Whats youre thoughts about delidding? Thanks in advance.
Hugo signing out
No, you should NEVER de-lid a CPU.
Yes, delidding a CPU can lead to lower temperatures. However, what Skylake offers removes the need of past CPUs to do so.
But, these CPUs are built with protections that keep them safe. This includes heat, overall power use, and current consumed. By delidding a CPU, you over-ride the heat protections, and thereby invalidate the other protections as well. You also, of course, invalidate your warranty (you can, however, still buy a "Tuning Plan" warranty that sometimes will let you RMA a de-lidded processor).
So you can delid a CPU, get lower temperatures and all that, but it doesn't actually allow for a better overclock that to me, justifies the loss of warranty. All it does is provide better cooling. Heat isn't going to kill one of these chips anyway (So says Intel!), so I am unsure why anyone would worry about it unless they were running into a throttle situation, and that's actually better dealt with by buying better cooling, NOT by physically modifying the chip.
All that delid will do is allow you the false security of lower temps, which then might have you think you can run higher voltage without any issues... but you cannot. The thermal interface material provided already allows you to run the required voltage to get the most out fo your CPU for 24/7 use. If you have some adequacy issues and need that extra 100 MHz it might offer, then by all means, delid way. But do keep in mind the "stock" TIM also prevents you (by design!) from running a voltage too high, and protects your CPU investment.
If you want a good set of info about delid, you can read this here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/kaby-lake-de-lidding-overclocking-test,4970.html
Here's a few quotes:
Instead of pushing the limits at 79°C, you're breezing with a low of 57.5°C.
Hmm, 60c instead of 80c.. cool! But what's wrong with running 80c? Nothing!
Tip: If you want to overclock your processor to higher frequencies, but don't want to give up stability in AVX-heavy workloads, use your BIOS' AVX Offset feature. Let's say your CPU isn't stable in AVX-based tests above 4.8 GHz, but is stable at up to 5 GHz otherwise. You have three options:
- Set the chip to operate at 4.8 GHz. It'll be stable in every test, even though you lose out on the 200 MHz it'd accommodate in non-AVX tasks like games.
- Set your processor to 5 GHz, knowing if you start an AVX-optimized workload, a crash is likely imminent.
- Set your processor to 5 GHz with an AVX offset of -2 in the BIOS. For non-AVX applications, the processor runs at up to 5 GHz, and when an AVX-optimized task starts, the frequency automatically drops to 4.8 GHz. Isn't technology wonderful?
Wait... WHUT! Did that just say that some Z270 boards allow you to remove those high-heat scenarios anyway? So, you can avoid having a CPU throttle in extreme workloads, just with BIOS settings, and get those high clocks for gaming, too! Who would have thought!
Not everyone will reach speeds in the 5 GHz range. However, that should be an attainable goal for the most cooperative -7700Ks. If you don't get lucky with your sample, the introduction of an AVX offset could give your overclock a second chance.
Only you can determine if de-lidding is worth the risk inherent to such a serious modification. If you don't plan on pushing your core voltage beyond 1.25 to 1.3V, you probably shouldn't bother. On the other hand, if you're gunning for a big overclock using aggressive voltage settings, the gain will be much more worthwhile.
So yeah, some people will do anything to hit that 5 GHz mark. Some won't be able to. So they'll delid, run a voltage of higher than 1.3V, and by doing so, they shorten the life of the CPU, no matter what the temperatures are. Remember, temperature doesn't hurt these chips!!! They throttle long before that!!!
I suggest, you move with the times, take advantage of what the platform offers, and don't de-lid. Have an elegant overclock, and not a messy hacked one. Leave that to those who don't know any better. And in the end, if you just MUST get that 5 GHz CPU, simply go any buy a pre-binned one from Silicon Lottery. It doesn't cost much more than the cost of an effective delid does anyway.
*Note: Delid on Haswell and IvyBridge, yep, worth it (Haswell specifically, because of the integrated power stuff, but Skylake and Kabylake have removed that). Skylake...KabyLake... nope.
