Delidding & re lidding advice

mdickens98 · 5 Jun 2017 at 13:35

Hi,
I'm planning a new build soon and primarily use my PC for gaming so was looking at the i7 7700k (im upgrading from an i5 2500k in case anyone is interested). I've read a bit recently about high temps on this chip and a lot of talk about delidding, I then stumbled on the Delid Die Mate 2 and as there were a few in stock at the time i've gone and ordered on. I'm no stranger to modding but i've never delidded before so i've got an old i3 to test on and if that goes well i'll be modding my wife's Kaby Lake pentium machine (haven't ordered the i7 yet).
I've seen that relidding is pretty much required for good results so I wondered what you guys recommended for this process? I've seen talk of liquid metal but never heard of or seen this stuff before, also there seems to be mixed opinions on glue or adhesive to reattach the IHS. If you guys can recommend or even link to guides i'll post back my results to hopefully help someone else down the line.

Freddie1980 · 5 Jun 2017 at 16:30

mdickens98 said:
Hi,
I'm planning a new build soon and primarily use my PC for gaming so was looking at the i7 7700k (im upgrading from an i5 2500k in case anyone is interested). I've read a bit recently about high temps on this chip and a lot of talk about delidding, I then stumbled on the Delid Die Mate 2 and as there were a few in stock at the time i've gone and ordered on. I'm no stranger to modding but i've never delidded before so i've got an old i3 to test on and if that goes well i'll be modding my wife's Kaby Lake pentium machine (haven't ordered the i7 yet).
I've seen that relidding is pretty much required for good results so I wondered what you guys recommended for this process? I've seen talk of liquid metal but never heard of or seen this stuff before, also there seems to be mixed opinions on glue or adhesive to reattach the IHS. If you guys can recommend or even link to guides i'll post back my results to hopefully help someone else down the line.

I think you jumpping ahead of yourself, just get you 7700K and see how it performs first before you make any snap decisions on deliding your expensive CPU.

SCOLANATOR · 5 Jun 2017 at 19:36

I'm going to be delidding my 6700k this summer.

Using Coollabs Liquid Metal Ultra between the die and IHS then Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut between the IHS and cooler.

I'm also going to get V-tech Black RTV Silicone Instant Gasket Maker to reseal the GPU. There's lots of guides on Youtube for it.

mdickens98 · 6 Jun 2017 at 07:00

Freddie1980 said:
I think you jumpping ahead of yourself, just get you 7700K and see how it performs first before you make any snap decisions on deliding your expensive CPU.

I know what you mean but I enjoy modding and building so if delidding can really make the sort of temperature differences people are reporting I'd like to get involved. As I said before I will be practicing on other cpu's first and of course I'll be testing the i7 first before making any modifications

mdickens98 · 6 Jun 2017 at 07:03

SCOLANATOR said:
I'm going to be delidding my 6700k this summer.

Using Coollabs Liquid Metal Ultra between the die and IHS then Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut between the IHS and cooler.

I'm also going to get V-tech Black RTV Silicone Instant Gasket Maker to reseal the GPU. There's lots of guides on Youtube for it.

I've seen quite a few people talk about using RTV silicone so thats looking like my preferred option at the mo, especially as I'll be able to get the ihs off again later down the road if I need to. I did see one review suggesting that perhaps it wasn't the best option as it's too flexible but lots of people are reporting great success with it so perhaps this is a non issue

Phemo · 6 Jun 2017 at 09:22

I used RTV silicone to reseal my 7700K's IHS. I just put a really small amount of it on the IHS but you don't want to put it all the way around as you need to leave a gap to account for the air trapped inside the IHS expanding. I got a tube of it off an auction site for £2 and have delidded/relidded 3 CPUs, all of which are holding up fine. I used liquid metal ultra between the die and IHS also.

I see you mention that you have an i3 you're going to practice on first - what i3 is it? Only the 3000 series chips and up will have paste between die and IHS so don't try to do it to a 2000 series chip as they're soldered and you will likely break the die.

Jumper118 · 6 Jun 2017 at 22:13

wouldnt buy any cpu and motherboard right now. its a very bad time. with 6 core mainstream chips from intel around the corner and x299 and x399 will see loads of people selling there 7700k and 5820k cheap as they become Pentium grade cpus

mdickens98 · 7 Jun 2017 at 12:36

Phemo said:
I used RTV silicone to reseal my 7700K's IHS. I just put a really small amount of it on the IHS but you don't want to put it all the way around as you need to leave a gap to account for the air trapped inside the IHS expanding. I got a tube of it off an auction site for £2 and have delidded/relidded 3 CPUs, all of which are holding up fine. I used liquid metal ultra between the die and IHS also.

I see you mention that you have an i3 you're going to practice on first - what i3 is it? Only the 3000 series chips and up will have paste between die and IHS so don't try to do it to a 2000 series chip as they're soldered and you will likely break the die.

It's an i3 3240t, literally worthless to me as it came out of a scrap pc with a dead mobo. I'll get some rtv and liquid metal ordered up as the delid die mate turned up today

mdickens98 · 7 Jun 2017 at 12:40

Jumper118 said:
wouldnt buy any cpu and motherboard right now. its a very bad time. with 6 core mainstream chips from intel around the corner and x299 and x399 will see loads of people selling there 7700k and 5820k cheap as they become Pentium grade cpus

This has crossed my mind and I'm still on the fence whether to buy Ryzen for that reason but as pretty much all pc games are developed for consoles these days I can't see pc gaming benefitting from more than 4 cores for a good while yet and even then the i7 has ht so shouldn't be lagging that far behind. At the end of the day I've got money burning a hole in my pocket and I've been wanting to upgrade my 2500k for a couple of years now so I'll see how I get on with my delidding experiments on the 2 cpus I've got now and go from there

Jumper118 · 7 Jun 2017 at 14:15

mdickens98 said:
This has crossed my mind and I'm still on the fence whether to buy Ryzen for that reason but as pretty much all pc games are developed for consoles these days I can't see pc gaming benefitting from more than 4 cores for a good while yet and even then the i7 has ht so shouldn't be lagging that far behind. At the end of the day I've got money burning a hole in my pocket and I've been wanting to upgrade my 2500k for a couple of years now so I'll see how I get on with my delidding experiments on the 2 cpus I've got now and go from there

Wait wut. You can't delid a2500k

Phemo · 7 Jun 2017 at 14:21

Yeah, don't try it on a 2500K. As I mentioned above only the 3000 series chips and higher (excluding socket 2011 of course) can be delidded easily so you'll be fine with the i3 you've got, but you will trash the 2500K if you try it on that.

beany_bot · 7 Jun 2017 at 15:29

Here's a (probably) stupid question. If you are delidding. Why not just (gently) stick the heat sink right on the die with thermal paste. Why bother with the lid at all. Surely temps would be much better removing that sandwich.

EssexBoy · 7 Jun 2017 at 15:36

beany_bot said:
Here's a (probably) stupid question. If you are delidding. Why not just (gently) stick the heat sink right on the die with thermal paste. Why bother with the lid at all. Surely temps would be much better removing that sandwich.

Something i have also thought about.The die is probably to fragile to deal with the force from the cooler i assume but like you said would be a lot cooler and probably possible with great care.

Phemo · 7 Jun 2017 at 18:28

Main reason is that it's easy to crack/damage the die. On top of that, the metal clamp part around the socket means that the die is then too low down to make contact with any heatsink. You can remove the metal clamp as it's only 3 screws holding it to the board but then you have another problem - the package substrate of Skylake/Kaby Lake chips is really thin and this means that the corners of the plastic part of the CPU socket itself are also a smidge too high for the heatsink to make contact. You can trim a bit off with a knife or whatever to solve that issue but I'm not going to try my chances there.

Another issue is that because the substrates are so thin, they bend pretty easily. I imagine the force exerted onto the die itself would mean that the chip substrate would eventually bend over time and potentially means some pins might not contact the CPU as well. The IHS at least allows for better pressure to be exerted all across the package substrate.

On Ivy Bridge and Haswell chips though, I imagine it's a lot easier because the substrate is thicker and this means no CPU socket cutting is needed and the package isn't as flexible

Disco_P · 7 Jun 2017 at 22:29

I used the clamp only method to remove the IHS from my 3570K. It really did not want to move at first so i boiled some water, waited for it to drop to 80C and put the cpu into a sandwich bag and put that in the water for a few minutes. It warmed the glue and allowed the IHS to come off much easier.

ussie · 10 Jun 2017 at 23:21

mdickens98 said:
Hi,
I'm planning a new build soon and primarily use my PC for gaming so was looking at the i7 7700k (im upgrading from an i5 2500k in case anyone is interested). I've read a bit recently about high temps on this chip and a lot of talk about delidding, I then stumbled on the Delid Die Mate 2 and as there were a few in stock at the time i've gone and ordered on. I'm no stranger to modding but i've never delidded before so i've got an old i3 to test on and if that goes well i'll be modding my wife's Kaby Lake pentium machine (haven't ordered the i7 yet).
I've seen that relidding is pretty much required for good results so I wondered what you guys recommended for this process? I've seen talk of liquid metal but never heard of or seen this stuff before, also there seems to be mixed opinions on glue or adhesive to reattach the IHS. If you guys can recommend or even link to guides i'll post back my results to hopefully help someone else down the line.

In all honesty buddy delidding can be done by beginners with the delid die mate, all you need is the die mate 2 and a good thermal paste (liquid metal in my own experience)

I have not even relidded my CPU even though I got high grade silicon I can use for it, I went with 8packs advise and just let the motherboard clamp the IHS down and then mounted my cooler (h115i)

Robzere31 · 16 Jun 2017 at 23:56

My experience of delidding is positive.
I used a rokat tool on a 4770k & 7700k, easy to do & liquid metal applied to the core.
IHS was reapplied using a couple of spots of glue.

7700k temps dropped by 20c & now runs around 55-60 @5ghz (WC)

Certainly worth the effort IMO, & virtually idiot prove these days.

mmj_uk · 17 Jun 2017 at 11:34

beany_bot said:
Here's a (probably) stupid question. If you are delidding. Why not just (gently) stick the heat sink right on the die with thermal paste. Why bother with the lid at all. Surely temps would be much better removing that sandwich.

The trouble is the socket puts pressure on the heatspreader to hold the CPU firmly in place, the issue I had with a waterblock and bare die is that you can't get even contact/pressure on the core because of resistance from the pins and the non-central core. You'd need some sort of shim to go around the core and keep pressure even on the CPU.

I recently bought a delidder but have never used it

I used to use vice method I definitely wouldn't recommend any sort of knife I practiced on a Celeron and butchered it something rotten.

pastymuncher · 17 Jun 2017 at 15:24

beany_bot said:
Here's a (probably) stupid question. If you are delidding. Why not just (gently) stick the heat sink right on the die with thermal paste. Why bother with the lid at all. Surely temps would be much better removing that sandwich.

The cooling is actually worse with the naked die. Several of us have tried it with the EK Naked Ivy mounting kit for waterblocks and all of us found that temps were significantly worse when directly cooling the naked die than with the IHS back on. Possibly something to do with less surface area maybe? All I know is that putting the IHS back on gave me vastly improved temps.

mdickens98 · 20 Jun 2017 at 22:11

I got all my parts so went and had a go with a spare pc I had knocking around, i3 4160. Gotta say with the die mate 2 it really was a piece of cake! What a great well designed tool. Anyway, first tried using arctic mx2 between die and ihs and just using the clamp to hold it in place, amazed to see a clear 10 degree drop on full load! I then moved on to liquid ultra and used the rtv silicon to reattach the ihs but this time it was about 2 deg warmer than the mx2. I've redone it a second time using less liquid ultra but the temps are the same. A good improvement but it seems to cool better with mx2 or it could be that I'm not reattaching the ihs