Re: Delidding Adventure (Long Post)

Fri, 16 Jun 2017 13:55:43 EDT

FizzyMyNizzy posted : I did link in the past a delid kit Kickstarter.
»Intel CPU Delid Tool

=D

Re: Delidding Adventure (Long Post)

Thu, 15 Jun 2017 20:42:02 EDT

Alakar posted : Thanks for the feedback. :)

Another interesting thing I've run into with this effort is the AI Suite 3 software that came with the ASUS motherboard. Normally I've found the software supplied with motherboards to be mostly useless. This tuning app though is really useful. It allows you to tune your system from within Windows for performance, energy efficiency and cooling. It actually interacts with the UEFI bios in real time and allows you to set profiles for individual applications. I've setup a overclocked profile for ARMA. They system runs at normal speeds (3.5) making small adjustments all the time depending on work load. Once I launch ARMA, the software overclocks my system to 4.5 and adjusts the cooling. It's really slick and gives the best of both stock and overclocking.

Re: Delidding Adventure (Long Post)

Thu, 15 Jun 2017 17:40:04 EDT

tlbepson posted : No...searching can be hit/miss here...just depends on the day...'-}}

Thanks for you (original) post. This is not something I will ever do--not a gamer but do a fair bit of graphic work (no video) so my system(s) are unlikely to need the fix--but your post was interesting to read and written very clearly...

Re: Delidding Adventure (Long Post)

Thu, 15 Jun 2017 17:06:10 EDT

Alakar posted : Thanks for the link. I did a search for delidding and came up with nothing before I posted this, but I search now and get more than a dozen hits. Doh! Wonder if all the blockers I'm running are causing problems with my search results.

Re: Delidding Adventure (Long Post)

Thu, 15 Jun 2017 12:22:29 EDT

rusdi posted : Might take a look at this post.
»Delid Intel CPU

said by Alakar:

I haven't seen any posts on delidding processors, so I thought I'd post up my current try at this.

YES, improved CPU temps, as well as GPU temps can be achieved! As you learned however, GREAT CARE must be taken.
Glad to hear of your success!
:)

Re: Delidding Adventure (Long Post)

Wed, 14 Jun 2017 19:57:09 EDT

Alakar posted :

said by DarkLogix:

Why didn't you get pics?

To late for the hardware, but the pics below show the results. First pic is a 30 minute stress test with the cooling set to max. Second pic is idle with cooling set to it's lowest/quiet setting. Third is gaming, 1680x1050 all settings to Ultra, 68 fps, cooling set to lowest/quiet setting.

Re: Delidding Adventure (Long Post)

Wed, 14 Jun 2017 17:24:18 EDT

DarkLogix posted : Why didn't you get pics?

Delidding Adventure (Long Post)

Wed, 14 Jun 2017 17:02:31 EDT

Alakar posted : I haven't seen any posts on delidding processors, so I thought I'd post up my current try at this.

I've got an i7-4770K 3.5Ghz processor, Gigabyte GA-G1.Sniper Z87 motherboard, 16GB of G.Skill DD3 2133 memory, ATI HD 7850 video card with 2GB of memory and a Corsair H100i liquid cooler. I've been planning on doing a new build once the Vega GPU's are available, but in the meantime this system still does what I need; at least until I started playing ARMA 3.

With ARMA 3 I would get 40-50 fps in the standard scenarios, but it would drop with more players on. In certain user created scenarios, it was dropping to 10-20 fps and was unplayable. I figured my GPU was just overwhelmed and decided to get a stop gap card until the Vega's come out later this year.

I ordered an EVGA GTX 1060 3GB card (since every modern AMD card seems to be out of stock); not too expensive and about double the power of my 7850. I pop the card in and install the drivers; clean things up and try ARMA with the scenario that was really unplayable. No change, still getting only 10-20 fps.

I hadn't really done any research on optimizing ARMA since I've done enough with other games to know which video settings need tweaking when you're running slow. As it turns out, ARMA 3's big bottleneck is not the GPU but the CPU. Apparently the AI sucks up tons of processing power, especially if you are using the AI to control the opposing force.

After reading several guides, I found how to enable all cores and threads (ARMA will use as many cores and threads as you allocate), set the game to a higher priority, set the memory size, and kill some unneeded parts of the game. With these tweaks I got a bump of about 15 fps which is better, but not great.

At this point I decided to overclock my system to see if I could squeeze some more performance out of it. I usually don't overclock, as there usually isn't much real world benefit with what I run, so stock speeds are fine. I bumped the CPU to 4.5Ghz and kept the memory at 2133. The system crashed as soon as I started an application. I backed the memory down to 2000 and everything stabilized, but idle temps were running about 20°C higher. I started ARMA 3 and loaded the troublesome scenario and my fps was over 80 fps! This was awesome, until I looked at my core temps. Temps were running between 80°C and 90°C even with the liquid cooling running at it's highest settings. I back off to 4.3Ghz and the temps dropped some, but were still spiking occasionally to 90°C. While the CPU temp was this high, the temp at the waterblock of the H100i was around 50°C. I pulled my H100i waterblock to check the heat sink compound (Noctua NT-H1) and it was fine, with it still being pliable and having good coverage and contact.

Looking for ways to reduce the heat on my CPU, I find there are issues with the 4770K (and other 4th and 5th gen processors) and heat caused by Intel's crappy way of attaching the heat spreader. If you are not familiar with this issue, the metal piece you see on top of your CPU is not the CPU itself, it is a metal heat spreader. Intel attached these with solder in the past, but starting with the 4th generation chips they switched to using thermal paste for heat transfer and epoxy to stick the heat spreader onto the PCB. In some cases it worked fine, but in others the thermal transfer between the CPU and heat spreader was less than perfect, making it hit or miss on whether your CPU would run hot. My CPU is 3+ years old at this point, so even if the thermal paste was applied correctly at the factory, there is a good chance it's no longer working right.

The solution to this is to delid, or pull the heat spreader and replace the thermal paste under the heat spreader. Some people pull the heat spreader completely and mount the heatsink directly to the CPU. I watched several videos on Youtube on how to delid. The procedure is pretty straight forward; use a razor blade at the corner of the heat spreader to cut the epoxy. Roll the blade along the straight sides, while not cutting the PCB or the voltage regulators or the CPU itself. Clean off the old thermal paste, put on new thermal paste, reassemble.

I opened my PC, pulled the H100i waterblock, then pull the CPU. At this point I fat finger the CPU and drop it, right back into the socket, edge on. The CPU smashes a bunch of pins in the CPU socket, essentially trashing my motherboard. I tried straightening the pins, but something kept shorting and I couldn't get the board to post. Time to order a new motherboard. I order an ASUS Z97-A motherboard and put it in, testing to make sure my CPU wasn't damaged in the drop. Everything tests good, so now back to the delidding. I CAREFULLY pull the CPU from the new motherboard and using a razor scraper, carefully work the heat spreader off my CPU. It took about 20 minutes and alot more pressure than I though it would, but it came off clean and I did no damage. What I found was a bunch of dried out, cracked thermal paste. It's now obvious why I getting such high temperatures at the CPU but not at the water block. I cleaned the heat spreader and CPU with a combination of denatured alchohol and brake cleaner. I applied new thermal compound and reassembled. One thing to note is you have to hold the heat spreader in place when closing the retention mechanisim or it will slide around.

Now for the ultimate test, will it boot? I startup my PC at stock speeds (CPU 3.5/Mem 1600) and it boots up just fine. I check idle temps and the are sitting at 27°C with an ambient temp of 23°C. I reboot and overclock back to 4.5 on the CPU and 2000 on the memory. System boots fine, and idle temps are now at 29°C. I try the ARMA 3 scenario that started all of this and I'm getting 80+ fps with temps hovering around 55°C at 30% CPU utilization with the H100i and case fans set to medium instead of full blast. That's approximately a 40°C drop in temperature without the cooling going all out! If I set my cooling profile to silent temps bumped up to 61°C. I then did a 30 minute stress test with CPU-Z with the CPU at 100% and cooling at 100% and temps never went above 71°C. Delidding is a complete success (minus cost of new mother board).

I know it's a wall of text post, but I'm wondering if anyone else has tried this and if they've seen the same kind of results.

Topic 'Delidding Adventure (Long Post)' in forum 'PC Hardware' - dslreports.com

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Delidding Adventure (Long Post)