I've only had problems with LM "drying out" when applied on copper. Which seems to be solvable by reapplication. It appears that once the copper surface has "soaked up" whatever it is that gets separated from the LM compound on an intitial application, that it effectively prevents any more separation from occurring. Forming some sort of plating or protective barrier. Anyway, yes, I'm well aware that it happens. But I've never had it happen on anything but a pure copper surface(this cooler is nickel plated BTW, so no issues anticipated with it). Other than the small amount of what I presume to be gallium that infuses itself into the silicon die. Which, if you've dealt with LM enough, you'll notice that after being applied to a bare die it can never be completely cleaned/removed from it. There will always be areas of "staining"(for lack of a better word) on the die. Which is inconsequential(nothing to worry about). And doesn't cause any "drying out" that I've ever witnessed. I just took apart my 3570K that had CLU under the IHS(nickel plated copper) for ~3 years and it was still in a fully liquid state.
I'm going with the Morpheus II because it's cheaper than a water block. And less hassle to deal with. If it doesn't work to my liking I'll be getting a liquid cooling setup for it. It's already not working exactly to my liking, and I've haven't even got it installed yet. I've been doing some test fitting and trying to decide what to do as far as VRM cooling. It does come with a bunch of small aluminum heatsinks in various suitable sizes. With enough thermal tape and thermal pads to install them all. But I'm strongly leaning in the direction of modding the stock VRM heatsink plate thingamabob and just using that(just needs some height removed to fit under the cooler and 4 holes drilled out a litter bigger so the mounting "nuts" on the cooler will pass through). Some of the thermal pads got a little messed up when I removed it though. So I'm probably going to replace those with something better(or maybe just use a little grease to fill in the imperfections).
HOWEVER, the bigger deal is, the cooler itself it not a direct fit. The mounting holes line up fine. But the mounting hardware is totally not sized correctly. And, depending on the GPU die height, which varies between the molded and non-molded packages, will be more or less incorrect depending on which you have. I have the molded version. And I've needed to fabricate and install a couple .037" shims under the mounting brackets to get the "nuts" on the brackets to meet up with the PCB. Or, rather, get them close enough that I'm not worried about bending the shit out of my card when the screws get fully tightened down. And about those screws, also not sized correctly. So to get it installed "correctly" I'm reusing the stock backside mounting plate(X bracket) with the stock screws(which are the correct size/length, and work with the "nuts" on the cooler mounting brackets). I also needed to buy four M3 x 8mm flat head machine screws to be able to fit the shims. Probably could have went with 6mm(and I still might). But the 5mm screws it comes with were not long enough to compensate for the shims. No biggie to replace @ 27¢/each(from the local hardware store).
And the adapter to plug the fans into the header on the card. Ordered that yesterday. The fans I bought are daisy-chainable via connectors they already have(so I don't need a splitter, though I already have 2 of them that I bought by mistake a while back).
So...still waiting for a part(and considering buying replacement thermal pads)...and have a bit more modding to do(pretty sure I'm not going to use the feeble looking VRM heatsinks provided)...to get the thing up and running with it. All in good time...
