'll see that the copper sink is gray now and that it cannot be cleaned, that's the soaked up gallium. Don't worry about it, just add more and repeat if necessary. Just because things like these happen to all thin and powerful laptops, I'm buying a Helios 500. To me it's ugly as sin, but what can I do? It works, and it's probably the only one on the market now that actually works. I'll probably do the same mod as well, just to keep it even cooler and quieter. It can be ugly, at least it'll be quiet! :) BTW I bought an ASUS GL504GM i7 8750 / 1060 6Gb, and returned it 4 days later because it was useless. It throttled the CPU core down to 800MHz, and GPU got power throttled as well. Too bad, it looked OK.

Feels like defusing a bomb lol

Excellent video and explanation. I had to do this twice. (TLDR) The thin layer isn't enough in the GS65. Leave the thinnest pool possible as the heatsink doesn't press the two die that you're trying to take heat from. After a week of high temps, I did this process a second time and improved my temps as is stated in the video. Explanation: I found that you appear to use the provided q-tip off screen to get a thin film of LM on it before applying to the die. That thin film wasn't enough for me. Running Handbrake to convert a single mkv to mp4 immediately sent the temps to 90C and throttled. This happened 100% of the time where the PC was using the proc 60% at 4ghz. After applying / leaving more of an ever so slightly pooled amount on both die, my temps topped at 85C but averaged 77C @ 3.2Ghz instead of running at 2.6Ghz at 88C. The rationale is that the heatsink doesn't press onto the die like you'd have with a desktop cooler (which you should de-lid the processor and apply LM between the chip and die cover then apply regular thermal paste between the proc and heatsink). Thus, you should definitely protect the aluminum parts of the chip with silicon or regular clear nail polish to ensure anything seeping and spreading over the course of time doesn't cause a short in the motherboard.

Excellent video! I just bought this laptop, and I too notice it slamming up against ~90C and thermal throttling on at least 2 of the 6 cores right out of the gate. I recently performed a repaste of my old Lenovo IdeaPad U530 Touch, and it made a HUGE difference, so I intend to do the same with the GS65. I just wish laptop manufacturers would start doing this kind of thing correctly from the factory so we wouldn't have to take apart brand new products and fix shoddy workmanship.

I had the similar problems as you regarding thermals, as my msi gs65 was thermal throttling over 30% when running AIDA64, or playing games like Warzone for an hour my CPU was easily peaking to over 90 degrees C even with cooler boost on + external fan (GPU sometimes to 85C). Hell, even just putting the laptop in turbo mode caused CPU thermals sometimes to spike up to over 70 degrees in idle, while averaging around 60 degrees. I bought and iFixit toolkit and using your video I could easily disassemble the whole thing. My laptop is 2 years old and the paste was significantly dried out and crusty. So i went to work, did a few minor things extra, such as applying 2 layers of modified conformal coating around the die (wanted to be sure of heat resistance as it has max service temp up to 200C) and finishing off with some kapton insulating tape as second defense layer. I also disassembled the gpu and cpu fans and cleaned the inside as the vent holes were clogged with dust and the cpu fan was making noise. Finally I repasted the more whiteish paste that was just left in the video with kryonaut paste, as it was pretty dried up aswell. Also did a 1tb SSD upgrade. I have to say, the results are awesome. Idle temps are now around 40C. Running AIDA64 on full GPU and CPU load with no thermal throttling and does not cause my temps to rise above 80 degrees, or 70 even when i turn on cooler boost. Overall laptop is much more quiet now. Although it did cause me some headaches, such as a minor slipup with the LM on one small gpu capacitor and having a heatsink screw that I had to drill out using a cutter, I'd say it was worth the trouble. I am very happy! This was also my first time disassembling a laptop. Might update you in 6 months when I will reexamine the LM.

Doing this saved my desktop 7700k as well. Went from not being able to OC to 4.9 and hitting 95c, to being able to get 5.0 stable and keep the temp at 70c at 100% load. What a world of difference. It was way easier though then in this situation having to remove the entire mobo. I have a GS75 now and Im going to have to do this eventually. Nice video man.

Excellent video, watching you tear down this GS65 has given me the confidence to repaste my two week old GE75, having said that all I'll have to do is dismantle the heat pipes as the motherboard "thankfully" isn't turned around...if it was it would be way beyond my skills. Great to watch someone who is experienced take apart a 2k laptop though.

Hey, it's been 11 12 months since you applied LM, have you noticed any increase in temperatures or any other abnormality yet? I have a gs65 and am contemplating between Kryonaut and Conductonaut.

Im imagining that beeping sound you always hear in surgery videos while youre doing this. Beep.Beep.Beep. Lifts up motherboard. BEEEEEEEEP.

This really helped me when I added another M.2. Fantastic video. Thanks man!

Great video! I recently convinced my friend to purchase a 31.5in, 1440p, 144hz monitor which made this already hot laptop run -hot-. I didn't use liquid metal since I'm not quite that good or comfortable yet, but using this for applying some NTH1 paste yielded a 10C-20C temperature delta on the very cursory thermal testing I did. The framerates went up by like 10-12fps in a lot of intensive loads, and the laptop lifespan was (probably) increased as well. Previously was running 88C-96C on all cores, now running in the 69(nice)-78C range.

Great job to MSI for making it take longer to work on

Good work 👍 I’d love to hear more about this laptop from you after you sink some time with it.

This video is 2 years old. So I wanted to ask: Did you encounter any problems in this time with the liquid metal / laptop?

I still wanna see how you put it back together. Can you please do it ? I’m woories about the fan connectors to put it nice back without the liquid metal will move to much.

When you sell your wedding ring for a laptop! 😂😂

Hey, great videos. I know your channel is small (at the moment) but i do hope it grows over time. You explain things very clearly and deserve the viewers and subs.

Badass vid, life saver, thank you mucho got my m.2 2tb upgrade. Simple smooth.

They should put a liquid metal at stock in laptops like these

Amazing results, question, do you have to keep repeating this process like ever 4-6 months?

you are so brave sir

Is somebody's cat in heat? Lmao 😂😭

I'm really happy I went with the GF 65. I got I7 9750 and Rtx 2060. & The motherboard isn't flipped... I would never attempt to take the motherboard out of a labtop. Lol props to u all that do..

Thank God I bought the GS75. I don't have to flip motherboard to install SSDs. I know that is stressful to do as I had to flip it to upgrade the ram and liquid silver the cpu and gpu. The things we do for love...

I did this. It's not that bad but man was I nervous.

Thank you very much for posting. I was just adding and SSD, but this video, and your commentary was very helpful. If you're very near Philly pickup come your case of beer!!!

I just did this on my gs65 but my results arent as good as yours, I used thermal grizzly conductanaut, in aida64 i got 75-77 in cpu stress, but thats with the fans set to max before i start, in auto it still throttles and if i do cpu and gpu stress the cpu (90-93) throttles while the gpu stays around 75, that being said it is around 35 degrees where i live, do my results seem normal to you? what was the ambient temperature like when you tested it?

You're a genius and a life saver! Thanks.

I got the HP Omen with a 1060 and an 8750h and will soon be doing some cooling upgrades myself. Just bought some Fujipoly Ultra Extreme thermal pads and Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut liquid metal. I cannot wait to see the improvements this upgrade will show. I am also adding some heatsinks to my RAM and will see if a 3mm heatsink will fit on my M.2 SSD.

this made feel some type way haha! I recently bought one I want to do this!!!! gs65 is beautiful!!! it will b in my will haha

Game changing video! Well done sir.

Hello. I recently bought this laptop and I am greatly considering repasting it. My first issue was the fact that i was scared of doing this myself or going to a PC store to pay them to do the job. I already got over it, im going DIY. Now my second and most important issue is the Liquid Metal. How much of a benefit is it compared to a regular thermal paste like Kryonaut? Other question is: how long des the liquid metal last? Is it really hard to remove? Really hope u can answer, thanks!

Welp, so there's another thing I definitely don't want to do myself

Just like my Mom's old VCR....this thing is never going back together.

Hello! How does your notebook feel now? GPU & CPU temperatures are still same as after this operation?

Fantastic video! I was thinking the same thing and thought that maybe already someone did this already. But I am thinking of using Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut and my question is: Will it go cooler with that paste? Is the original paste that bad?

Well done .. keep the good work

what was the brand of the clear nail polish?

Great teardown video.

Maybe Undervolts would have been enough to control temps.

planning to do this on my ROG Strix G

I love this notebook and it would be a perfect 10 for my use case, IF it weren't for the flipped mobo! It's all good nevertheless - just not as fast to get in and do what I need.

my gs75 stealth 10875h reaches 100c when stress testing it, apparently undervolt is locked, and i cant do much !...

Man what a fiddly build! :O

I once owned a GS73VR and it was the same deal as this, flipped motherboard. Such a pain to upgrade.

Wow, this is a nightmare. I was going to wait till Black Friday but ended up biting the bullet and buying this since I needed a laptop now. I know I will have to do this one day just to expand the storage.

i know this is a little late but undervolting will help your laptop run cooler, and performance wont be affected. Do this before opening up your laptop, and if you have the skill to open this laptop causes its harder than most, then you can try opening it up.

Excuse me! What is the nail polish that you used? Can I have that link too?

Great video. How did you figure out where and how much LM to put on the heatsink itself? I've looked at other videos, and it all seems like people just eyeball it, but maybe I'm missing something-- I was planning on just making a guide for myself by putting down tape to outline the impressions in the paste before buffering it off, or just putting LM on the die and then putting the heatsink back on for a little bit in order to see where the LM is actually making contact. Are these good ideas? What did you do?

How is the liquid metal performing now? Has it eroded into the heat sink? Has performance dropped? Claims of a 20 degree decrease in temps seem too good to be true.

1:20 Screen is not IPS. It's AHVA. MSI calls it "IPS-level"

Mother board is flipped for better cooling... Not really a big deal... How often are you going to install ram and a new SSD? maybe twice???

Are the heat blocks pure copper on the cooler? Last thing I want is liquid metal to eat through it. How about a link the the nail polish? Any follow ups on your device since you made this video?

What kind of results did you get? I got a little worried watching that... when you were applying the nail polish on the CPU it looked like a little tiny bit spread onto the CPU edge (at 13:06) which you spread out with the Liquid Metal! Maybe I'm mistaken.

If the major issue with this laptop is the mother board being flipped... It must be the perfect laptop! I just don't see this being an issue... its easy as hell to work on!

There should be an option while buying a laptop to have the Liquid Metal Mod for the CPU, those manufacturers will have less to worry about cooling and we will have an overall better experience.

I did this successfully with the same laptop but I still hit 90+ at times under heavy load. Do you get the same? I can't imagine I did something wrong as all fans are still running and the liquid metal spread I did seems to cover well. My idle temps at the lowest are still around 48. Does this seem right after a liquid metal application?

Because of this I probably I won't buy G65. I really liked this laptop.

How is it holding up? :) Great video!

God this looks like a surgery to someone who hasn't tried it

Hi Im only 15 and did a teardown on my gs65 to install a second m.2 ssd and then assembled it back together but when I pressed the power button and it didnt turn on my heart stopped lol and i checked the cables for another 30mins and then realized I just had to plug it in for a second and it booted up kinda weird but thanks for the video I might to metal mod too. :)

I need to do this for cyberpunk.

I have GS65 with 1070 Max-Q. Used Grizzly (+ Arctic Silver for the VRM) and at first time got around 2% improvement. Then used more "Grizzly" and now it is much better temperature, but still far from your results. Am I doing something wrong? How did get so good results? Did you replace thermal-pads? Did you got the -20C with Undervolting?

how or what did you use to reconnect the MOSFETs or TRHM to the heatsink? I'm not sure if it was thermal pads or a paste in the video, I'm about to pull this apart but I don't want to have to order something and wait a week for it to arrive. Can you give me any information on this?

Do you have to remove the nail polish after the application of the liquid metal? (after the nail polish dries), I have seen that some use Liquid Electrical Tape ... what advantages can it have?

I feel this laptop like an half-done product.

I hear there is creaking with hand resting on the palm area, is this true? build quality is a bit of a concern. Thanks for the tear down video! Likely will save me money as resalers want to charge $70-80+ on top of the ssd price just for ssd upgrades...

Is there any companies that make improved heatsinks or anything like that or is thermal paste all we can do? I see below a guy is talking about gallium contamination will this lead to breakdown of cpu component or thermal decay or does it only affect cosmetics?

When you say nail polish, do you mean actual clear nail polish? Or is that some kind of computer term I’ve never heard before.

I've seen others suggesting some other type of coating to insulate the metal bits in the PCB, is it safe to use a nail polish instead, I mean I hope it isn't electrically conductive??

Awesome video! I just bought this laptop but I feel that the screen area will bend and also the build quality seems kind of low even though is a 2k laptop. How have been your experience with it?

I noticed some components with thermal paste below the GPU that come into contact with the coolers. Did you reapply paste (normal) to those or just leave them as is?

Is doing this going to void the warranty? I've done this before on my GFs Dell 7567 but that's a $700 laptop not $2K. Honestly I'm not even sure if I need the warranty considering anything that broke I'd probably fix it myself.. Thanks for the video, this will be very stress relieving!

I just got this but i’m a bit apprehensive to do the mod right now. The laptop was expensive. I have a bit of experience re-pasting laptops, done it on a Vaio which is harder to disassemble but i have never used liquid metal either. Though i got a tube of liquid metal i bought months ago to use on a desktop, never ended up doing it. It’s not Grizzly it’s from the other known maker Laboratory Liquid Pro. I was thinking about using it for a few months then do it but the this chips are toasty af and the fan can do your head in. I’ll prolly just buy an iFix it kit and do it. I’m pussing out due to the price. I’m gonna be paying this thing for 6 months at £280 per instalment. Thank fuck i will pay no interest through a Paypal loan. That’d be another 200/300 on top.

I guess this liquid metal has gallium in it. But be careful with gallium, because if it gets in contact with anything aluminium, it will cause damage to that component. What are the heatpipes of this laptop made out of? I hope it has no Aluminium in it. I have almost the same laptop (GS75) but I'm too afraid to try this mod. How is it working out longterm?

why is your hand so blurry while wiping down the laptop at 0:20? I thought there was something wrong with my refresh rate but no, it's the video itself.

Can you do a video on the keyboard removal process?

I have a GP65 and thinking of this. After a year, still same temps? Notice and increase? How’s the liquid metal doing against the heat pipes? Reason why I ask is because that stuff eats away at certain alloys, wondering if these pipes are resistance to that.

How is it 11 months later? Still alive? How about the heat sink, definitely copper all the way, (not coated for it to eat through?) I'm considering doing this but the laptop was 2k in the UK🤢🤢 If I kill it I will die a little on the inside 😋

I loved this video . How does one know if the nail polish is conductive or not ,Is there an alternative to using nail polish like maybe using non conductive tape?

Good work I really wanted this laptop I was torn between this and the Razer blade. And I ended up going with the Razer blade for this purpose alone, the flipped motherboard is just completely stupid. And it uses a significantly slower pcie drive than anyone else so to upgrade anything is just way too much of a hasslen, so I ended up going with the Razer blade for ease of upgrading

I’ve seen some videos about just using better thermal paste like thermal grizzlys kryonaut instead of liquid metal. I would much rather just put better thermal paste then risk the entire system with liquid metal. Do you know if the better thermal paste would get the same cooling results as with liquid metal. Thermal paste is just so much safer and I do not want to take any risks with a $2000 laptop

Next we can do my 1080 stix...... maybe

Is this video still true for the MSI GS65 Stealth? GTX 1660TI version.

Very helpful video, i'm going to upgrade this laptop. Would u mind let me know what type of tools of those u r using? Can u provide me a link so i can make a purchase and keep it for future use? Thank you.

Can u make a video how u put the things together after putting the liquid metal ? I’m too scared

Can you do a Updated video of your Temps using the Liquid Metal Mod, and Undervolt settings? Mine has the same specs as yours, MSI GS65 however im using the Kryonaut and undervolt of -175 still hitting at 80 to 90c dpending on load

Is there a computer/ electronics based alternative to nail polish?

At first this helped me also, but now i have it on and it does contact but im still having 90C with custom fan curve...what went wrong? Its cleaned, it has conductonaut on. Should i repaste it with something else?

Thank you! I would like to know if this works as well with the aero 15x because I’m leaving towards that instead of this

Hello, I just bought this laptop and thinking about doing a repaste but I’m wondering what you do about the thermal paste by the ram shown in the video. Can I put thermal pads instead of thermal paste in those 3 vram or whatever it is?

Can anyone give me a purchase link for foam material to use as a barrier that you have personally used and know is safe for a laptop?

How can I replace the keyboard? The metal appears to be plastic rivetted in. My keyboard has broken due to the common error with the rivet under the keyboard ribbon.

what did you use for the vrms seems like gp65 doesnt use thermal pads, i have heard about k50-pro , i looked for thermal pads but i dont know what dimensions to use, any clue anyone?

brilliant, thank you so much, i think il do this, just can't decide whether to get the rtx 2080 mq or rtx 2070 mq version of gs65, money is not an issue, i'm worried about 2080 mq performance problems, what do you think?

What about the vrm. Did you repaste it too. I wonder if 1gb of thermal paste enough for all cpu gpu and vrm too

How long did this Liquid Metal hold up Im thinking that nail polish doesnt last long under so much heat its starts to dry and crack maybe high temp silicone or glue would be better.

do you have to take the mb out to take the heatsync off? thats not normal... i got the gf 65 thin and you can get the heatsync out without much trouble