Delidding an i7 4790k?

[swiftleeo]

So where to start?

I'm aware of the vice method, as well as the razor method. I believe the vice is the safer method?

Also, would MX-2 thermal paste help me at all?

Basically the reason I want to delid my i7 4790k is this: it runs hot. I have an NHD-15 with a single fan running. Case airflow is exhaust out the top and back, and intake from the side and front. Ambient temperature is around 23-25C (varies depending on if some idiot turns the air off).

My i7 4790k with the NHD-15 installed with a single fan runs at about an average of 39C per core.

That is pretty high for me, and I suspect that the cheap thermal paste on the inside of the heat spreader is to blame

. I run it at stock, so 40C is a bit high for an idle temp with a cooler like the NHD-15. I don't expect the idle temp to go down more than 8C at idle, but load temperatures should improve tremendously from what I've read, and that is definitely going to determine how high of an overclock I can get. I do not plan to overclock right now, but I do not want temps past 65ish when stress testing if possible (at stock 4.4Ghz turbo speeds obviously)

Anyways here are my current settings:

i7 4790k @ 4.0Ghz with 4.4Ghz Turbo enabled

Core voltage (from BIOS) is around 1.00, Core voltage (from CPU-Z) is exactly 1.191 (why such variation?)

NHD-15 heatsink with single CPU fan running at about 700rpm idle

(1) Front 230mm fan at 1500rpm (intake), (1) Top 200mm fan at 700rpm (exhaust), (1) Side Panel 200mm fan at 700rpm (intake), (1) Rear 140mm fan at 2000RPM (exhaust)

Case is a Cooler Master HAF X, and it is missing only one top 200mm fan (didn't come with the case like the others).

 

[clueless77]

It doesn't make any sense. i7 4790k was supposed to have better internal TIM than 4770k, and people on youtube have reported much better temps.
and the new nh d15 can't be worse than a nh d14...
How old is your nh d15? maybe you could get a refund and buy a coolermaster nepton 280L or something.
Before you delid, try everything possible. Once you delid, your warranty is gone. Maybe you could tell Intel you got a defective 4790k?

Then maybe they aren't using Prime? These chips run hot at load with certain types of stress testing and even hotter than my previous experiences at idle, it makes Prime as a stress test almost unfeasible. OCCT actually caught a very slightly unstable voltage for my memory cache, whereas Prime would have lead me to believe that my overclock was stable. Not saying Prime is bad or anything, just that yeah, you're going to get insane temps with Haswell refresh if you stress with Prime no matter your cooler or supposedly "mediocre" applications of thermal compound, delid or not.

 

[swiftleeo]

Ok, its a start. Now comes fan curves. In bios, set all your fans to performance, with duty cycles at 100. In AiSuite, find the correct fans and set them up according to tastes. The Noctuas have a very low activation threshold, in the neighborhood of 18% speed, or about 400 rpm. I'd raise that some, to @ 550-600rpm for idle temps upto @40° then start curving up till 100% @65°. Your other fans you want to be sure to provide adequate airflow so when the cpu fan ramps up, so does intake and exhaust, but those fans will read case temps so set those to reach 100% by 50°. They will not go as low starting threshold as the Noctuas so expect @50-60% to start.

Btw, the d15 is king of the aircoolers, it'll put idle temps of @3° above case ambient temps at idle, easily comparable if not better than a Corsair h-100i. If your case temps are hot, any cooler, liquid or air, is going to see higher temps. If your case ambient temp is 40°, the best you'll see is a cpu temp at 43° idle. Liquid, clc or full loop, will not change that unless you use the cooler as intake, thereby using room ambient temps. This has the drawback of putting all the cpu exhaust heat back into the case, making it that much hotter, which will directly affect gpu temps, as the gpu will now be using hot air to cool itself. Get case temps down, cpu/gpu goes down accordingly.

Well I dont have a thermometer to find out what my case ambient temp is, but the ambient room temp is 23 celsius, so I should atleast get between 33-36 stable, rather than 33 jump to 50 then back down...

Are there any fans perhaps that perform better than the Noctua's at a reasonable noise level (basically, jet engine is a no go)? I don't need 100% silent system, I just need something that isn't going to annoy the hell out of me but still cool my system.

Noctua has some 3000rpm fans but I'd imagine they would be quite loud.

 

[Karadjgne]

You do know that Haswell cpus run hotter than Ivy Bridge, and i7's with hyperthreading enabled run hotter still? If you think delidding will help, I'd say that's your last resort. I'd use Coolaboritory Ultra or Pro over the MX, you'll see better results. I'd also do some extensive research, hardOCP has a good tutorial. Just remember this though, if you do delid, say goodbye to the warranty. It's gone, no chance of RMA.

 

[projectbadass]

Use something more realistic like ASUS RealBench, or try Prime95 26.6 if you're insistent on getting that prime95 stamp of approval. I went through the same issues as you, and I'm sure a lot of 4790k owners did as well. The newer versions of prime95 use a different set of instructions and can melt the ice in your freezer, especially if you're Haswell testing. I have an h100i and stress temps initially hit 100 C in seconds with 28.8. I went through a series of troubleshooting techniques, including reseating my water block, using different TIMs, and eventually delidding the sucker. After all that, I ended up hitting around 70 C after several hours in Prime95 (26.6) with 4.7 GHz @ 1.26 V.

As for the delidding, the main problem is the black silicon stuff they use to adhere the PCB to the HFS; it's thick enough to leave a little open space in between the two, which allows the heat to build up. Watch every delidding video on Youtube before you venture into this so you'll know what to expect. And definitely use Liquid Ultra/Pro. Other TIMs will reduce temps, but they won't make the effort worth your time the way that UC/P will.

 

[chromic]

offtopic, does liquid pro/ultra have a waiting time when applied?
(need to wait to the paste to fully work?)

P.S, latest P95 temps max core temp ~75c avg.~68-70

 

[swiftleeo]

My prime 95 temps get an average of 70C at full load. I know that is a lot better than 90-100C, but I want to know if its safe to overclock at all? My i7 runs the Turbo 4.4ghz frequency at almost 1.2v. I did a small overclock over the turbo frequency (4.6ghz) and temps went up almost 10 degrees. I understand that the tasks I do will almost never hit 100% load, but I want to keep my CPU healthy as well. So if overclocking with an idle temp of about 37C avg per core and a max load temp of 73 (so far), is it safe, or should I just leave it be?

 

[clueless77]

LP takes a long time to "cure," as in by the time it "cures" is about the time you'll want to apply a fresh coat. It's metallic and has a mercury-like consistency. So no, no waiting.

Swift, yeah, it's safe to overclock. Projectbadass has a good chip, so they're able to clock higher at a lower voltage and stress with Prime for decent temps, delidding having been factored into that. Still, even the newest version of Prime puts an unrealistic amount of stress and thereby heat generated upon Haswell refresh depending upon which pass is being run, especially at higher voltages. I think that if you can clock these chips high at lower voltages Prime is still good for stressing, but anything higher than 1.25 and you're probably going to end up cutting it close. Those aren't the thresholds of your chip, they're the thresholds of Prime's stressing of your chip. Prime wasn't even developed for the purposes that a lot of people use it for, and again it's not to say that it's bad as I used the hell out of it for Ivy Bridge and was getting awesome temps at load.

Like I said before, after stabilizing my chip with Prime I tried OCCT, had lower temps during stressing and actually caught a slightly unstable cache voltage that Prime didn't.

 

[Karadjgne]

You can realistically hit temps in the mid 80's on p95 or occt and still be fine. It's only when getting close to 100 that you should really start to worry. The Haswells run hot anyways due to their on-die VRMs, the memory voltage regulators, that were separate on the Ivy and Sandy Bridge cpus. Manually set dram voltage to 1.5, don't set memory any higher than XMP value.

Side note, prime95 will run cpu at @115% with small fft, Occt is 100% cpu and small % ram, Occt Linpack is @ 100% cpu and 90% ram (temp monster for haswells). intel Burn is @125% cpu. For overclocking purposes, these are run for 2 reasons.
1. Punish the cpu beyond normal heavy gaming usage. Simply, if you don't cook your cpu with one of these tests, you'll never have to worry about your OC cooking a cpu when in max game mode.
2. Stability of the pc at speeds, temps, beyond stock. Simply, nothing worse than spending 4 hrs on a supreme dungeon crawl, just to bluescreens as you finally start to battle the final big Boss. And your last save game was 3 hrs ago. It's got a be stable, 1st last always.

If you can pass any of the tests, run for several hours, even over night, and still have workable temps and no errors, you are all good. Doesn't matter if the temp is 50 or 70, the results are the same. The pc runs when ya want it too, and no cooked components

 

[swiftleeo]

LP takes a long time to "cure," as in by the time it "cures" is about the time you'll want to apply a fresh coat. It's metallic and has a mercury-like consistency. So no, no waiting.

Swift, yeah, it's safe to overclock. Projectbadass has a good chip, so they're able to clock higher at a lower voltage and stress with Prime for decent temps, delidding having been factored into that. Still, even the newest version of Prime puts an unrealistic amount of stress and thereby heat generated upon Haswell refresh depending upon which pass is being run, especially at higher voltages. I think that if you can clock these chips high at lower voltages Prime is still good for stressing, but anything higher than 1.25 and you're probably going to end up cutting it close. Those aren't the thresholds of your chip, they're the thresholds of Prime's stressing of your chip. Prime wasn't even developed for the purposes that a lot of people use it for, and again it's not to say that it's bad as I used the hell out of it for Ivy Bridge and was getting awesome temps at load.

Like I said before, after stabilizing my chip with Prime I tried OCCT, had lower temps during stressing and actually caught a slightly unstable cache voltage that Prime didn't.

Well I'll try OCCT and Prime and see what happens. Thanks

 

[StupidComputers]

I was getting 63c load spikes during normal operation at STOCK. I couldn't hear my NH-D15 cuz'a headphones the one time I played (had to take mobo back, SB apparently fukd, should get new one today) but when I took my headset off the noctua was screaming, i wish i knew the temp. Delidding is likely necessary, however:

For the life of me I can't find Cool Laboratory Liquid Pro anywhere that has shipping under $20 (except $8 15-30day) +$14 for the TIM. But my main concern is that PPL say dont use Arctic Silver 5 for delidding because it's conductive. Cool Laboratory Liquid Pro says it's LIQUID METAL??
quote from site "Liquid PRO is electrically conductive" - but all the reviews seem stellar aside from them saying it's a bitch to apply safely and well

 

[CompuTronix]

swiftleeo,

You might want to give this Tom's Sticky a read: Intel Temperature Guide - http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1800828/intel-temperature-guide.html

CT