Liquid metal thermal paste: thoughts?

Hey there, fellow tech enthusiasts!

I was wondering if anyone here has actually taken the plunge and swapped out standard thermal paste for liquid metal—something like Liquid Ultra/Pro or Conductonaut—on a laptop, and if so, how did it actually turn out for you?
I’ve got this Dell Inspiron that’s about two years old now, and I’m finally getting around to repasting the CPU and GPU because I’ve noticed the temps are spiking incredibly fast and just hanging out at high levels, even though I know for a fact the internals are totally dust-free.🤔
It seems like all those budget thermal pastes have pretty mediocre thermal conductivity, maybe topping out around 5W/mK, whereas liquid metals can boast ten times that kind of performance! In theory, that sounds absolutely incredible, especially since my setup has an Intel Core i5-4200H (clocking up to 3.4GHz) and a GTX 850M sharing the exact same cooling fan. It basically acts like a little space heater in there, doesn't it?
I’ve been doing a ton of reading on the subject, but honestly, the feedback I'm finding online is such a mixed bag of opinions.
Is the risk actually worth the reward?

Thanks a bunch! 🎉

Just grab some standard thermal paste and stop throwing money away. Heat dissipation isn't rocket science; you don't need to reinvent the wheel just to keep things cool.

+1, I wouldn't grab that paste from $33 right now—and honestly, skip the one from $3.00 too. You're better off finding a bit of a "middle ground," maybe something around $13, and just calling it a day.

It isn't nuclear, but the physics behind it is wild 🙂
Which thermal paste should I grab if I want to make sure it doesn't conduct electricity?
Has anyone here actually messed around with liquid metal before?
Thanks, guys (let’s be honest, most of you are probably dudes anyway🙂)

You’re probably going to laugh at me, but I was watching these crazy tests using random stuff as CPU thermal paste—things like toothpaste, Nivea, even mayo... 🙂 ....it actually won, you guys will never guess which one....

Ketchup. Seriously. It was only a 1 degree difference compared to some high-end, professional silver-based thermal paste 🤣

Maybe this is the video

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hahaha what a wild video! those Australians are something else...
That clip where the guy slathers liquid metal onto a desktop CPU and claims he only saw a 1°C difference? Honestly, it’s kind of nonsense. The bottleneck isn't the paste itself; it's the terrible heat transfer happening right between the silicon die and that integrated heat spreader labeled Intel Core something-something. It’s common knowledge that Intel uses pretty mediocre "internal" TIM—I don't mean the stuff between the chip and your cooler, but the interface tucked deep inside the processor itself.
That’s why the real "pros" actually delid the chip just to swap in high-end thermal compound, like in this case-> <- using liquid metal.
The reason I’ve been eyeing liquid metal for my laptop is because the CPU and GPU dies are exposed—they don't have those protective caps, and since the heatsink is copper, I don't have to worry about that nasty gallium-aluminum reaction. Still, I think I'll stick to the standard paste like most of you guys are suggesting.
But hey, I might just give that crazy liquid metal a shot eventually 🙂 and I'll definitely post the results here sometime, since it feels like nobody else in this group has messed around with it before.
Thanks so much to everyone for all the help 🙂

I almost forgot to mention that mercury is actually the only metal that stays liquid at room temperature. Let's not fall for those kinds of misconceptions.