ThisIsDonut

If you're having problems I'd start by flashing your bios with the latest version and remove any overclocks on you may have.

I am a lighting designer for concerts/events etc... so I work with a lot of tech savvy people, audio engineers, riggers, etc, all of these guys use CAD software and other virtual design stuff so USUALLY, its not like being IT-Guy for your grandparents... but without fail one of my lighting buddies with no real first hand experience with PCs other than buying them at best-buy will say, "Hey man, I'm thinking of building my own rig like you did...."
now I used to get really excited when this would happen, in my mind I immediately start calculating what CPUs and GPUs are out and on sale, what kind of power we could put into a nice rig for the person, and how excited they would be to have a super nice, super fast system that they got to build first hand with me....
I said USED TO.
Because this has happened at least 5 times now, and EVERY SINGLE TIME... they buy some OP desktop from Wal-Mart and say to me, "Ahhh man, I bought a pre-built, I got thinking about it and building my own would be too hard"

I LITERALLY JUST OFFERED TO SPEC AND BUILD IT FOR YOU!!??!! 
And SHOW YOU what I'm doing so you can see its NOT HARD and you can DO IT YOURSELF.
... I still have by far the nicest PC of all my Lighting Desginer colleagues ... lol.

Yes in generel people don't appreciate the time and energy used by "the IT guy" ?

I use to to that route, but anymore I just install the drivers over using the clean install checkbox which is more or less suppose to do the same thing.

Did you DDU the driver?

Did you do a clean install of the drivers? That'd be the most likely issue when swapping out GPUs. 

The driver is the same however registry entries and alike are based on your GPU specifically, DDU in safe mode when changing GPU architecture is always advisable (pascal to turing) even if the driver is "the same"

Considering the current WHQL drivers support all the way back to the 600 series, I think a better question is if OP updated his drivers.

I just wanted to share my experience with liquid metal on my AW13R3, and provide some tips and warnings in case anyone decides to repaste.
 
For anyone not willing to read the whole thing, here are the tips and lessons learned from my case:
- It will most likely void your warranty, if not right away, surely after a few months, as it stains the heatsink and doesn't come fully off from the die. Don't assume you can just wipe it off and replace with thermal compound in case you need to activate your warranty later on, as it kight not be the case.
- AW13R3's heatsink seems to have only a thin copper sheath in contact with the die, the rest may be made of aluminum or some other alloy which reacts with the LM. Sorry I didn't take pictures, but after I removed the LM I tried using sandpaper on the copper to try and get all the LM out, only to discover it had somehow migrated into the heatsink. Don't know how deep because I didn't want to scrap it, but it was clear that there was some reaction involved. Scratching the copper didn't show more copper underneath. Really weird.
- Protecting not only the GPU/CPU but also the area around them is an important safety measure. The electric tape is fine for the chips, but maybe using nail polish or something more heat-proof in the area around the CPU and GPU should prevent issues in case you have any mishap.
- As mentioned by Alex here somewhere, moving the laptop around, especially with the LM still a bit warm, may cause issues. I'd wait a few minutes for it to cool before turning off, or even force the fans to run at full for a couple of minutes. Having the area around the chips better protected is a good mitigation measure, but never underestimate Murphy's law.
- Maybe consider opening your laptop to inspect the service every so often, maybe every year, or even every 6 months. This could've avoided me a lot of trouble. I don't think you need to replace the LM, it works differently than regular thermal compound. As for the thermal pads, if you've replaced them as well, maybe consider getting new ones as they seem to become a bit dry and may come apart when you remove the heatsink. This may have been just the brand I used (Fujipoly), as the stock ones seem more forgiving, but still.
- If for any reason you get LM anywhere but the die, isopropyl alcohol and a microfiber cloth are bad to remove it, but it seems to be the best there is. This thing is just awful to remove from anywhere, I guess there's some metal bonding thing that makes it extremely hard to clean. If you get it underneath any component, get a compressed air can, protect the other side with a microfiber cloth (you don't want to blow the LM from one place to another where it might be even worse), and start blowing from multiple sides, alternating with soaking it with isopropyl alcohol (90% plus, please). Worked for me.
 
Ok, now to the issue.
 
I won't go into details about how I did it, but I followed the guide available in iUnlock, which is great, and it worked out fine for almost 1 year. My temps dropped 17degC, which is a lot. Anything is better than the crappy stuff Dell uses, anyways. I repasted even the Dell I use at work.
 
Preemptively answering some questions or comments: Yes, I used electric tape. No, I didn't apply too much, in fact I probably used a tad less than what is shown in iUnlock. Not my first repaste.
 
So, what happened after almost 1 year of low temps? Suddenly my 1060 stopped working and Windows showed a "code 43" in device manager. My graphics amplifier still worked fine, so I started troubleshooting. After DDA didn't solve the problem I imagined it could be something hardware-related. Opened the laptop and found a tiny bit of LM has squirted out from the die all and made its way underneath one of the GPU memory modules.
 
It was probably from throwing the laptop around (mea culpa here, as I have thrown it on my bed once or twice), but there's no way to know for sure, since the last time I threw it around was probably months before this happened, and I had been using the laptop every day for 3 days without moving it from my desk (I was on vacation). One day I'm gaming normally, the next day I notice my fps is dead. It probably took a few heat-cold cycles for the LM to actually short something. But still, it's amazing how the LM can escape from the middle of the die-heatsink contact.
 
Regardless, I was lucky enough to be able to clean it without sustaining permanent damage to the laptop. Anywhere else the LM caused a short might have bricked my laptop.
 
First I removed the excess with a microfiber cloth, then again but soaked in isopropyl alcohol. It's impossible to properly see underneath these chips without proper equipment, but it seemed like it had been just in one set of contacts close to the edge, so I cleaned what I could with the cloth and isopropyl, then used a compressed air can to blow the rest away from the contacts in several directions, starting with the closest path out, of course, and protecting the other side with the cloth. On the first blows I saw some LM coming out (traces, but still), then I soaked everything with isopropyl and blew it out several times.
 
Repasted with Kryonaut and it's working normally, although a bit warmer. I might replace the heatsink in the future, since it's quite bad now after I tried to remove the LM, but only if I start to see throttling. If I do I'll take pictures and see how far the LM has migrated.
 
Lucky me, I guess.
 
I hope this helps anyone considering applying LM.
 
Cheers

I am a lighting designer for concerts/events etc... so I work with a lot of tech savvy people, audio engineers, riggers, etc, all of these guys use CAD software and other virtual design stuff so USUALLY, its not like being IT-Guy for your grandparents... but without fail one of my lighting buddies with no real first hand experience with PCs other than buying them at best-buy will say, "Hey man, I'm thinking of building my own rig like you did...."
now I used to get really excited when this would happen, in my mind I immediately start calculating what CPUs and GPUs are out and on sale, what kind of power we could put into a nice rig for the person, and how excited they would be to have a super nice, super fast system that they got to build first hand with me....
I said USED TO.
Because this has happened at least 5 times now, and EVERY SINGLE TIME... they buy some OP desktop from Wal-Mart and say to me, "Ahhh man, I bought a pre-built, I got thinking about it and building my own would be too hard"

I LITERALLY JUST OFFERED TO SPEC AND BUILD IT FOR YOU!!??!! 
And SHOW YOU what I'm doing so you can see its NOT HARD and you can DO IT YOURSELF.
... I still have by far the nicest PC of all my Lighting Desginer colleagues ... lol.

I am a lighting designer for concerts/events etc... so I work with a lot of tech savvy people, audio engineers, riggers, etc, all of these guys use CAD software and other virtual design stuff so USUALLY, its not like being IT-Guy for your grandparents... but without fail one of my lighting buddies with no real first hand experience with PCs other than buying them at best-buy will say, "Hey man, I'm thinking of building my own rig like you did...."
now I used to get really excited when this would happen, in my mind I immediately start calculating what CPUs and GPUs are out and on sale, what kind of power we could put into a nice rig for the person, and how excited they would be to have a super nice, super fast system that they got to build first hand with me....
I said USED TO.
Because this has happened at least 5 times now, and EVERY SINGLE TIME... they buy some OP desktop from Wal-Mart and say to me, "Ahhh man, I bought a pre-built, I got thinking about it and building my own would be too hard"

I LITERALLY JUST OFFERED TO SPEC AND BUILD IT FOR YOU!!??!! 
And SHOW YOU what I'm doing so you can see its NOT HARD and you can DO IT YOURSELF.
... I still have by far the nicest PC of all my Lighting Desginer colleagues ... lol.

Yes every day. I work on a school as a IT guy. Teachers, fine creatures, but some of the most non-techie people in existence. I smoke alot of weed to deal with the extreme traumas I get from work.