BanthaFodder23

I guess just to come back to this - you're 100% right, but going hard on either platform or GPU now means shelling out a lot more initially than my stopgap solutions.

If I reframed the original question and said I only have £600 quid to spend - anyone have any thoughts on which side I'm better off investing it in?

Not the same but on the laptop side I've LMed CPUs and GPUs without much issue. The longest running LMed machine is now coming on 3 years and showing no signs of degradation. The main issue is to coat surrounding smds and be sure the clean both surfaces very, very, very well. For me, I lapped the heat sink coldplate before applying liquid metal as regardless of the TIM being used, less is always better. Make sure that your coldplate is something that does not get destroyed by liquid metal so it you're using copper or anything nickel plated you will be fine. Also, you will need far less than you think you will. Even after many applications I still tend to overshoot and have to deal with the clean up. Also don't expect too much of a drop in temp/boost in performance. You'll get something, of course, just not anything mind blowing. Good luck with your project!

My advice would be a couple layers of clear nail polish on the SMDS surrounding the die, I believe that the cold plate should be copper so no worries for that, just make sure to completely avoid liquid metal contact with the aluminum on your heatsink as corrosion is nearly instant with most compounds. Gains will probably be in the 5 to 10c range since it's already a bare die on a mediocre cooler. Could be worse if your die or cold plate are concave/convex enough.