Delidding a $1000 CPU - Worth the RISK??
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,897 words · ~9 min read
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last time we tried d-lidding the process
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of removing the heat spreader from a CPU
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we decided that it wasn't really worth the effort
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the voided warranty on a brand new 300
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processor or the risk
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but it has since come to our attention that
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while x-acto knives are a fun if a little dangerous tool for
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de-litting there is a much better way to go about it
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so then with the der bauer d-lidding tools in
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hand for both lga 1151 and
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2066 that's right my friends we're gonna get
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naked with a core i9
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we're going to re-evaluate d-litting
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should you do it
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synergy allows you to share your mouse and keyboard between multiple computers
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at once check it out now at the link in the video description
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now both of Intel's current platforms are
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notorious for running pretty uh
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hot with many enthusiasts pointing to
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Intel's use of a paste rather than solder based thermal
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interface material between the heat producing dye and the protective heat
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spreader over top of it so
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let's take a look at our tools
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this guy right here is
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oh man it's gonna be such comment fodder okay
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so this is the derbauer d-lid mate 2. the tool
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itself actually pretty straightforward it's two
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metal pieces here and a hex wrench
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so the CPU sits in the grooves here with the arrow
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pointing to wait a minute Anthony did you delid this already
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yes the ihs isn't on right
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it's uh it's 90 degrees off okay
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well you know what that's okay because this is a good opportunity
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to show you guys how it works so i'm going to de-lit it again so we can put
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it back on properly pretty much you slide this second piece
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in here you tighten up this screw as much as you
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can by hand you throw in the hex wrench and
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bippity boppity boop
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that's all there is to it the hex crew pulls against the ihs with mechanical
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force causing its silicone seal to break
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and you have got yourself a d-lidded CPU
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then we just need to scrape off the silicone
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clean that baby up and oh look how shiny
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it is okay now you could technically run a CPU like
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this with the cooler straight on the die but with modern Intel processors it's
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impractical for a couple of reasons not the least of which is that in order to
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get good contact between your cooler and the CPU you have to remove the retention
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mechanism meaning there's no easy way to keep the CPU in the socket etc etc etc
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so what most people are doing is they're
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taking their d-lidded processor they're using a higher quality thermal compound
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so we'll be using thermal grizzly also provided by derbauer and they're pretty
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much gluing that sucker back together so we're just going to take
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some pretty generic silicone junk here that
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we pulled out of a tube in our caulking gun we put it in a
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syringe and we're just gonna kind of yeah i'm not doing a very nice job of
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this but whatever you guys get the point okay so that's on there
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we take just a little bit of thermal compound
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then we take our CPU we put it back in the delidding tool aligning the triangle
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with the triangle not triangle with the dot and
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we take our ihs and we put that on aligning the dot with
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the dot bippity boppity
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all right then to make sure that our ihs is aligned correctly we jam this baby in
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here and you take the included
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little turny screwy grippy doodad here
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you tighten this baby down right on the center
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there we go and then leave it for about half an hour
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to harden back on anyway though d-litting the 7700k that's been done to
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death that's the boring one good thing Anthony
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already has the performance numbers that demonstrate that as long as you're
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willing to give up your warranty this
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safer way of de-litting is a fantastic
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way to significantly drop your CPU temperatures which is obviously
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a good thing wait
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how did he get performance numbers on this if the ihs was on the wrong way
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you know what forget it i don't even want to know because the main event
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today is the prototype
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der bauer d-lidding tool for x-299
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this one works a little differently
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using the force from this lever right
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here to push the ihs but the whole thing
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is still powered by a hex screw with one
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of these included allen wrenches so we're going to be delitting the core
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i9 7900x
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because we like to live dangerously get
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on in here dennis come on get a look at this man
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so we put the CPU in
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aligning the triangle right there with the triangle right there so that's all
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pretty straightforward so far it sits in there nice and snug
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all right then in theory and i haven't read the
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instructions we just do this look at this thing look
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at how like over the thing is so german you'll turn this thing and then it
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pushes this thing which in turn pushes this thing like
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so over engineered i love everything about it
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okay it's getting tight now
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i'm getting tense oh it's getting really tight now
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okay oh man that's a lot of pressure
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this is legitimately getting really hard to push oh
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okay this is this is tense oh my goodness
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i think it's off okay i think it's off
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okay thousand dollar processor kids
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ladies and gentlemen thousand dollar
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chip oh oh wow
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oh there it goes holy crap
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look at the way that thing is assembled it's got silicone sealant up the butt
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okay oh baby
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hopefully this thing still works oh i need my alcohol
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this kind so
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same basic procedure let's clean her up
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he's shiny baby shiny
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now apply our silicone again
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apply our thermal grizzly again this time using the handy dandy applicator
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end
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um i'm trying to oh oh lordy oh lordy oh this is bad
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oh that's way too much thermal compound is awful it is awful okay
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that's it i'm never going to be a professional thermal compound applier
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oh really this time get this it's dot to triangle
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so we go ahead and put that baby on there we do not have an alignment tool
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this time so we're just gonna have to yolo it
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then we throw the whole thing back in the
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deleting tool and we clamp her down
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that's right giving her the clamps baby it should be fine
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everything's fine moment of truth time my friends
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let's get this installed in the socket here
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so again triangle the triangle hopefully that orientation works just fine for us
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here cooler time here we'll just be using ic
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diamond let's throw this baby on here
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where my thumb screws be at beaches
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is it going to post or what
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it just posted it did oh yeah
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okay so the CPU still works that's good so
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now all we got to do is throw our overclock profile on
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and then we can do some temp results for you guys
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uh what just happened well that's not good
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this is better than it was really yeah it was 105.
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oh no um okay
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i mean it's hitting that again but not immediately like it did before okay so
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we just need to wait 10 minutes for our final result here
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so here we are and we can actually kind of wrap things up here our core i7
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managed a 17 degree delta at 4.8
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gigahertz allowing it to run at that speed for half an hour for a stress test
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with no throttling whatsoever cool as for our core i9 well
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it looks like our overclock wasn't 100 stable our system actually crashed but
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the good news is that while we were still running at super high temperatures
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come on in here we actually thermal throttled
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less than we did for our first run-through
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before d-lidding okay so it's actually a few days later
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and what we saw with our overclocked result turned out to surprisingly be a
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result of the better cooling performance
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even though the temperatures weren't that different so if we look at the
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graphs our Intel tim overclock test was
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tripping thermal protection despite a very modest voltage bump of only 10
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millivolts so you can actually see it as it drops in the CPU load that's reported
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in task manager and also in the reported temps
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with thermal grizzly conduct-a-knot it actually stabilized and then that was
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what revealed that our overclocked frequency wasn't stable
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so since we can't put a number on that type of improvement what we'll do is
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revert to comparing our stock cooling performance
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and wouldn't you know it we actually got 20 degrees lower on the maximum reported
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temperatures after delitting 20 degrees
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so it's crystal clear then that Intel stock tim is basically toothpaste by
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comparison but should you void the warranty on your
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brand new thousand dollar CPU well given that this tool isn't even out yet to say
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nothing of the mess of the silicone adhesive
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that's a solid no i think for most people but
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if you're looking to squeeze every last bit of performance out of your new
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workstation and you don't mind the risks involved
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well there are definitely gains to be
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had big thanks to synergy for sponsoring
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today's video synergy is the software download that solves a hardware problem
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having two keyboards and two mice or heaven forbid three keyboards and three
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mice for all the different computers that you're running at your battle
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station you'll never have to confuse which one goes with which and it is
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perfect for developers or gamers who
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also like to use a mac for productivity because it is cross-platform Windows mac
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and Linux you just share your keyboard
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and mouse across multiple computers just moving the mouse between the screens
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seamlessly it even has features like dragging and dropping files between the
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computers the ability to set up hotkeys and more so use our link in the video
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description to get 50 off synergy today
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so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that
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button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed maybe consider checking out
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where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description
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by processors the lidding tools it's all there
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also down there is a link to our merch store where you can buy a cool shirt like this one and our community forum
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which you should totally join