We're looking at an Asus TUF RTX 5070 Ti in the video above; this card doesn't come with liquid metal out of the box. It was the owner who decided to apply it themselves and, unfortunately, didn't do a great job since it ended up ruining the entire board. The TIM (thermal interface material) appears to have spread everywhere, leaking out from the core and spilling over onto surrounding components.
When liquid metal comes into contact with tiny surface-mounted componentry like capacitors, it will create microbridges that can short those parts. The leak can eventually reach the main power rails in worst-case scenarios, too. Not only that, but some liquid metal TIM can slowly eat away at metals like aluminum and weaken solder joints. Eventually, ICs in the affected area might even get knocked out of place.
You may like Asus revised the liquid metal application on its $4,000 ROG Matrix RTX 5090 cards Frankenstein RTX 5070 Ti with an RTX 2080 Ti PCB breaks world record with extreme modding $5,000 RTX 5090 Lightning Z gets killed in extreme overclocking attempt, thermal shock cracks the GPU core Worst GPU Mess I’ve Seen RUINED by Liquid Metal – YouTube Watch On In the video, we see that the liquid metal has somehow reached into every nook and cranny of the PCB, and it's impossible to spot without a microscope. The owner said they cleaned off as much as they could, but clearly, there was enough left on the board to frustrate the technician. About halfway through the cleaning process, the repairman declared that only a miracle can save this GPU at this point.
From the looks of it, liquid metal had gotten underneath the GPU core as well, which shorted it internally, as we can see a physical edge crack in the video. This is unfixable because you'd need to replace the chip, and that's just one part of the problem. The memory modules are affected, too, and the 1.8V power rail is shorting to ground, which means that liquid metal reached a ground pad and destroyed critical circuitry as well.
Even if the GPU core hadn’t been directly contaminated by liquid metal, the short on the 1.8 V power rail would have destroyed it regardless. So, in the end, this becomes a cautionary tale about letting enthusiasm override judgment. If the owner had just used regular, silicone-based thermal paste, he'd have a working GPU — applying liquid metal to a card not designed for it, even if you can create your own seal, is too risky.
Even large manufacturers producing $4,000 GPUs sometimes struggle with getting the application right . Besides, non-factory-applied liquid metal jobs rarely help lower the temperatures in a meaningful way in the first place. You'll certainly lose your warranty if you try to do it anyway, which is why Asus refused to accept the RMA request for this broken RTX 5070 Ti. Unfortunately, not even NorthridgeFix could fix it.
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/flabbergasted-gpu-repair-wizard-highlights-dangers-of-liquid-metal-after-leak-kills-entire-rtx-5070-ti-user-applied-tim-spread-to-every-crevice-of-the-pcb-physically-cracking-and-shorting-out-the-core#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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