No, not a euphemism for a Bris. Having had my current setup for a couple years, I decided to fuck with it a bit.

I read about "de-lidding" and it didn't look overly complicated, so I bought a de-lid kit, some liquid metal and silicone and gave it a shot. (the process of removing the OEM IHS (integrated heat sink) and replacing the (utterly shit) Intel thermal compound between it and the CPU die.

The process itself was pretty simple. Probably could have done it all in the span of 15 minutes, not taking into account the cure time of the silicone on the IHS, if I hadn't decided to completely dismantle and clean each part/square inch of the case and re-build.


Results were pretty good as a first go:
Stock 3.7Ghz (not overclocked in any way), Cinebench topped out at about 80C, meh.
After putting it back together with the liquid metal, and overclocked to 4.2Ghz (fairly minor) with no voltage increase, same bench test topped out at 59C.

This (potentially) opens up a path to higher overclocks.


It is a little unnerving when a bit of liquid metal goes where it's not supposed to, and the "snap" when you initially break the IHS free from the die. Thoughts that go through your head "fuck, that just cost me $300 because I have to buy a new CPU".

Interesting "MacGuyver" innovation: the little orange Lego disassembly tool is a fantastic scraper for all things silicone/thermal material from computer parts. Wasn't about to use a razor on the CPU die (ffs). Far superior to the piece of shit pencil-thick wood toothpick that was flat on one end and splintered out within about 15 seconds of use.

Don't know if I'll get 5Ghz out of it, I may try to go for a 1GHz O/C, all comes down to the temps.

It's been quite a while since I messed around with this shit. I went in with the attitude, if I fucked it up, I would pull the trigger on my Amazon cart and get a Z490 and 10850, but so far, so good.