Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 X3D: Effective Cooling with Liquid Metal
Asus has found a way to effectively cool the powerful AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D laptop processor and GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU, thanks to clever use of liquid metal. After a teardown, we can see that the company’s Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 X3D uses the thermal compound to protect the APU from GPU contamination and effectively cool both chips using a large vapor chamber.
We previously checked out the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 X3D, which features the company’s latest cooling solution. However, we didn’t know exactly how it worked until now. A Chinese TechTuber named Ordinary Uncle Tony (or, UAT) has disassembled the laptop, revealing the insides.
The APU inside the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 X3D features multiple dies and doesn’t have an integrated heat spreader (IHS), meaning that it’s particularly susceptible to liquid metal seepage. So, you might expect it to use a barrier sponge to protect the processor circuitry. But, as you can see in the image below, it doesn’t.
Instead, Asus has carefully applied solder mask or a similar non-conductive barrier to the APU, acting as an effective barrier against liquid metal. You might think this is a traditional method of protecting against seepage, but it’s actually quite rare.
Asus has been using liquid metal on high-end laptop processors since 2019, and we learned back then that the company was experimenting with its production line application. It’s unclear if the solder mask is applied by robots during production, but it works well in this case.
The solder mask acts as an effective barrier against liquid metal.
It’s worth noting that solder mask has been used in electronics for many years and has been used on processors for quite some time. It’s quite effective as a non-conductive barrier against certain types of materials, including liquid metal.
Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 X3D liquid metal protection
There’s a good reason why Asus uses solder mask to protect the X3D APU from liquid metal contamination from the GPU – because it uses it to protect the GPU from the APU. You can see in the image below that the APU contacts the vapor chamber cooler via a thermal pad.
This thermal pad ensures that the APU doesn’t contaminate the GPU cooler with liquid metal, which would reduce its effectiveness. As we see below, the underside of the laptop reached a temperature of 56.6 degrees Celsius (133.88 F), but the thermal imagery shows that the cooling system effectively dissipates heat without any thermal throttling.
In other words, the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 X3D’s cooling system keeps the processors cool during demanding benchmark runs, even when the GPU is pushing the APU hard. We’ll be back with our full Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 X3D review soon, so stay tuned. In the meantime, check out the best gaming laptop you can buy right now.
