Intel's x86 architecture was made so popular by the original IBM PC that 40 years later,
40 years after the original 8086 CPU, we are still using it. So it's pretty important. But
when Team Blue decided to celebrate that anniversary with what basically amounted to
an upclocked and upmarket Core i7-8700K, we were a little underwhelmed. I mean,
I have been asking Intel for years to do something truly special with their really high-end stuff.
And like, look at this. It's got the same cores, the same IHS, the same green substrate,
the same non-soldered thermal interface material. So we figured if Intel's not going to do it,
then we're going to do it. We're going to build the 8086K that should have been,
and we're going to do it in style.
Before we could do anything, we needed to make sure that our CPU was performing the way that we would expect,
because we'll be comparing our end results later on to make sure that we didn't make it worse.
With that out of the way, it's time to shut it all down, pull the CPU, and delit it. We've delitted
plenty of processors before, but this time will be slightly different, because now we need to lap it,
which for the uninitiated means removing the upper layer of nickel plating and leaving behind a smooth,
flat, and smooth CPU.
It's a flat copper finish for us to play with.
Two hours, and two bloodied thumbs later, Anthony eased off the manual work to finalize
the design that we'll be etching into the top of the IHS. We weren't sure at this stage
whether or not the resolution would be too fine to etch into the size of a CPU, but once
we finished with the design, we decided it was time to practice our gold plating with
a dead CPU. Extra hours of lapping not shown.
So this is our lapped heat spreader.
Got this in there.
Got that exposed copper going on there.
I guess the smoother this is to start with, the less gold we would have to waste applying
it thicker and then polishing it down, right?
Right.
Okay.
What we need to do is we need to wrap this around like this, so that there's no metal
actually showing.
Okay, so what is this?
That's to absorb the liquid.
Okay, and none can be exposed at all?
It can be exposed, but don't do it too tightly, because the fluid needs to be able to flow
with the electricity.
Okay, so this hook is just going to hold our...
Our piece then?
No.
Oh.
We're going to brush it on.
We brush it on?
Yeah.
So our gold solution is actually clear.
Dip that in there.
That gauze will actually clear up, and once it's fully soaked...
You just brush the gold on.
Yep.
They say to do it as if you're petting a cat.
After a while, we should start to see some yellowing.
So it paints on a pretty thin layer, eh?
Yeah, it's basically microscopic.
Oh, it is starting to yellow a little bit.
It's really subtle.
Wow, it's hard to...
It's hard to tell, because it happens so slowly.
Brush plating really wasn't what I was expecting when I had said, hey guys, let's make a gold-plated
CPU, largely because I had actually never heard of it, but it ended up working out great.
Check out the difference from the start.
Now applying conformal coating to the PCB or substrate that's going to be nearby anywhere
you're going to be using liquid metals.
Pretty standard operating procedure.
So we've already done that all over the green part here, but the unusual thing we're doing
today is we're going to plasti-dip a CPU.
So we're going to go ahead and cover up the dye, and that's just for thermal performance
reasons.
We wouldn't actually be harming it by plasti-dipping it.
Then we're going to go ham.
Oh, Lordy, I put that on a little thick.
Oh, boy, oh, boy.
The adhesion to the conformal coating is not ideal.
And I wish I'd gone on a little lighter, but what's done is done now.
So now that we've got a smooth, gold-plated IHS, you're probably thinking to yourself,
well, hey, almost home free, right?
Throw it in your guys' laser cutting slash engraving machine.
I mean, wow, those test runs of the pattern look great.
And boom, it's off to the races.
But unfortunately, because we don't have like a solid state laser or what's it called?
I don't know.
What's the other one?
Fiber optic.
Fiber optic laser.
And for that matter, like almost no one around here does because they're really expensive.
We're going to need a different plan.
So we're going to do it the old fashioned way.
It's off to the jewelry store.
We're going to engrave it.
That sounds like a plan.
Anthony's going to engrave it.
I'll find someone.
I heard he knows a guy.
While Anthony gets our practice piece over to the engraver, it's time to gold plate our
real IHS.
So he took a turn with the electroplating kit.
Anthony got back after a bit of polish and some touch ups here and there and a second
trip to the jeweler.
I think the end result speaks for itself.
So something we didn't account for in the original plan was the extra thickness that
would be added by the plasti dip.
So a quick extra step we had to add was just sanding down the bottom of the IHS a little
bit to account for that clearance because it's the glue that we're going to apply around
the edges when we relit it, that's going to hold it on.
So that's sort of important.
So now all that's left is to peel this off, exposing our die.
Liquid metal the die.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
And that's more like it.
It's so chilly in here that it's not staying very liquidy.
I'm going to wipe some up.
I just want to err on the side of a lighter rather than a heavier application here.
I think that's pretty close actually.
Let's put our CPU back together.
Oh.
That was spot on.
Nailed it.
What?
That should be tight enough.
Okay.
Now we leave that for about an hour.
All right.
We'll be back.
This is it.
This is we think the limited edition CPU Intel should have made.
Black PCB, gold spreader, custom engraving.
And should we make sure it still works?
Probably a good idea.
That is so cool.
If you're into that sort of thing anyway.
So we want to enable XMP and disable multi-core enhancement.
Oh, it looks like...
Yeah.
So just F10.
Cool.
27 degrees.
Looks good.
Oh, cool.
So the IHS is lapped.
We've got liquid metal on it.
Theoretically, it should be better than before in terms of its temperatures, but we also
engraved it.
And we don't know if that's going to cause micro ridges around the engraving or anything
like that.
There's a very good chance it could.
And we don't know if that's going to cause micro ridges around the engraving or anything
like that.
There's a very good chance it could.
And we don't know if that's going to cause micro ridges around the engraving or anything
like that.
There's a very good chance it could.
And we applied a new layer of metal on top of it that obviously wasn't lapped.
So we don't know exactly how flat it is.
So we're hoping for the best, but we won't know for sure until we actually test it.
We're using an air cooler, so we don't have to wait around for the coolant to reach equilibrium.
Max.
So 64 to 75 degrees.
67 to 71.
Does that sound reasonable?
Yes.
Look at that.
We had a spike and then it settled in.
Yeah, because that was in turbo.
Now it's no longer turboing.
If we look up here.
Oh, okay.
But was that the same way you tested it last time?
Did you take your temps with turbo or without?
Without.
Without?
So sustained.
Oh, so then we're killing it.
Oh.
Yeah.
We're at like 62 degrees.
Yeah.
We're not finished our before and after testing yet though.
Now this CPU's thermals were not good enough before we liquid metalled it to really do
any overclocking.
So all we could do was turn on multi-core enhancement and then, where's this guy?
And then max out these power limits here.
So 4095 here, 127 here, and 4095 here.
So now we can have a look at what kind of a performance improvement we can get now that
our true limited edition, very limited edition, one of a kind.
And CPU can be fully unfettered.
So let's hit it again.
We're running at 4.3 right now, 4.3, 68 degrees on the hottest core.
Wow.
Dang.
That max turbo though.
We could just run that all day.
As it turned out, we didn't gain much in gaming, but when it came to blender, we saw a tangible
improvement in performance thanks to our better thermals, which were much better than stock.
When we removed the turbo, we got a much better performance.
When we removed the power limit, we hit the same temperature, but our gold plated CPU
remained at five gigahertz on all cores with a Noctua NHU 12S.
With a beefier cooler, we could do five gigahertz all day long.
So even after running for 10 minutes, our thermal results are still looking great, which
means the last before and after is a good old fashioned Cinebench run while we wait
for that to go.
I should probably say like, in fairness to Intel, there's a lot of stuff that you don't
have to change in the manufacturing pipeline in order to do something like gold plated heat
spreader.
Like the kind of validation a company like this does.
I mean, let alone turning the substrate black, they'd have to do all kinds of materials testing
and science and stuff in order to do that.
So I'm not giving them too hard of a time, but I also do think they could do better.
And that's the purpose of this video is, hey, come on guys.
If we can do it, then I think a multi-billion dollar company can probably do it too.
So our final result is...
1390.
1386.
So we have lost no performance.
We have better thermal results and presumably we'd be able to overclock this damn thing
now.
Probably at this point.
Freaking A.
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