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how would you get the foil stuff to squish down into the depressions and malformations if you just place it over the core? With goo, you know it will be compacted and gel into the cracks when you compress it with the block...
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Well, that's the thing. I don't know and I want to know if anyone has tried this. It sound to me like Cathars gold leaf was not the proper stuff since $40 is way to much for gold leaf. I doubt it's that much more expensive than aluminium foil.
Heat transfer is a proportional to surface area and inversely proportional to thickness. Not filling in all the cracks reduces the surface area and will reduce heat tranfer by a percentage of the lost area. I.e. if you only get half the contact area you get half the heat transfer (or double the temperature difference). I doubt that gold leaf will do as good a job of filling in cracks as goo, but I don't think it will need to because the thermal conductivity is so good. Even if the surface area is only a 50th of what it is with goo, the incredible difference in thermal conductivity should be able to make up for this.
And then we have the thickness. If the gold leaf interface is a 10th of the thickness of goo (which I think should be doable in most cases) the heat transfer will be 10 times better.
However I think that greater than average pressures will be required. It would be good if Cathar could try this since I noticed in another thread that you apply a lot more than the recommended pressure.
Heat would also help in settling the gold leaf. Running the CPU for a short period with the fan slowed down so that it runs for a minute or 2 at ca 75C would make the gold leaf marginaly softer and hopefully seat it better.