- Jan 9, 2011
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I've had a 4670K for nearly 5 months now, and I don't do a lot of overclocking so I've never experienced any of the notorious heat issues of the Ivy and Haswell CPUs. However, the temps were still orders of magnitude higher than what I got with a 125W FX-8350 under the same cooler, and I was a bit disappointed by that, quite honestly.
About a month ago I decided to look into building a custom water cooling loop and begun the design process. All seems well and I don't think it'll be a challenge, but it does cost 3 arms and 5 legs in my case(no pun intended!). I definitely did not want my ludicrously expensive water cooling performance to be held back by subpar thermal compound between the die and the IHS, so I went a bit more extreme and decided to delid my 4670K. This is the part where the warranty goes out the window, and if I make a mistake, it's all on me. Tough decision, but after some research about the bench vise method, it became an easy decision.
All I had to do was hold the chip by the IHS with the vise, put a wooden block against the edge of the PCB, and gently hit the block until the PCB came loose. The entire process took maybe 30 seconds, and the rest is just cleaning and polishing the PCB and the die before applying a new compound. I used the Coolaboratory Liquid Ultra, which came with a brush, and I just simply "painted" a layer of the mercury-like compound onto the die. And that was it! The Liquid Ultra compound doesn't seem to hold the PCB and the IHS together very firmly, but once I locked down the retention bracket on the motherboard, it wasn't going anywhere.
With the stock Intel box cooler and CoolerMaster thermal compound between the IHS and the cooler, the delta T was -10°C for load and -5°C for idle. This is pretty impressive if I do say so myself, and it will definitely be much more dramatic once it's under water. And I have to say, this was one of the easier things I've had to do with my build so far, it's actually safe enough to be worth a shot, although I take no responsibility if you hammer your CPU across the room and out the window.
About a month ago I decided to look into building a custom water cooling loop and begun the design process. All seems well and I don't think it'll be a challenge, but it does cost 3 arms and 5 legs in my case(no pun intended!). I definitely did not want my ludicrously expensive water cooling performance to be held back by subpar thermal compound between the die and the IHS, so I went a bit more extreme and decided to delid my 4670K. This is the part where the warranty goes out the window, and if I make a mistake, it's all on me. Tough decision, but after some research about the bench vise method, it became an easy decision.
All I had to do was hold the chip by the IHS with the vise, put a wooden block against the edge of the PCB, and gently hit the block until the PCB came loose. The entire process took maybe 30 seconds, and the rest is just cleaning and polishing the PCB and the die before applying a new compound. I used the Coolaboratory Liquid Ultra, which came with a brush, and I just simply "painted" a layer of the mercury-like compound onto the die. And that was it! The Liquid Ultra compound doesn't seem to hold the PCB and the IHS together very firmly, but once I locked down the retention bracket on the motherboard, it wasn't going anywhere.
With the stock Intel box cooler and CoolerMaster thermal compound between the IHS and the cooler, the delta T was -10°C for load and -5°C for idle. This is pretty impressive if I do say so myself, and it will definitely be much more dramatic once it's under water. And I have to say, this was one of the easier things I've had to do with my build so far, it's actually safe enough to be worth a shot, although I take no responsibility if you hammer your CPU across the room and out the window.
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