Delidding an Intel Core i7 6700K - Is it worth it!?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,721 words · ~8 min read
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now this is a video that I have received many requests to do over the years that
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this practice has been I don't want to say commonplace but definitely something
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that enthusiasts have been doing and I am finally finally going to set aside my
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concerns about not really wanting people to do this cuz it can definitely break
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your CPU and will definitely void your warranty and I will be showing you guys
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how to remove the integrated heat spreader or IHS of an Intel Core i76700
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description so I think a natural question to ask is why on Earth would
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you want to remove that that metal top
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that protects the die of the processor well the reasons have varied from uh
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year to year or so in the olden days it was so that we could actually Mount the
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heat sink directly to the die eliminating that small uh thermal
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resistance that is caused by the IHS itself but in recent Years starting I
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think it was particularly with Haswell it's become more because Intel has used
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um not the greatest thermal compound to
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attach the the IHS to the die itself
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rather than soldering them together so what that worst thermal compound means
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is that your cooling performance can be affected by that goop so what people
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have been doing is instead of leaving the IHS off they've actually been going
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as far as to put the IHS back on and
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just replace the thermal compound so that's what we're going to be doing
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today and we're going to find out if it makes a difference so to start with
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we'll need a baseline so we're going to take our 6700 100K we've just got some
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z170 board from MSI going on here and
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other than that this is kind of a janky test bench and wow I applied a lot of
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thermal compound but that's okay as long as I do it the same way the second time
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then we are freaking golden so we're
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just using a stock heat sink I don't want to sit around and wait for water to
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warm up and reum or whatever else and frankly that doesn't matter to get the
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results that we need because we are looking for an improvement in
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temperatures not an absolute Val you so
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let's go ahead and get that puppy mounted there we go snapped in place
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we're going to fire this up and then get Ida 64 going to find out exactly what
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our Baseline reading is benchmarking
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break that was a long Pizza break it is actually the next day I got busy I had
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to do anow whatever you guys don't care about my excuses what you care about is
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results and right here we've had our test running for about 20 minutes and
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it's running at 70 ° C here so that gives us a really good before
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scenario well before we uh rip that baby
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apart all right so step one we're going to pull the CPU off of our test bench
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here and put that aside next and this is
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for the sake of keeping my hands clean not because it's uh Hazard to the CPU
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we're going to go ahead and clean off that thermal compound don't worry we'll be reapplying
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it later one handy thing about doing this test on
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this CPU one that's had thermal compound applied and cleaned off of it many times
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is that we're effectively working with a pre-polished IHS so that's another thing
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that people do sometimes to get slightly better performance now with some
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previous generation CPUs and I've encountered this before there were
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surface mount components much like you see here on the top of the package which
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meant you had to be extremely careful as you were cutting in between the
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substrate and the IHS but that's not the case with Skylake making it actually
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surprisingly easy so you start with the corners I have a good Gap in that one we
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will try a slightly different approach holy crap ho that is tight all right I
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think I got it I just need to get the CPU flat make sure that I get under the
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metal here once it starts to cut it'll cut pretty fast there we go see that
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that okay so the adhesive is starting to come starting to come loose we're going
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to do all four corners just like that I really don't want to slice my hand open
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with one of these that would suck so
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once we've done the corners we're going to go ahead and do the edges don't cut
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too deep there's really not that much
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adhesive all right woo rock on so it looks like we
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our right side up with The Notches at the top we're going to clean the
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adhesive residue the seal here off of
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both sides then we are going to clean
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off that thermal compound and replace it with something else now I'm just going
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to use some maker gel that I have lying around but what a lot of people are
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doing is they're using like the that liquid metal stuff or whatever else to
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get the utmost in performance and then they're actually using an adhesive like
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a thermal adhesive to GL glue these pieces back together I'm just going to
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be going with the floating method where you don't actually glue them back
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together and I'm just going to be doing a Tim swap that is thermal interface
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material to find out just how bad the stock stuff
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is let's put some aftermarket grade
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thermal wow so much fail all right I got
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to clean this again we'll be back in a moment let's try that again this time
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holding down the CPU and putting less thermal compound
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that's slots let's check our orientation there we
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go
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and so let's find out if she works now
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because I didn't glue down the IHS I do have to be pretty careful in my
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installation here I'm just going to
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throw that baby in there like that so one tricky bit as we lower the retention
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ARM is you can see these Wings right here sit on the inter gred heat spreader
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the IHS so we're going to need to compensate by moving it a little bit
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further back before we tighten this baby
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down so that it sits in the correct position once the arms are locked just
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like that so now we're going to reapply our thermal compound again going a
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little bit heavy putting a little bit more than I normally would like I did
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last time put our stock heat sink back
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on and let's fire up a stress test shall
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we my jabronies that's right I am full of
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dated words see if it works yeah all
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right that's the first step in success
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when it comes to trying to improve something not making it worse or
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breaking it boom let's let her run until she
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reaches Max temperature and we will come back so here we are my friends the
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stunning conclusion it's hovering anywhere from about 66 to about 68°
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we'll call that 67 so there you have it
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friends that is ultimately why I have
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never really condoned the removal of
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integrated heat spreaders because while you do get a couple of degrees and if
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you were using a better paste you would get a couple more degrees what you do
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not get is enough for it to make any kind of significant difference to your
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overclock or the lifespan of your chip if you're using air or water cooling so
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I don't recommend doing it because I don't feel like it is worth the risk of
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damaging the CPU or the voiding of the
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warranty of your
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CPU so we've got Torro here with a
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pretty freaking awesome giveaway we've got three of their Excalibur V2
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keyboards to give away so these are based on kaiwa Brown mechanical switches
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they are fully backlit and you can actually customize your backlighting on
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individually and one of them can be yours simply by following the
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instructions in the video description we've also got three tsaro sitaa mice so
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these are 5,000 DPI 1,000 HZ pulling rate mice with 16.8 million color RGB
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lighting six independently programmable buttons adjustable DPI control liftoff
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distance and shooting speed and an antimicrobial soft touch finish you've
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got seven days to enter the giveaway and you do it through the form link like I
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said in the video description shout out to Torro for making this giveaway
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happen so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video hit the dislike
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stuff's cool too now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what should I watch next we'll
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check out this video it's freaking awesome whatever it is that we have up
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here right now I mean we made it so it must be awesome