JohnnyDiggs

If this turns out to be true, I'm glad I didn't buy into x399 thinking I'd be able to get a new Threadripper chip down the line.

The cpu hasn't been delidded, right? 
When you touch the tubing, can you feel the liquid moving?
 
@JohnnyDiggs You can use the Edit button to add in more info instead of making multiple posts -- posts merged. 

I think a typical key misunderstanding in the community is that thermal compound/pads are "improving" the thermal conductivity between the CPU IHS (or die) and the metal heat sink. This is categorically untrue as metal-to-metal contact has far higher thermal conductivity than any thermal compound can dream to provide. If the two surfaces were completely flat at a atomistic level, there would be no need for thermal compound.
 
How the thermal compound improves is by displacing insulating pockets of air between two non-flat surfaces and therefore improving (by eliminating) thermal transfer between CPU IHS-->Air-->Heat sink. Now, the problem with pads is that it completely covers the contact area and does not "squeeze out" and so while you remove some of the air pockets, you also completely remove the metal-to-metal contact you would have had. Therefore you are completely in the mercy of the Z-directional thermal conductivity of the pad (which isn't that great) and overall likely to lose mass heat transfer capability when compared to having some degree of metal-to-metal contact.
 
Furthermore, specifically about spreading chiplet heats from Ryzen/Threadripper also fails to acknowledge that, yes, the chiplets are small dies with focussed heat; however the IHS sitting on top of it is soldered, and also a solid chunk of nickel plated copper. And so the heat from these chiplets will travel via the solder layer to the IHS, and within the IHS can spread in the X, Y, Z direction with 389 W/m K  being a solid chunk of copper, so by the time you are thinking of spreading the heat further with a pad, the spreading has already been done, and you are simply adding another layer of insulation.
 
@bignaz made some fairly bullish claims in the thread below but also never followed up on the results. So my best guess is that the results were disappointing. On the other hand @porina did come back with results and as I had originally predicted, the results are worse than using standard paste.