Delidding a haswell CPU - Worth it?

[Emlyn_Dewar]

I'm using an old Alienware R1 as my living room gaming PC. Put an i7 4765T in there and it is more than powerful enough for what I'd need to play from the sofa.
The bad thing is, the temperature is pretty toasty (late 40s/early 50s idle), and it's not just down to the small enclosure. No amount of heatsink remount has fixed either.

Never paid attention to delidding before, but I'm starting to think there is a good few degrees to be found with remounting the IHS given the CPU age.
Has anyone done this recently on a similar aged chip?
I'd be doing this for temps and potential noise reduction only.

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

Think I'll have to do it. Do worry about killing the CPU, but worth the risk if I could knock 10 degrees or more off.

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

Yeah, ordered a delid tool this morning. Cheap as chips. Will be a few days until it's delivered though.

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

The tool I got was 20¥ which is about £2.50.
Was incredibly easy to do, and the system was back up and running in 40 minutes.
The old paste was rock solid and turned to dust when wiped.

I used the end of a tube of quite terrible noname paste which seemed pretty watery... System in the early 40s at idle now, which given the heat of my living room is probably about right. Load temperatures were 4 degrees cooler in my non-scientific before/after.
I'll be interested to see how it performs with some good TIM. Was more concerned getting it back together today to make sure I didn't kill it.

There's still a place for old Haswell.