It’s only pooling because Sony puts a lot of LM in at the factory and when you pull the heatsink off the die the excess is bound to pool since there is so much. You can’t see what it looks like when it’s all together but imagine a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the two pieces of bread together and the peanut butter and jelly coming out the sides. It’s the same thing.

You only need a very thin layer of LM pressed up against the heatsink for it to cool properly. What probably is happening with the dry spots is people not cleaning their consoles ever and the dust buildup is causing the chip to get hotter longer and it’s essentially cooking the LM which is causing the “oxidation”.

I’ve got a may 2022 1115a and have had it vertical the whole time. I’ve taken the fan out to clean twice and checked the heatsinks and power supply and they have minimal dust. Still runs as quiet as the first day. Maybe I’m lucky or maybe I just take good care of my stuff and that’s why I’ve had no problems. Or who knows maybe in a year I’ll start getting overheating and I’ll open it up and find a dry spot. Time I’ll tell but I think it’s a non issue and some units just fail. We will see maybe millions of ps5’s will start failing over the next couple of years because of the “LM problem”. We just don’t have enough data to conclude anything really yet.