Delid and Direct Die for 9900K

[objecttothis]

Disclaimer:  This is a description of my experience.  If you choose to do the same thing and break something, it's not my fault.  This is not a how to.

 

For the last 3 months I have been scheming my upgrade from my delidded 8700K (Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut paste and Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut Liquid Metal).  I finally took delivery of my used 9900K that I picked up off eBay ($400 was a steal at this point).  My mission:  direct die.  I've been watching whatever youtube videos I could find on the delid procedure and was thoroughly stressed, knowing that some had chipped their die while delidding.

 

In my opinion, the die chip happens when people get overzealous and the IHS gets pushed into the edge of the die chipping it. YMMV.

 

I used the metal fatigue method with my Rockit 88 delid kit and it worked for me.  Similar to Derb8uer's recommendation I moved the IHS a millimeter or so and then flipped the chip 180 degrees and moved it 2mm (i.e., back to center and then 1mm the other way).

 

What worked for me was to make a mark with a pen on the little screw sticking up from the Rockit 88 delid kit.  Once I had moved the front of that bolt to that mark I unscrewed it and flipped the chip.

 

I had to flip the chip at least 20 times before the IHS came loose.  I used a #10 blade from an exacto knife to carefully scrape away the indium solder (very soft).  Once I got it as close as I could, I coated it with liquid metal and let it sit for an hour.  With the liquid metal on, I continued to carefully scrape at a low angle with the #10 blade and used a cotton swab to wick up the pieces of indium left over.  I later learned that Rockit Cool makes a compound to dissolve the indium so you can just wipe it off.  Would have been nice.

 

Anyway, I wiped off all the liquid metal, took a buffing wheel to it (dremel) and then recoated with liquid metal.  Slapped it into the socket sans IHS and used a Rockit Cool 9th gen die guard to keep the heatsink level.

 

My results:

Stock:

- Cinebench 4611 max score and 84 degrees single core max as reported by hwinfo after 10 runs.

 

Direct Die (stock clocks):

- Cinebench 4762 max score and 74 degrees single core max as reported by hwinfo after 10 runs.

 

Both were with all fans at 100% and pump at 100% to eliminate variables with fan curves. IMO the 10 degree drop was worth it, but it was the most stressful delid I've done.

 

My setup:

- XSPC Raystorm Pro Waterblock

- D5 Pump, 240mm and 120mm rads cooling both the CPU and GPU

- Zotac Arctic Storm 1080Ti

- 16GB DDR4-3600 G.Skill Ripjaws V

- Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB

 

I've got some Cooler Master JetFlo 120's for airflow and Noctua NF-F12 iPPC 3000 PWMs coming in the mail which should help with the thermals a little more.  Once I get dialed in, I'll see what kind of overclocks I can get.  I'm guessing that my radiators are going to limit how much I can get, but it's the most I can pack into my Fractal Focus G Mini. 

[Strelok]

Cool. Pics plz?

[MaratM]

12 hours ago, objecttothis said:

Noctua NF-F12 iPPC 3000 PWMs coming in the mail which should help with the thermals a little more

they are great fans but then you run them at the full speed, THEY ARE LOUD!  

[jasonc_01]

In progress...

[objecttothis]

On 3/5/2020 at 2:38 AM, Strelok said:

Cool. Pics plz?

The pics @jasonc_01were fairly similar to what I got.  Although, I will say that his finished die looks cleaner than I remember mine.  I also chose to use liquid metal between my die and cooler.

[objecttothis]

On 3/5/2020 at 11:22 AM, MaratM said:

they are great fans but then you run them at the full speed, THEY ARE LOUD!  

Yeah, I don't plan on running them at full speed.  I also found out that my MSI Z390M Gaming Edge AC had been pinning the 9900K to 5.0GHz on all cores.  Which makes much more sense to me why I was getting 74C max core temp on a custom loop.  I figured it out when I went to troubleshoot why I got a BSOD WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR message when *I thought* I wasn't overclocking.  I think it's because I upgraded from an 8700k that I was overclocking at 5.0GHz.

[jasonc_01]

21 hours ago, objecttothis said:

The pics @jasonc_01were fairly similar to what I got.  Although, I will say that his finished die looks cleaner than I remember mine.  I also chose to use liquid metal between my die and cooler.

Yeah I got the flints cleaning kit. I will be using Conductonaught, the thermal paste was just to check fitment, clearances and contact. 

 

As you can see from the pictures its a tight fit with the Apogee drive II. You can see where i touched down on some of the caps on the left side, and you can see on the left side of the cold plate where I had to remove material to clear those caps.

 

I actually need to install that center screw and then grind half of it of to clear completely, on top of already opening the mounting screw holes to move the block over to the right more.

[objecttothis]

As a 9-month update, I had to take my loop apart due to some corrosion causing flow restriction and giving me horrible thermals.  It also turns out that when I went direct die, I didn't get enough of the Indium solder off.  I followed @Falkentyne's procedure in my thread about the issue here (https://www.overclock.net/threads/yikes-9900k-direct-die-custom-loop-w-conductonaut-thermal-throttling-after-9mo.1775341/page-2#post-28691933)

 

The result is getting much better thermals than I originally got.  69C on the package under load at stock clocks.  The first time around I was afraid to take sandpaper to the die for fear of destroying a CPU I had just spent $500 on.