Intel engineers are missing out on a huge opportunity, and it seems they don't even know it.
What would happen if some desktop parts arrived already delidded, or more accurately UNlidded? Subbing a piece of plastic to ensure contact for the obviously higher cost of the lid and whatever garbage Intel uses to secure the lid and act as TIM wouldn't just save end users money, it would save Intel, too!
I'd certainly limit this idea to K and KF parts, as buyers of those SKUs are much more likely then non K buyers to want to delid, have the technical knowledge required, and/or know what advantage delidding even promises. Not only that, but Intel already recognizes that set of end users by not including an OEM HSF with K and KF SKUs.
In the age of buzzwords like 'sustainability' and 'carbon footprint', such a move has the potential for a bigger effect than first realized.
1. Labor and energy is spent manufacturing lids, transporting lids, receiving lids and committing lids to inventory. Same with glues and TIM materials.
2. Labor and energy is spent picking inventoried lids and other materials and then mounting them onto dies to create finished products.
3. Finished products are then shipped to distributors and resellers for shipment to end users, each leg of the process consuming more energy because of the weight of metal lids, as opposed to plastic contact plates.
4. A delidded or UNlidded CPU draws 10 watts less power, so says the foregoing, which means each of those million CPUs has the potential to save up to 88 kWh of power per year by itself.
5. Each of those UNlidded CPUs then dumps 10 watts less heat into the rooms they are in, which equates to 10 watts less air conditioning required to cool the rooms.
6. Those 10 watts plus the several additional watts to cool said rooms, plus the cost of transmitting those watts to the place of consumption may cost the end user a very small amount of money on a monthly or even yearly basis, but at ~120 kWh/year, over a 10-year lifespan that money is not trivial, especially when expressed in terms of TCO on a P&L statement.
7. Those 120 kWh must come from somewhere, and even if they come from renewable sources, they serve to offset other uses for that power, which in 2023 still usually means more generated by the use of fossil fuels. That in itself engenders a whole other discussion centering on extraction, transport, supply, demand and the economics thereof, plus the actual burning of and subsequent dumping of CO2 from them into our air.
Phew.
If Intel sells a million K and KF CPUs, and each lid weighs 25 grams more than a plastic piece, that equates to 25 million grams, or better said, 25 metric tons of weight that doesn't require energy to transport every step of the way. Those million CPUs could collectively save 1200 million kWh over a decade, more/less. That's just gotta be enough to send one DeLorean back to 2015.
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