I applied LM on Vega before and delided i7 7700k and applied it there.
I did not use much protection there.
Both survived. i7 is still being used by my son.
Due to Murphis law,
I will try to be careful this time and apply some protection.
I wonder if there is expiry date for Liquid Metal.
I have a one unopened package of Cool Laboratory Liquid Pro that I bought about 3 years ago.
I have also Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut package where I used some parts on Radeon VII about 2 years ago.
I wonder if these can be still used.
I was watching video about the liquid metal and it's use with different types of metal coolers.
So LM does stain Nickel plated surfaces.
I had this experience as well before with the CPU where the text on the surface of Nickel plated Heat Spreader was gone after a year.
Here is video from Gamers Nexus comparing the effects of LM on the surface of Copper, Nickel and Aluminum:
How Liquid Metal Affects Copper, Nickel, and Aluminum (Corrosion Test) - YouTube
So if I don't want to screw the warranty on the 2299€ card, then maybe I should stay away from LM.
For warranty purposes it would stain the Nickel in a way that it is not reversible.
So even if I remove the warranty sticker in a super careful way without breaking it, the warranty sticker will not help as the cooler will be stained after using LM for some time.
But maybe I still should open it and apply some better thermal paste like Thermal Grizzly.
I was also looking for the best alternatives to LM.
The Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut is still the best according to the recent review from Guru3D and better than MX-5.
According to this review LM (Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut ) is only few degrees better than Kryonaut but according to experience from
@Felix123BU and
@Butanding1987 it is much better than just a few degrees:
Guru3D Thermal Paste Roundup - Round 2 (2021) - Introduction