Is delidding worth it?

[Hydra453]

I'm purchasing an i7 9700K along with a motherboard soon. I am hoping to be able to overclock the CPU (not extreme).

I have a water cooling loop already, and I am pretty prepared to be able to overclock as soon as I can.

Anyways, I was wondering if delidding the CPU makes a difference on the temps (I know it does, but is it a big difference and worth me ordering the tool I need to delid)? 

 

And if it makes a good difference on temps then will it make overclocking a lot better?

[That_PC_Kid]

If you are rich

[Hydra453]

4 minutes ago, That_PC_Kid said:

If you are rich

This doesn't really answer my question, i dont care about price, I just want to know if its worth the troubles of delidding to get good temps and stuff...

[That_PC_Kid]

1 minute ago, Hydra453 said:

This doesn't really answer my question, i dont care about price, I just want to know if its worth the troubles of delidding to get good temps and stuff...

Exactly. If prices doesn't matter because if you fuck up then you need a new CPU then go for it. It does bring down the temps quite a bit from the benchmarks I've seen. That's if you do it properly.

[CharminUltraStrong]

2 minutes ago, That_PC_Kid said:

Exactly. If prices doesn't matter because if you fuck up then you need a new CPU then go for it. It does bring down the temps quite a bit from the benchmarks I've seen. That's if you do it properly.

That's not what he was asking...

[badreg]

It's not worth the effort to delid a 9700k, clean off the solder and apply liquid metal for a ~10°C gain. That is without taking the possibility of breaking the die into account.

 

With Coffee Lake, when the odds of damage was close to zero if you used a proper delidding tool, and the gains were 20°C, a good argument could be made for delidding. However, that is not the case with 9th gen.

[That_PC_Kid]

Just now, CharminUltraStrong said:

That's not what he was asking...

The OP literally says "Anyways, I was wondering if delidding makes a difference on the temps" so what do you mean that's not what he was asking?

[dizmo]

7 minutes ago, Hydra453 said:

This doesn't really answer my question, i dont care about price, I just want to know if its worth the troubles of delidding to get good temps and stuff...

How is one supposed to decide if something is "worth it" without factoring in the price? That's the whole question you've asked. Also, worth is entirely subjective, so if it's worth the cost or not is really only something you can decide.

2 minutes ago, CharminUltraStrong said:

That's not what he was asking...

That's exactly what he was asking...

[CharminUltraStrong]

5 minutes ago, Hydra453 said:

This doesn't really answer my question, i dont care about price, I just want to know if its worth the troubles of delidding to get good temps and stuff...

As far as delidding, yes it is worth it in many scenarios. On a 9700k? Not so much. 9700k's are a bit of a waste of money if you ask me, the i5 9600k is plenty fast. It has 6 cores and 6 threads and, personally, mine is OC'd to 5.2 Ghz without the slightest hiccup. i7's no longer have hyper threading, that's a feature that's only for Core i9 model CPU's nowadays. So yes the 9700k has 12 threads but it has the same amount of physical cores, perhaps you'd be better off saving for the i9 because the i7 doesn't have much more overclocking headroom than the 9600k and I'm not so sure that delidding the 9700k would yield benefits that are substantial enough.

[CharminUltraStrong]

2 minutes ago, That_PC_Kid said:

The OP literally says "Anyways, I was wondering if delidding makes a difference on the temps" so what do you mean that's not what he was asking?

He was asking specifically in reference to the 9700k and your answer wasn't conclusive on whether or not it's worth the risk of delidding.

[That_PC_Kid]

Just now, CharminUltraStrong said:

He was asking specifically in reference to the 9700k and your answer wasn't conclusive on whether or not it's worth the risk of delidding.

Sorry, must've forgotten to add it in the abstract of my comprehensive report.

[CharminUltraStrong]

1 minute ago, That_PC_Kid said:

Sorry, must've forgotten to add it in the abstract of my comprehensive report.

Yeah, better luck next time I suppose. You live and you learn, it's important to make mistakes at least you've acknowledged yours.

[K1ng]

as far as some chips go it definatly can help you squeeze out quite a good extra bit of mhz or let you run MUCH cooler. But that also depends on how good of a silicon lottery you got with your chip so there is always a risk it may do very little for you in the long run besides thermals. Also there comes maintenance where it will degrade much faster so those results you saw 6mo ago or a year ago may be gone in that much time without reapplying. Which again can be easy or super F'n difficult if say you are full custom loop and even worse for the situation using hardline. But say you have a 7700k and $80 or more to blow on a delidder and liquid metal unless you find a good deal are you willing to do that for possibly no gain? If yes go for it if no than its not something to consider its advantages on at all. It is an ENTHUSIAST market item not to be treated as a necessary part of a complete build unless you like OTT stuff.
That being said it is something i would do on again a 7700k and maybe a few other cpu im not sure there are much reports on stellar improvements on a 9700k i would assume it would not cool as more just due to the magnitude of cores pushing out heat so rapidly so you may end up with 50% the gain at best of other more traditionally delidded cpu.

[Hydra453]

4 hours ago, badreg said:

It's not worth the effort to delid a 9700k, clean off the solder and apply liquid metal for a ~10°C gain. That is without taking the possibility of breaking the die into account.

 

With Coffee Lake, when the odds of damage was close to zero if you used a proper delidding tool, and the gains were 20°C, a good argument could be made for delidding. However, that is not the case with 9th gen.

Thanks for the reply!