Unfortunately, I have one of the Framework 16s with Liquid Metal, and the new mainboards are too incremental for just upgrading my mainboard to be a good option. However, I had to recently remove my current main board to transfer it to an unbroken shell, and other than the Wi-Fi card, I now have enough confidence to try the repaste for real. However, my one remaining hang up is the isopropyl wipes and the prying off of the heat sink.
What do you all recommend? To be clear, this isn’t happening until December, when I no longer have to labor under the heel of three term papers. I need an actual keyboard until then.
(I’m planning to ask for a Framework 12 for Christmas. The new iPadOS is driving me a little bit up the wall, and the thought of my Framework 16 breaking again is giving me conniptions.)
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I just used a bottle of 90+% isopropyl alcohol and q-tips for wiping down the silicon. I didn’t have fiber-free q-tips on hand (which are preferred) so I just diligently made sure there were no fibers left before I sealed it back up. All in all, it took me about an hour to do the swap given how long I spent scrubbing trying to get rid of some black color, but I never got that off and eventually just said it was good enough. Thermals dropped like 20-30c once I booted back up.
Regarding prying off the heatsink, I just used the provided screwdriver as a prybar on one of the corners and ignored the uncomfortable sounds it made while doing my best not to bend anything.
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Also, beware the alcohol will immediately wipe away the printing on the ram slot area if it gets in contact with it. Ask me how I know…
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Thanks! Looks like I’ll only need $20 worth of supplies to do everything.
Unfortunately…
…it looks like I’ll need to replace something else first. 
Well, unless I find my missing screwdriver.
So, uh… I might have decided that getting new screwdrivers would be too slow for me, and that I wanted to do the mod much earlier than I thought I might (laptop was getting hot while watching videos).
So I bought this. Is there anything in that kit that is nice to have?
Also, are there any risks I should be aware of when I’m trying to get the liquid metal pried off? Don’t want to kill the CPU, otherwise I could have just gotten a new mainboard and avoided the hassle. I do plan to do a battery disconnect before messing with the board.
It can flake a bit, so be careful not to let any pieces get away. Use tape or something sticky to get all the loose pieces off the area. They can easily short out any parts of the motherboard they come in contact with.
Also, I found using a hair dryer/heat gun to get the heat sink really hot helped it to release from the cpu so I did not need to really pry that hard to get it off.
Good luck!
