Delidding & re lidding advice

[mdickens98]

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.

 

[mdickens98]

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]

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

 

[mdickens98]

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]

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

 

[mdickens98]

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

 

[mdickens98]

The reason you saw the increase when you used the rtv silicone is because it increased the gap between the core and the IHS.

I did wonder if that might be the case, I might try it again without regluing the ihs but using the liquid ultra. The only problem is the ihs moves quite a lot when trying to latch the retention clamp and because liquid ultra is conductive I don't want it to move at all really incase any of it touches any of the other components on the cpu

 

[mdickens98]

Both the top consoles are 8 core.

Thanks for pointing that out, I'd just assumed they were 4 core, doh!

 

[mdickens98]

With some care it can be done. When I delidded my 4790k it had an array of vrms close by. These got a layer of clear nail polish and I was just careful in my application of clu.

I did try it again using liquid ultra and not regluing the ihs, the temperatures were the same, a good 8 degrees cooler than stock but still 1-2 degrees warmer than when I used the mx-2. I'm happy anyway with how it performs using liquid ultra and reattaching the ihs, a big improvement from stock so if I do but the 7700k I'll go with that method but all the comments about core counts have made me seriously reconsider Ryzen