Delidding Intel Ivy Bridge and Haswell: A How To [Pictures included]
Once you have finished applying the Coollaboratory TIM, set the CPU in its socket on the motherboard. Then take the metal heat spreader and line it up well above the CPU die and set it down carefully. Pull the CPU locking mechanism down and make sure the two side flaps come down well onto the edges of the metal heat spreader. After you have it lined up and you have set the lock in place, you can move on to the heatsink or waterblock.
Secure the IHS
Take the Arctic Cooling MX-4 and squeeze a good pea sized amount lengthwise down the CPU heat spreader vertically along the line where the CPU die would be under the heat spreader. Finally, you get to mount your choice of CPU cooler flat on top of the CPU and power on your rig to behold the true fruits of your labor. If you used another thermal compound in place of the MX-4, then you might have to run a full curing cycle to get it to work properly, but the MX-4 will work 100% from the start.
You’re finished delidding, hooray!
These are my comparison results from my original delidding on the i5 3570k processor. The delidding process shown here will work exactly the same on all ivy bridge and haswell i5 and i7 prcessors. This is what you can expect if your delidding went well:
That’s even after a bit of a voltage increase
I ran prime95 for 1 hour before and after delidding for accurate temperature reads both times. Ambient temperature was 23 degrees Celsius, 74 degrees Fahrenheit. Hopefully yours went well if you went ahead and attempted it. If it indeed worked out for you, I’d like to congratulate you on becoming an official part of the club. If you have any questions regarding something I wasn’t specific about, send them to me via the comments below, or comment in the forums. If this was an any way helpful to you, I’d appreciate hearing about it. Feel free to share your results with the rest of us here.