E4300 - Removing Integrated Heat Spreader (IHS)

[wiz83]

Anyone done this before?

One of my buddy just did it yesterday, and he installed a water block on it.

The temperature dropped 2C idle, 7-8C load.

I got a new E4300 coming in. The previous E4300/E4400/E6300/E6400 rig I built before I sold, I've actually tried lapping the HSF, and the IHS, but have not tried removing the IHS itself. I was shocked when my buddy told me he attempted to remove the IHS, and his excuse for being wise/dumb is that he had $800 in tax returns, and that E4300 is now $117.

Apparently, he's done a great job, and he had his E4300 overclocked even further, from 3.3GHz, to 3.5GHz, with 1.50Vcore, load 56C.

I've done a lot of search, and most of them had issues mounting the HSF onto the CPU without the IHS, because the core is lower than the motherboard socket, but my friend's water block was small enough to sit right on top of them.

 

[jay2tall]

8O Ummmm yeah.. I don't suggest doing that. I've seen and heard people who did it and it DOES give you the best contact with the cpu. HOWEVER, you risk breaking or cracking or chipping the CPU. It immediatly voids any warranty as well. If you move your PC alot the weight of the cooler itself can crush it or break it in half. Granted your buddy has a waterblock which is nowhere near that heavy but still its bad practice. Lapping is much better and safer practice although they both will void your warranty. I personaly lapped my cpu heatspreader because i leveled it out and found it was a bit concave and already had it 6 months so i was comfortable doing so. But to be honest it really isn't worth it. Are you planning to overclock the crap out of this thing? if that is your reasoning I would just get a little more expenise chip, overclock it not as aggresively as you planned with the e4300 and be safe and happy.

There is EXTREME and OUTRAGIOUS overclocking and then there is SMART and SAFE overclocking. Don't join the wrong crowd.

 

[wiz83]

I've been overclocking for a long long time. So, I know how to squeeze every single MHz out of it, safely.

I do understand the risk, that's why I want to know if anyone else did it, and succeed? I want to know what are the success rate, and judge myself if it's worth it.

If you've read my other threads/guide I've written, you'd know I'm tight on budget. I built a bunch of system, and has to sell them out, and people usually tip me $50-$200 on the effort I put in.

For an overclocker, temperature is everything.

What I usually do before I lap the IHS is, I run the CPU in default settings, stress test it for 24 hours, if there's no problem with it, I'd start lapping the IHS the very next day, as I personally think I wouldn't need the warranty anymore. From my prior experience, lapping the IHS and HSF combined gives provides a drop of an average 3-6C.

My buddy that removed the IHS, had already originally lapped the IHS and the Water Block, and by just removing the IHS, the temperature even dropped a further 8C. That is why, I'm looking into this option, and need more feedback from people who actually tried it.

 

[Pax2All]

Instead of removing the IHS and hoping you can get a good mate between your bare CPU and HSF (not likely without mods), save your pennies for the best HSF you can afford. Your friend had $800 to throw away if he screwed up. You don't.

 

[wiz83]

Good HSF doesn't come cheap.

 

[chuckshissle]

The IHS is stock in the chip really well and it will take some beating to take it out. I've read some reviews of some people trying to take out the IHS of the E6600 and ended with a non functional chip and wont' post at all. So don't remove it, whether you're trying to make it cooler temps it's not worth it.

 

[wiz83]

The review you read about the E6600 is probably the one I read as well, where that dude had to burn the IHS to dislocate it from the core. E6600's IHS is known to be soldered to the cores, whereas there are a couple of reviews stating that E4xxx are non-soldered, instead it has epoxy/thermal compound in them, which doesn't need burning to dislocate the IHS.

 

[jay2tall]

I say you can do what you want, it's your chip. But if you are paying $120 for a CPU and are appempting to remove the IHS instead of buying a good cooler you are running the risk of ruining it. In return you are risking having to buy a new $120 to replace the one you screwed up instead of just going and buying a good cooler. You wouldn't even have to buy the best cooler. Just a decent one. I think you can get a Thermalright ultra-90 and a 92mm fan for a good price and they aren't to bad at cooling.

 

[rdhood]

Anyone done this before?

One of my buddy just did it yesterday, and he installed a water block on it.

The temperature dropped 2C idle, 7-8C load.

If "one of your buddy" did it yesterday, why the heck are you asking about it here? You tell us!

Apparently, he's done a great job, and he had his E4300 overclocked even further, from 3.3GHz, to 3.5GHz, with 1.50Vcore, load 56C.

Let's see: remove IHS (void warranty), add water cooling ($$$) for an 0.2GHz on a $115 CPU.
For hobby purposes only (just something to do), it might make sense if you already have the water cooling rig and just want to play. BUT if you don't already have a water cooling rig, you can get there on air for less $$ and not void your warranty.

 

[wiz83]

The temperature he's having now is still lower than the temp he had running at lower speed, with the IHS on.

 

[mrmez]

Prob NOT a good idea.

From what i remember the 'experts' managed to successfully remove ~ 1in4 not so long ago.

If u lap ur IHS and do a good job, add some Shin Etsu x23 paste it will prob get u within a c**t hair temp-wise anyway, and its like 100x less risk and work.

Take the $100 u may have used killing ur chip and blow it on coke and hookers :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

 

[mak1skav]

For some people removing the IHS gave them a huge drop down in temperatures but for many other only 1-2C.For 1C i don't think it's worthy. You have to see how flat is the IHS of your own CPU if your CPU's IHS is really flat then the best you can do is to lap it.Maybe the new E4300 and E4400 are soldered too you never know.

 

[muddleclass]

I'm not saying that what you are proposing is totally insane but:

Apart from a high risk of ruining your processor, what real benefit are you achieving?

I' m a medical doctor and if there is another doctor viewing this thread are you also willing to sign the forms.

 

[rammedstein]

My ihs came off accidentally, the e4300 ihs's arent held on by solder so it is alot easier, no heating involved, also, if you ahve a bigass cpucooler, like me, keep the socket cover on and cut into the base of the heatsink, this way the socket acts as a shim and supports some of the weight and you get better copntac.

 

[jay2tall]

My ihs came off accidentally, the e4300 ihs's arent held on by solder so it is alot easier, no heating involved, also, if you ahve a bigass cpucooler, like me, keep the socket cover on and cut into the base of the heatsink, this way the socket acts as a shim and supports some of the weight and you get better copntac.

Damn it don't encourage him. haha

risk assessment says...... not worth it. Lap it at the very most. It's much safer. 2C idle, 7-8C load is not worth it if you even get this. Are you trying to overclock your CPU to the moon or trying to calculate Pi with it?

 

[wiz83]

I'm a overclocker, and I want to get every single drop of juice, and MHz out of the cheapest possible C2D chip.

I haven't decided to do it, that's why I'm asking it here. I'm very tempted though.

7-8C load, is A LOT ... trust me ... 1-2C is already a lot to an overclocker, 7-8C is ... INSAINE ...

 

[SuperFly03]

First of all to rammedstein... there is no way your IHS came off accidentally, no way. You have to exert some solid force with a sharp as hell blade to even get through the IHS's glue, it is nuts. I call BS on the accident part.

I have taken the IHS off of an opteron 165, E6600 and E4300. First off, don't even bother trying to take off the E6 series IHS, as far as I know they are all soldered on (I only tested the E6600 specifically). It took too much effort, there ended up being too much flex in the PCB board as well as knicks in the PCB board causing the E6600 to become useless.

However, on the E4300 the IHS is not soldered on which makes it much easier, but still a pain the ass to remove. You need a freakishly sharp (and tough, exacto won't cut it, too weak) blade to get through the black blue holding the IHS on. Also, along the top of the PCB are wire traces so if your blade slips and cuts the PCB board you are likely to ruin it. In order to actually remove the IHS you need to lightly heat up the exact middle where the core attaches to the IHS in order to soften the paste/glueish type crap that is in contact with the IHS. Then you slowly twist the IHS to loosen it before trying to actually pull it off. I take no responsibility if you screw your chip up. My E4300 posts like a normal one does (I haven't finished the build to test the temps because the TR Ultra 120 Extreme won't arrive until tomorrow).

The Opteron has min capacitors around the edge of the IHS on the PCB board making removing the IHS even more risky (not to mention actual pins on the proc), however, the IHS is not soldered either.

In all likelihood you will probably ruin it, but I would say if you take extreme care and use a wicked sharp blade carefully, you can achieve a 20-30% success rate. Again, I take no responsibility if you chose to try this and break your chip.

 

[rammedstein]

actually, it overheated, the grease was insanely liquidy and the glue was brittle, it came off quite easily... unfortunately that chip i broke, lol, when i was pulling the heatsink off the ihs came off with it, and since i wasn't intending on taking it off i chipped the corner (not much, but enough), i saw it wasn't that hard to take it off an e4300 so i bought a new one and successfully tried again.

 

[SuperFly03]

Hmm that sounds nuts. It must have been ridiculously overheated to make that black IHS glue pliable. I mean really hot... interesting. I still find it a bit hard to swallow, but such is life.

Gratz on it working the 2nd time around intentionally.

 

[dr_kuli]

I'm a overclocker, and I want to get every single drop of juice, and MHz out of the cheapest possible C2D chip.

So why you don't buy some vapochill case???

 

[SuperFly03]

I'm a overclocker, and I want to get every single drop of juice, and MHz out of the cheapest possible C2D chip.

So why you don't buy some vapochill case??? No one said he wanted to throw down $1000 on cooling.

 

[wiz83]

I'm cheap, and I've got not much money to spend on, that's he reason I'm overclocking.

I keep building system, overclock em', sell em'.

In general, my practice, I don't get to keep the same computer I use for more than 2 weeks. The system I plan to keep the longest would be the one I'm using now, E4300, running at 3.573GHz, on a BigTyphoon with Silverstone FM121, which I've been using for the last 3 weeks. The reason I'm keeping it is because I have not been able to overclock another E4300 as high as this system does, with Stock HSF, and best yet, ChiefMax PSU. The downside to it is, I've got plenty of fans installed around my casing, and it's noisy, but acceptable.

I'm thinking of selling it though, but haven't got a good offer on it that would make me consider parting with.

I've just wrote a guide, an updated guide of my old one that was written more than 6 months ago, and now, it's cheaper, and better, with better graphics card, higher RAM capacity, but prices are way cheaper now. 2GB now is cheaper than 1GB 6 months ago, 7600GT today cheaper than 7300GT/X800GTO 6 months ago. Meh ... the link is at - http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/GUIDE-GHz-Core-Duo-Budget-System-456-Overclock-ftopict234760.html

 

[rammedstein]

Hmm that sounds nuts. It must have been ridiculously overheated to make that black IHS glue pliable. I mean really hot... interesting. I still find it a bit hard to swallow, but such is life.

Gratz on it working the 2nd time around intentionally.

it was hot enough to fry the prcessor

 

[wiz83]

Any more results?
I've got a 3.708GHz overclock on my E4300 without removing IHS, I'm trying to bring it up to 4GHz if possible.
I need more input on the IHS thingy. :lol:

 

[SuperFly03]

Any more results?
I've got a 3.708GHz overclock on my E4300 without removing IHS, I'm trying to bring it up to 4GHz if possible.
I need more input on the IHS thingy. :lol:

WTF? 3.7GHz on a E4300? How long ago did you get it? Most top out at 3-3.2... lucky bastard.