Hi. I’m trying to replace the liquid metal in my framework 16 with the thermal pad and I have it open now. I’m on step 18 of the liquid metal to PTM guide. The attached photo is what I see. Can anyone tell me if I’m supposed to remove the silver rectangle from the heat sink (top piece in the photo)? Is that part of the liquid metal as well? just want to be sure because I don’t want to leave any of the liquid metal inside as mentioned by the guide. The guide doesn’t have videos for this step so it’s hard to be sure.
Nevermind, I think/hope I figured it out. The silver thing on the head pipes is supposed to be there from what I can tell. Marking as resolved.
The silver stuff is the liquid metal. It is to be removed, and ptm used instead.
When i changed mine, half of it was on the heat sink, half on the cpu.
They use lquid metal???
Omg this is so bad, that’s a concept for big motherboard failure 
@Geert_Verstraete
FW designed the use of Liquid metal for the FW16 well. It is protected by various barriers so was never going to damage the motherboard.
It did eventually cause a problem, where it would, over time, move and then not provide the level of heat transfer expected. Even though it moved, it was prevented from touching the motherboard by the barriers.
FW then came up with the PTM solution, that works well, and is more long lasting.
I think the original poster was just trying to make sure they know which bits to remove during the change to PTM.
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It should also be mentioned that Framework used a variant of liquid metal that is solid at room temperature (specifically it melts at 58°C) and thus was less likely to be shaken past the barrier when placed in a backpack or otherwise jostled around. Most other manufacturers use a liquid metal that’s liquid at room temperature and therefore more likely to escape the barrier.
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Yes, that is right. When you have the heat sink removed from the CPU, the so called “liquid metal” is actually a solid. It only becomes liquid when the CPU heats up.
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