I was thinking about delidding my cpu today. I did some reading on it on the web and everyone seems to be de lidding and then just throwing the thing back on with different thermal paste...I didn't realize that I thought the whole point of delidding was....to delid it. ANYWAY so yea is there anything stopping me from delidding my cpu and just mounting waterblock directly onto the die like I used to do with my old athlons. Will the waterblock keep it inside the socket or am I missing something?
I think the main risk i think is chipping the chip since they are so small. If you think you can mount it straight on without chipping it then you can try.
Messing up the chip is the main issue. Next issue is shims/spacers to hold the cooler properly. If money is no object, have at it. If money is a object, put the lid back on The gain is not worth the risk IMO. 1 bump of the cooler and the cpu is shot.
It's mainly about replacing the thermal paste to lower temps as the chip is hell fragile without the lid. I've considered delidding and replacing thermal paste with some non corrosive and conductive stuff for ages, but I'm also a little interested in lapping the heat spreader first and seeing how much of a cooling improvement it provides. The old quad-cores used to benefit quite a bit from lapping the heat spreader, though they did seem to have a rougher finish than newer chips. Wet&dry sandpaper and a sheet of glass just waiting. Soon as I get some spare time I'm going at it with the sandpaper, though I'll be putting off the delid for a while unless lapping reduces temps enough to get me interested in just how low they can go. Bit expensive if I gouge the chip delidding though and those new sound cards look alright ATM.
The threads I read showed not much of a benefit from direct die contact iirc. The main risk is not chipping the die which is quite some distance, or it should be from your knife, it's chipping the PCB that is the main issue.
