Is delidding worthwhile without liquid metal style thermal paste?

[GoogalyMoogaly]

So a little while back I finally built my Maximus X Hero + 8700k system that had been sitting untouched for "a while".

Spoiler: Background

Watched a few videos, did an overclock, got to 4.8GHz with less than 1.3v but could get 4.9GHz stable and couldn't push voltage much higher because of temperatures.
Then a couple days ago we had a powercut (PC was off) and when I turned the PC on it had lost all the BIOS setting (I replaced the BIOS batter a few months ago, not long after I built it).
Now I had saved a profile so I just reloaded that. But when I ran Cinebench R15 (R23 doesn't work on that PC) it crashed about halfway through. The profile had the VCore set to 1.265v and I've had to bump it to 1.28v to get it stable in Cinebench. I'm not sure if I'd previous set it to 1.28v and not saved it to the profile or if I'd previously been running at 1.265v. I tried running Prime95 with no AVX stuff and it fairly quickly got to 93ºC and then the PC froze. I'm sure I was able to run all this without issue when I first did the overclock. Maybe it was 1.28v but with colder weather at the time it ran a bit cooler? I can't think why it would've run with 1.265v before but not now.

So I'm now thinking I should delid it to improve the temperatures so I can run with higher VCore (seems quite possible I'll need to add a bit more VCore yet).
But I don't have any liquid metal style thermal paste and I'm a bit nervous about using it anyway. I'm a bit nervous about delidding full stop.

Is it even worth delidding if I'm just going to use MX-4 under the IHS?

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

Maybe direct die water cooling is worth it.

I’d be tempted to overclock the CPU first and see if it’s high temps are holding it back.

It is overclocked.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

Increase the v core and see if it keeps going. Some chips don’t scale well with voltage and knocking 5-10c off the temps won’t make a huge difference.

I tried, it didn't. I think trying anything approaching 1.4v just to get 4.9GHz instead of 4.8GHz with 1.3v or less isn't worth it.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

if you need to go up by 0.1v to add 100mhz it not worth it..
what are the max temps you see now under normal load?

Depends what I'm doing.
5 mins Prime95 - ~93ºC
Cinebench R15 - ~85ºC
Light gaming - ~60ºC
Youtube - ~40ºC
idle - ~35ºC

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

so again.. under normal load(what you do with the system) what temps do you see?
if all you do is light gaming and random internet carp to the max temp you see is 60c. what wrong with 60c?

is 0.1v(1.4v) for an extra 100mhz worth pulling the CPU to bits and messing about with it. NO
if you set 1.4v for 4.9Ghz what temps do you see when using the system in a day to day scenario?

i use LM on everything so im not the person say DONT, im just saying is it worth it for 100mhz when your only at 60c

Been playing a few more games and it hits around 79ºC (while playing CK3).
Not the end of the world I guess, it's just frustrating because the air coming off the cooler is pretty much still cold.

If it needs 1.4v for 4.9 ghz don't bother deliding at all. It's a dud. Your average 8700k should be hitting 5.1 ghz with 1.35volts.

Yeah, would be par for the course for me to get a dud, that's what usually seems to happen. I think it's tacking about 1.29v to be close to stable at 4.8GHz, I don't see it hitting 5.1Ghz (+300MHz) with just an extra 0.06v.