I don't buy this narrative. Don't thermal pastes (at least the old ones) also dry up? "Repasting" old laptops/gpus seems to be a common advice on tech forums, at least a few years ago. If they're doing it for the planned obsolescence they really didn't need to go with the expensive liquid metal, they could just use the shitty thermal paste.
It is planned obsolescence, but not because of the usage of liquid metal thermal paste. Liquid metal is not only more expensive to buy but also to apply (it is very difficult to apply liquid metal thermal paste correctly, and also they need to take care to not spill liquid metal in exposed parts of the processor or it may short circuit the CPU; that is probably also the reason of the white plastic around the CPU). Also, liquid metal only form alloys with some types some metal and probably Asus knows this and avoided using them.
But it is still planned obsolescence because like most notebooks those parts like fans are not meant to be replaced, at all. They probably can be replaced, but is still expensive so most people will prefer to buy another notebook rather than replacing a fan or battery.
I repasted my Acer Predator laptop with liquid metal. It went from 80c idle 95c load to 65-70c idle and 75c load.
When I first turned it on I thought I hadn't plugged the fans back in all the way because it was so quiet. Fans didn't kick on till I was in Windows and it was loading apps, even then it was way quieter. Liquid metal is a game changer for certain computers.
I don't buy this narrative. Don't thermal pastes (at least the old ones) also dry up? "Repasting" old laptops/gpus seems to be a common advice on tech forums, at least a few years ago. If they're doing it for the planned obsolescence they really didn't need to go with the expensive liquid metal, they could just use the shitty thermal paste.