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ermo
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Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Fri Dec 30, 2016 11:51 am

A few years back I bought a i7-3770k (Costa Rica) and built the Windows system in my sig.  I always wondered, however, why my particular CPU didn't OC very well with my CM Hyper 212 EVO but never got around to doing anything about it.

This summer, I upgraded a friend to an i7-6700k system w/32GB RAM (he had been using my old i7-2600k system up until then) and as I was researching prices, I saw a nice 4x8GB DDR3-2400 G.Skill kit which was cheaper than any of the DDR4-2400 kits and sprung for it for my own system and proceeded to use my old 4x4GB DDR3-1600 kit for my FX-8350 box.

Then, just before christmas this year, I began feeling that familiar upgrade itch but then a small voice in the back of my mind started asking "Why don't you just delid that CPU of yours? You know you want to... :evil:".  So I began researching it and even tried to buy a delidding kit (the Rockit Cool Rockit 88, which is also featured on the TR geek wish list), but the seller's website just wouldn't accept my non-US zip code.

With the delidding kit out of the picture, I looked at the other methods available.  At the face of it, the razor method looked fairly onerous not to mention somewhat dangerous and the "hit your IHS with a block of wood and hope for the best" method looked fairly risky as well.

Then I happened on a nice anandtech forum thread about delidding using a vice to slowly and deliberately apply firm pressure to the IHS while the CPU was seated "just so" (like using a delidding kit basically) and figured that it might just do the trick.

And boy did it work -- and it took all of 5 minutes if we include adding sticky tape to the vice.

During my research, I noted that people kept coming back to the combination of Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra between the die and the IHS, and Arctic Cooling MX-4 between the IHS and the heatsink, so that's what I used.  I also secured the IHS to the CPU package using a small drop of superglue under each corner.

To measure the impact of the delidding process, I used the intel burn test package before and after the delid:

BEFORE:

All 4 cores turbo @ 3.9GHz (stock voltage): 70° C
All 4 cores turbo @ 4.2 GHz (1.22v): 90° C (unstable)

AFTER (w/Hyper 212 EVO):

All 4 cores turbo @ 3.9GHz (stock voltage): 58° C
All 4 cores turbo @ 4.5GHz (1.3v): 80° C (stable)

Maybe it is worth noting that the temps under load in Prime95 were consistently 5° C lower than the above results using the small FFT torture test.

AFTER #2 (w/Arctic Freezer i33 Plus CPU cooler replacement):

All 4 cores turbo @ 3.9GHz (stock voltage): 53° C (fans not full speed)
All 4 cores turbo @ 4.5GHz (1.3v): 73° C (stable)

EDIT: It turns out that my Hyper 212 EVO had a slightly dented heat pipe, which prevented the base plate from achieving full contact with the CPU heat spreader. This might explain the 80° C temp after OCing. I replaced it with an Arctic Freezer i33 plus which is about the same size but comes with push-pull 120mm fans and is only about €3 more than the Hyper 212 EVO where I live.

Stock 3.9GHz:

Image

OC 4.5GHz @ 1.3v

Image


Passmark CPU test:

3.9GHz: 10379
4.5GHz: 11767 (right around the ballpark of what a stock 4790k or 6700k CPU will do apparently)

Improvement: ~13,37% (I think this might qualify as a 'l33t' upgrade? *Ahem*)
Money spent: €27 worth of cooling paste w/shipping and taxes + €43 worth of Arctic Freezer i33 Plus = €70 total.

Did I satisfy my upgrade itch? Oh yes, yes I did. :D


P.S. I'm surprised at how well the Arctic Freezer i33 Plus works considering its price. Definitely recommended if you're on a budget (read: a cheapskate like me).
Last edited by ermo on Mon May 15, 2017 1:13 pm, edited 7 times in total.
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chuckula
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Fri Dec 30, 2016 12:49 pm

Welcome to the Delid club!
I see you did an older chip, but if it makes you feel any better, my delidded 4770K has been in use for 3.5 years @ 4.7GHz and remains stable.
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Fri Dec 30, 2016 1:03 pm

I'm gonna ask everyone to stop posting delid results. You're making me think about it some more.

(seriously, congrats...that's quite an upgrade for just a few bucks)
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Fri Dec 30, 2016 1:05 pm

Stop tempting me!

/Bender voice
 
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Fri Dec 30, 2016 2:14 pm

drfish wrote:
Stop tempting me!

/Bender voice

I'll go do my own delidding, with blackjack and hookers. Ya know what? Forget the delidding!
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Fri Dec 30, 2016 3:49 pm

I think the intel TIM job is wildly variable. I de-lidded my 4790 and it's netted me 100Mhz at best - I guess the original TIM was very well done.

On the other hand, your 3770K crashing at 4.2GHz is a sure sign of a terrible TIM application under the lid. My 3770 non-K ran at 4.2 all the time using a normal 120mm cooler with a quiet fan profile - Temps up to about 75C at worst - so your chip clearly had a big ole' air gap where the die was supposed to be making contact with the heatspreader.
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drfish
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Fri Dec 30, 2016 4:30 pm

Of all the engineering problems Intel tackles, you'd think this would be one of the easiest... How is this a problem???
 
techguy
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Fri Dec 30, 2016 4:33 pm

Congrats and welcome to the club.

I de-lidded my 3770k back in 2012 and ran it at 4.9GHz.

De-lidded a number of chips for friends and customers around this time too, most running between 4.4-4.7GHz.

Then I de-lidded and ran my 4770k @ 4.8GHz.

Then I de-lidded and ran my 4790k @ 5.0GHz.  

Custom water cooling FTW!
 
just brew it!
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Fri Dec 30, 2016 5:00 pm

drfish wrote:
Of all the engineering problems Intel tackles, you'd think this would be one of the easiest... How is this a problem???

99% of the CPUs they sell will be run at stock clocks. As long as they stay within their operating temperature range at stock clocks, even sloppily applied TIM is "good enough", and making sure it gets done right raises production costs without generating any additional revenue.
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Fri Dec 30, 2016 5:21 pm

JBI wrote:
making sure it gets done right raises production costs without generating any additional revenue.


And since overclocking is essentially utilizing the extra headroom available in the silicon that they really can't neuter, mechanically making it less viable through poor quality control of factors that only matter in out of spec operation is a win if you are wearing the "Evil Hat"TM.

It's almost ingenuous, especially since they have to know.

To be clear, I'm not *really* saying they are evil and planned this. I am just saying there is another disincentive built ontop of the "extra cost with no market-meaningful benefit" one that JBI mentioned. Why *would* Intel solve this problem? It's a convenient problem for them to have!
 
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Fri Dec 30, 2016 7:02 pm

This story is what it's all about! Sounds like a lot of fun. Thanks for posting - I enjoyed it. I've always liked the Ivy generation but I only have mobile and Xeons.
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The Egg
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Fri Dec 30, 2016 7:55 pm

....but as I've said elsewhere, if Kaby Lake only nets a few hundred Mhz in clockspeed, why bother?  Just improve the quality control for TIM application and bam....same result.

As an alternative, they could both improve the TIM and get their clockspeed bump from Kaby, and end up with a more measurable improvement over Skylake.  If anything, now would be the time to do it; when you don't have much to hang your hat on for selling the new lineup. 
 
the
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Fri Dec 30, 2016 8:03 pm

The Egg wrote:
....but as I've said elsewhere, if Kaby Lake only nets a few hundred Mhz in clockspeed, why bother?  Just improve the quality control for TIM application and bam....same result.

As an alternative, they could both improve the TIM and get their clockspeed bump from Kaby, and end up with a more measurable improvement over Skylake.  If anything, now would be the time to do it; when you don't have much to hang your hat on for selling the new lineup. 


Or you do both and able to show that this new process-architecture-optimization cadence has some potential. Of course the optimization parts gets the boost by intentionally crippling the clock speed potential with crappy TIM in the initial architecture but hey.... look over there!
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Fri Dec 30, 2016 11:00 pm

God I'm tempted to delid my 6700K. It gets extremely close to throttling at stock speeds with a full custom watercooling loop with a 360mm rad and reasonable room temperatures when encoding videos for hours on end.
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Fri Dec 30, 2016 11:56 pm

What a timely post! Got my 3770k in 2012, and it runs 4.4ghz and reaches a max temp of 80c with a CM612s in push-pull. Tried the razor method but chickened out...tempting tempting! Wondering how much I can squeeze out of it.

Need to get a vice and the TIMs though...
 
ermo
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Sat Dec 31, 2016 4:59 am

Wow.  Thanks for the kind words guys -- and the interesting points raised.

It's probably a bit weird, but this delidding business somehow makes me want to thump my chest and yell "F*** yeah, I pulled it off!" (pun intended?). It's quite difficult to put into words, but it feels like an accomplishment that I just *had* to share with someone who 'got it' if you know what I mean? If Captain Ned were here, he'd probably offer an eloquent and well read quip that would describe what I feel much better than I ever could have.

I'm also hoping that the CPU 'upgrade' will tide me over until the Ryzen chips and motherboards surface and get any potential bugs shaken out of them.  As long as the Ryzen IPC is better than my IB, it will still feel like a proper upgrade.  And with the performance I have now, odds are that I can wait until AMD's 14nm yield improves and get a couple of hundred extra MHz for free.  I think I quite like the idea of a SR7 BE w/a 3.6 GHz base clock and a turbo clock boosted to around 4GHz on an unlocked 8 core/16 thread chip.

As an aside, I'm also waiting for Vega to arrive so that I can put one of my HD 7970s into my nephew's box (which incidentally is that old i7-2600k I mentioned in the OP) and then the other will go into my FX-8350 now that it seems that AMD is getting their AMDGPU (kernel DRM module) and AMDGPU-PRO (OpenGL and Vulkan closed source driver) code in shape for supporting the GCN 1.0 generation of cards.  Besides, the FLOSS radeon (kernel DRM module), RadeonSI (Mesa OpenGL) and RADV (Vulkan) drivers keep showing progress, so there's already good baseline support for it out of the gate.

But I digress. Thanks again guys. :D
Last edited by ermo on Sat Dec 31, 2016 5:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Sat Dec 31, 2016 5:10 am

You know it sounds to me like the best option people have is when they're going to buy a new CPU to try delidding it and OCing. If they break it, well, you were going to get a new one anyways. If it works then you save a bunch of money. There isn't much to lose and a decent amount to gain.

Unless someone wants to send me their 3770k as it's an upgrade for me.
 
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Sat Dec 31, 2016 11:42 pm

Well, you can lose a perfectly good chip, but in general, I agree. I delidded the wife's 4770K and it dropped temps well over 30C under load at 4.4 GHz. Haven't moved higher yet, but the decrease in temps was absolutely worth 10 minutes of trying not to cut my fingers off. :lol:
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Wed Jan 04, 2017 11:18 pm

@ermo, can you share the link which had MX4 performing well between IHS and CPU cooler? Why not Liquid Ultra here also? 
 
Starfalcon
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Thu Jan 05, 2017 1:04 am

Well I feel lucky with my 3770, Mine is running happily at 4.6 at around 80 or so. Guess I got a good application under the IHS.
 
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Thu Jan 05, 2017 2:21 am

diademz wrote:
@ermo, can you share the link which had MX4 performing well between IHS and CPU cooler? Why not Liquid Ultra here also? 

Have been doing lots of reading over the past few days on delidding, and found my answer
TL;DR - CLU can also be used but will be a pain to clean as it "bonds" with the copper base of the heatsink. 
 
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Thu Jan 05, 2017 4:34 am

just brew it! wrote:
drfish wrote:
Of all the engineering problems Intel tackles, you'd think this would be one of the easiest... How is this a problem???

99% of the CPUs they sell will be run at stock clocks. As long as they stay within their operating temperature range at stock clocks, even sloppily applied TIM is "good enough", and making sure it gets done right raises production costs without generating any additional revenue.

They could at least bother for that with the K series, made for .. you know.. OVERCLOCKING?!
@OP Grats. 90°C @ 4.2 truly was a gimped chip worthy of delidding. 
My 3570K runs stable at 4.6 (could push 4.8 but temps do get past the 85°C on air, so I'd rather not), hence I don't see the point.
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Thu Jan 05, 2017 7:39 am

drfish wrote:
Stop tempting me!

/Bender voice

I'll try it if you do!  :lol:
 
ermo
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Sat Jan 07, 2017 9:16 am

A small update:

It turns out the the ASUS UEFI "Auto" CPU VID setting would make the 4.5GHz OC use 1.30V effective for some reason.  After manually setting the base voltage to 1.015V in the UEFI (after observing that the VID would fluctuate from 0.96V - 1.01V between boots when set to "Auto"), a setting of 1.25V in the TurboEVO OC tool now results in a reported VID between 1.248-1.256V and a decrease from 80°C to 75°C during the intel burn test as shown in the updated image in the OP.

Per recommendations in the various 3770k OCing guides I've seen, I've also bumped the DIGI+ CPU Load Line Calibration setting to "High" (+50%) and am using the ASUS "Optimized" CPU Power Phase Control setting.

Going from 4.5 to 4.6GHz results in needing to increase the voltage to 1.3V, so I'm happy to stick to 4.5 from here on out.

EDIT: Went back a notch to "High" instead of "Ultra High" on the CPU LLC setting.

EDIT2: Was getting crashes in games (but not intel burn test!) with 1.25v.  Bumping the voltage to 1.275v solved this, so that's where I'm at for now.
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Tue Feb 07, 2017 1:46 am

diademz wrote:
What a timely post! Got my 3770k in 2012, and it runs 4.4ghz and reaches a max temp of 80c with a CM612s in push-pull. Tried the razor method but chickened out...tempting tempting! Wondering how much I can squeeze out of it.

Need to get a vice and the TIMs though...

Finally delidded. Avg temp drop of 20c. Bloody worth it! 

Hoping my trusty i7 can last at least another 3y or so. 

Some pics
 
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Tue Feb 07, 2017 2:23 pm

I both love and hate these threads because I have a fairly speedy 4790k that runs way hot, but I really don't want to risk wrecking it. :oops:
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Tue Feb 07, 2017 2:29 pm

Just curious, are most people re-installing the IHS or leaving the CPU die naked?
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Tue Feb 07, 2017 3:50 pm

DPete27 wrote:
Just curious, are most people re-installing the IHS or leaving the CPU die naked?

I've done a G3258 and a 4770K so far (in addition to a bunch of Athlon64 and Opterons back in the day) but I've always re-installed the IHS on Intel chips. A coat of Coollab Liquid Ultra between the die an the IHS, plus a very small dab of sealant at the corners to keep the IHS in place. Placed wet into a socket to compress and dry.
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Vhalidictes
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Tue Feb 07, 2017 4:06 pm

Waco wrote:
DPete27 wrote:
Just curious, are most people re-installing the IHS or leaving the CPU die naked?

I've done a G3258 and a 4770K so far (in addition to a bunch of Athlon64 and Opterons back in the day) but I've always re-installed the IHS on Intel chips.  A coat of Coollab Liquid Ultra between the die an the IHS, plus a very small dab of sealant at the corners to keep the IHS in place.  Placed wet into a socket to compress and dry.

Interesting. I always though the point was to run without the IHS and use a socket shim.
 
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Re: Delidding my 3770k -- thoughts and results

Tue Feb 07, 2017 4:14 pm

Vhalidictes wrote:
Interesting. I always though the point was to run without the IHS and use a socket shim.

The IHS doesn't seem to be an issue, with "non-crazy" builds. The die dropping below the height of the retaining bracket is a real issue that has expensive alternatives, but ultimately, can be avoided by just reinstalling the IHS without the bulky sealant that causes temperature problems.

I ran bare-die back in the day, but now? It's not worth the extensive mods required for a few degrees better temps. The drop from non-modded to modded seems to be nearly 20C. Going to 22C down doesn't really inspire me. :P
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