Delidding your CPU can be a great way to improve its effeciency and and improve its ability to get heat away from the die. A CPU is only as good as its temperature and depending on your CPU it will throttle at higher temperatures to try to protect itself from over heating and causing damage. When you connect your cooler to your CPU thats really only half the story because no matter what thermal paste you put between your IHS (lid of CPU) and your cooler you will limited by the amount of heat that can be tranfered to the IHS from the Die (The main chip) by the compound between these surfaces.
In most Intel desktop CPU’s you will find an average at best thermal paste between the Die and IHS so this can be very limiting if you are trying to push your CPU to higher limits perhaps with overclocking, gaming or rendering. In my own experience, I have an intel 7700K overclocked to 5Ghz and though I have water cooling and 2x 360 radiators I could never get my temperatures stable until I decided the CPU and replaced the thermal compound with liquid metal, not only are the temperatures more stable the CPU runs at approx 15 degrees cooler.
However, Delidding definitely isn’t for everyone. It’s a very dangerous task and in the worse case, you could destroy your CPU and will definitely void any warranty you have. You cannot rush it and you CPU will be out of action for 24hrs while you let the silicone dry so keep these things in mind.
I’m suggesting liquid metal as our heat transfer compound because it will give the greatest amount of thermal transfer compared to pastes, however, liquid metal as you would expect is conductive and so you do run extra risks by using it of shorting components. I will show you how to combat this in the video but it is always a risk. Liquid metal will also react with Aluminum so if your IHS is Aluminium use something else. If the risk of liquid metal is too great for you you could use the exact same process with thermal paste, without the need to spread it atop the Die and IHS.
Materials:
Before we start your going to need the following:
• Delid tool (https://amzn.to/36jqm7N)
• IPA Alcohol (https://amzn.to/3bXAt3G)
• Microfiber cloth
• Liquid Metal (Thermal Grizzly Conductonaught) (https://amzn.to/3bViRVL)
• Silicone adhesive (High temperature) (https://amzn.to/3g9S2AK)
• Non-conducting Nail Varnish (Clear) (https://amzn.to/36pNgdR)