CPU die lapping, long term experience

magda

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I would like to lap the cpu die, I have removed the IHS from my 9900K and I plan a direct die contact to the watercooling cpu block.

I will try to follow this guy's advice


But how does it hold up over time? Did you have problems or malfunctions after lapping your cpu die?
 
I did that with a E8400 chip out of curiosity. The chip died after 6 months. The failure, in my opinion, was due to the rear case fan developing a vibration that caused the koolance block to grind against the die and shave off some of the gold plating - a conductive particle. Had I done things differently, I would have coated the bare chip with something, and adhered a thin foam around the die to prevent movement while under the mounting pressure.
 
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I've seen this done a long time ago.... As far as I remember, there weren't any wear issues from direct die cooling like you're considering.
 
I used to do this in the past, and I can tell you it's completely pointless.

The only time it has a benefit is if you do literal direct die cooling (hate that this term has become corrupted) and that is where you make a custom waterblock with no base that is sealed against the cpu substrate and water contacts the core directly. Hilariously dependant on pump not failing.

I've come close to doing this myself a while back, but couldn't find an easy way to manage the seal against the cpu substrate. The cpu needs to be hit with the fastest flow possible, so there'll be alot of pressure at that joint.
 
all depends on the chip.. with the 9900k the actual die is self is at the bottom so lapping the silicon above it won't matter as much but honestly unless you're doing LN2 or chilled water overclocking the gains aren't worth it. there's far bigger gains in just lapping the IHS and using liquid metal instead of the solder since the soldering warps the crap out of intel's IHS for some reason.
 
all depends on the chip.. with the 9900k the actual die is self is at the bottom so lapping the silicon above it won't matter as much but honestly unless you're doing LN2 or chilled water overclocking the gains aren't worth it. there's far bigger gains in just lapping the IHS and using liquid metal instead of the solder since the soldering warps the crap out of intel's IHS for some reason.

Do you really get much of a gain from that even? SL says 3-7C.
 
To me it's not worth the risk for a few degress cooler running temp. I haven't found any CPU that was hot enough to make top tier air cooling work hard enough to make anything but enough fan noise to know system was working hard .. that is with a reasonable OC', not extreme OC'.
 
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