Silicon Lottery

We've been selling delidded CPUs for over three years now, without a single report of thermal degradation over time. I still have access to a couple Ivy Bridge CPUs delidded near launch, and their temperatures are still the same as the first day they were delidded. Staining will always occur on nickel, but I see no reason to be worried about liquid metal drying out underneath the IHS. As it has been mentioned, the reaction is pretty minimal against nickel and silicon.

I have sold hundreds of Skylake chips since launch, and I haven't had a single customer mention any degradation. The stock turbo voltage for 4.2GHz on Skylake can be above 1.4V, so the voltages we use to bin are hardly worrisome. If you want to run below 1.35V, you'll need to drop 100MHz. For example, nearly all of our 4.8GHz bin 6700Ks should be able to do Realbench at 4.7GHz 1.35V. Another perspective would be to ignore the frequencies and voltages listed, and look at what percentile the chip falls in. Regardless of your requirements for stability, a 6700K from our 4.8GHz bin is still within the top 19% (so about 1 out of 5) of 6700Ks we have tested. If anybody has any other specific questions, feel free to contact me or head over to overclock.net. They have a great thread on Skylake overclocking, and many people there will help answer other questions you guys may have. Our market leans more towards benchmarking, extreme overclocking, or those wanting the best of the best- not the typical LTT user. 100MHz here and there won't make much of a difference for most people.

Sorry, no discounts. We are about to discontinue the 4790K though. I'm contemplating on whether or not to do another run.

I've delidded over 100 6700Ks, and I've never seen anything less than a 10C drop across the cores (closer to 15C when pushing the voltage.) If you're going to delid, a liquid metal like CLU is a must and you need to clean as much of Intel's sealant off as you can to narrow the gap between the die and the IHS.

No, you the man!