Ghetto Intel Core i7 from CHINA for $100!!

[X_X]

On 11/30/2018 at 6:34 PM, AntonyL said:

You will be limited by the TDP of the chip, the best OC I've seen so far is 4.6Ghz

Does the CPU not allow unlimited power and time? I'd be disappointed if 5GHz could not be reached, maybe not linpack / prime stable but nevertheless.

 

HWinfo32 should give quite a bit of info on the CPU, including power limits.

[AntonyL]

On 12/2/2018 at 7:56 AM, X_X said:

Does the CPU not allow unlimited power and time? I'd be disappointed if 5GHz could not be reached, maybe not linpack / prime stable but nevertheless.

 

HWinfo32 should give quite a bit of info on the CPU, including power limits.

Yea i'll take a screenshot of the HWINFO screen, I've not forgotten about this thread just been busy.

[Herman Mcpootis]

On 11/30/2018 at 7:34 PM, AntonyL said:

You will be limited by the TDP of the chip, the best OC I've seen so far is 4.6Ghz - not sure if that was on air or water though, probably air with a decent cooler. I had some weirdness around my first PCIe slot on my board, although my board is the ASUS Q87 so you should have some better luck. The board that the Chinese sellers are recommending use the Z87 chip set.

I'm not clued up on overclocking Intel chips, i'll post some screen shots tonight of what my BIOS looks like to give you an idea of what the options are. Mine might be more limited than those on your board though.

i haven't heard of them recommending Z87 boards over the other chipsets, they just warn against using gigabyte boards with crystal well CPUs.

[AntonyL]

On 12/5/2018 at 2:30 AM, Herman Mcpootis said:

i haven't heard of them recommending Z87 boards over the other chipsets, they just warn against using gigabyte boards with crystal well CPUs.

On the ebay ad that I got mine on they recommended the Z97 and Z87 boards specifically for overclocking. No idea what the differences are but I do know my board Q87 works fine with the chip, granted I'm not overclocking it. And yea as you said they mentioned to stay clear of gigabyte boards - again no idea why.

[TheSLSAMG]

On 12/2/2018 at 2:56 AM, X_X said:

Does the CPU not allow unlimited power and time? I'd be disappointed if 5GHz could not be reached, maybe not linpack / prime stable but nevertheless.

 

HWinfo32 should give quite a bit of info on the CPU, including power limits.

5GHz was tough enough to reach on the desktop variants of those chips (4770K, 4790K), so I wouldn't expect the mobile chips to do any better. If anything, 4.5GHz-4.6GHz is really good especially given the price.

[Bitter]

Which eBay vendor? I'd rather buy from there than from some weird website I don't know. I looked the other day but maybe didn't hit the right search terms.

[X_X]

17 hours ago, TheSLSAMG said:

5GHz was tough enough to reach on the desktop variants of those chips (4770K, 4790K), so I wouldn't expect the mobile chips to do any better. If anything, 4.5GHz-4.6GHz is really good especially given the price.

Well AFAIK the 4790K was introduced at a little over USD 300 while the mobile 4980HQ was over $600 and only shadowed by the mobile 4930MX at over $1000 (3x the price of the 4790K). I would hope those premium prices would mean excellent binned chips otherwise what was the extra cost for?

[AntonyL]

Here you go, https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F332931069453

 

This is the same guy I bought mine from, he is based in the UK but i'm sure i've seen the body of the main ad (description) posted on the us site etc.

 

Hope it helps! - still looking to get those screen shots sorted, been mega busy!

[Bitter]

Awesome thank you so much.

[Bitter]

Hmm so that seller doesn't ship to the USA, but I found an Aliexpress vendor with a 1150 4980HQ for $140. As soon as I get my money back from the 4770K that was damaged due to improper packaging during shipping I'll order the one from AliExpress. I don't trust them as much as eBay but I trust them more than Taoboa. I also found some copper IHS with liquid metal and a delid tool, anyone know what kind of TIM they're using between the die and lids on these mobile CPU? I'm sure they did not come from Intel with a IHS, so what's going on under these modded ones!?

[Herman Mcpootis]

11 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Hmm so that seller doesn't ship to the USA, but I found an Aliexpress vendor with a 1150 4980HQ for $140. As soon as I get my money back from the 4770K that was damaged due to improper packaging during shipping I'll order the one from AliExpress. I don't trust them as much as eBay but I trust them more than Taoboa. I also found some copper IHS with liquid metal and a delid tool, anyone know what kind of TIM they're using between the die and lids on these mobile CPU? I'm sure they did not come from Intel with a IHS, so what's going on under these modded ones!?

You can get a 3rd party forwarder to ship the taobao i7s to you if you don't trust them for some wierd reason, some of them offer package inspection services.

[Canada EH]

18 minutes ago, Herman Mcpootis said:

You can get a 3rd party forwarder to ship the taobao i7s to you if you don't trust them for some wierd reason, some of them offer package inspection services.

Gotta pay for the forward shipping cost. can be worthwhile though

[X_X]

2 hours ago, Herman Mcpootis said:

You can get a 3rd party forwarder to ship the taobao i7s to you if you don't trust them for some wierd reason, some of them offer package inspection services.

FWIW

 

I tried ordering from Taobao (Chrome is your friend) but Alipay wouldn't accept my card.

 

Tried Taobao agent and after paying and waiting 10 days without any news of second shipping payment, I contacted them and they checked and said the order had somehow slipped and re-ordered. Later that day I got a message from them to say it was out of stock even though the seller still showed 90+ in stock. A full refund was given.

 

From my own limited experience I would trust Aliexpress over ebay but obviously YMMV.

[X_X]

@Bitter that Aliexpress metal lump on top looks like aluminium and the one I got is pretty well scratched too.

 

 

 

Not sure how it's stuck on, some glue around the outside of the die perhaps. No contact at the sides. Thermals are terrible so will have to look at removing it somehow and going bear die. Other than that it seems okay. Mainboard does not have microcode update for it and can increase CPU ratio above 46x but only if left unpatched (only tried down to ver 0xe. Better perhaps to use the BCLK straps which work with microcode patches. Maximum power / time limits are reported as unlimited or about 4kW / 46 days. eDRAM seems to adjust but need to test if it is actually working.

 

[Canada EH]

On 12/7/2018 at 10:30 PM, X_X said:

it was out of stock even though the seller still showed 90+ in stock.

Liars are liars.

 

 

On 12/7/2018 at 10:30 PM, X_X said:

would trust Aliexpress over ebay

Why the fuck would you do that?

Aliexpress has no buyer protections, ebay does!

[X_X]

Aliexpress allows dispute but then I've never had to use it so cannot honestly say how well it works.

[Bitter]

On 12/13/2018 at 2:03 AM, X_X said:

@Bitter that Aliexpress metal lump on top looks like aluminium and the one I got is pretty well scratched too.

 

 

 

Not sure how it's stuck on, some glue around the outside of the die perhaps. No contact at the sides. Thermals are terrible so will have to look at removing it somehow and going bear die. Other than that it seems okay. Mainboard does not have microcode update for it and can increase CPU ratio above 46x but only if left unpatched (only tried down to ver 0xe. Better perhaps to use the BCLK straps which work with microcode patches. Maximum power / time limits are reported as unlimited or about 4kW / 46 days. eDRAM seems to adjust but need to test if it is actually working.

 

I'm really interested to see that thing de-lidded but will a normal de-lid tool be able to do it safely since it's thicker than normal? If that glue is silicone I wonder if soaking it in a solvent like acetone would be safe? I have that Celeron I could try de-lidding with acetone to see if it still works afterward, are Core2Duo stuff lidded in the same way? I have a couple of those I can sacrifice to the vice of knowledge or hammer of wisdom.

 

So what's this all about 46x multiplier and microcode updates? I have an Asus Z87 board I'll be using and would like to overclock into the 4Ghz range, but I'm a little behind on overclocking since the last thing I overclocked was my E8400 to around 4Ghz. If you know a good article that breaks down what you're talking about that you could point me toward I'll gladly get my learn on. Googling Z87 overclocking brings up some nice guides but nothing like what's going on here with a mobile CPU that's being socketed into a desktop board, this is some weird stuff but I like weird stuff!

[X_X]

After some sanding it appears not to be aluminum but some coating on copper. Nevertheless thermals are still unacceptable. Not sure what it's attached with, might even be thermal adhesive so need to be careful not to damage anything. No rush for me as this is more a play thing than something serious. Did have some adhesive solvent somewhere. Also need to think about adding side strips for the socket lockdown tabs.

 

Haswell desktop boards will most likely not have a CPU microcode update in their firmware for Crystal Well such as i7-4980HQ. A BIOS mod would be required. Normally the i7-4980HQ has a default top CPU ratio of 40 but also has an extra 6 bins that can be used to give a top ratio of 46, cache is 44 IIRC. However when used with no microcode patch it is possible to fully unlock the ratio's due to CPU bug making it essentially an unlocked processor. I'm not sure this is necessary as with up to a 46x ratio it is possible to use the 125MHz BCLK strap to give a possible top frequency of ~5.7GHz which should be more than enough except for exotic cooling. Didn't have any luck with the 167MHz strap and that might be due to the eDRAM.

 

For overclocking any Haswell guide should be sufficient remembering the exceptions of eDRAM which we may not be able to successfully ratio adjust and integrated graphics which are typically left alone or disabled. There may be guides specifically for OC'ing integrated graphics but I have not looked for them. If you want to be fairly safe then from memory (which is not that good), core less than 1.3V and cache less than 1.2V. Decide if you want fixed voltage or adaptive. With adaptive AVX loads may increase normal voltage by a fair bit and the VID table for the i7-4980HQ will stop at 40x ratio so the adaptive voltage slope will need to be set for those. See interpolation V/f graph at https://hwbot.org/news/9347_intel_haswell_overclocking_fully_disclosed_theory_for_core_i7_4770k

 

Sorry, but until I can get thermals in check there's not a lot of testing I can do.

[Bitter]

You've done a lot, thank you. Likely nickel or tin coated copper, but they may be using poor TIM inside or it may not be pressing down on the die well enough. With bare die I bet the socket holder does not need to be loosened, but I'd be worried about die damage and getting enough heat pipes touching the hot parts for an air cooler without a heat spreader. Some of the better machined copper spreaders may do the trick, I have a large glass slab and can get some very high grit abrasives to lap the spreader down when I finally get my ebay refund and then finally get the CPU.

 

It'll be interesting to see how the 128MB cache affects performance. I love big caches and I cannot lie.

And how big of a lie is that 47W TDP that Intel claims for this CPU? If that's true then it consumes less power than my Celeron G1820 and i3 4130 which just...is impossible.

[X_X]

It would be nice to be able to turn off that L4 cache to see the comparison.

 

Using H100i here for cooling, with terrible results so far.

 

Looks like @TheSLSAMG was right with the OC. I'm disappointed with that as my old i7-4700MQ entry level quad was able to touch 5GHz albeit barely. At this point I don't know how a 49xx is binned against a 47xx. It doesn't seem to be what I thought it meant in that higher numbers meant it can clock higher.

 

Regarding TDP, that rating is for base clocks, which for core is 2.8GHz. A CBR15 run at 2.8GHz, default voltages and integrated graphics disabled nets around 28W and a score of around 555cb. Some FMA3 instructions net about 42W. With integrated graphics running some more can be added to that. CBR15 at 4GHz turbo and an undervolt of 120mV to give 1.085V core that power increases to about 80W with a score of around 800cb.

[Bitter]

That's still fairly low TDP given the amount of work being done, which is nice for my intended HTPC use. I wouldn't anticipate a mobile chip to be hitting 5Ghz, I'd be happy with 4.4 to 4.7 turbo stable, in prime95, without thermally throttling. Most of the time for HTPC it'll be running off turbo or even lower than base clock, but when you need the speed you get it. I think maybe the 49 vs 47 may just be a feature bump not a clock speed capability bump which would make some sense given your experiences. I still think your heat problems may like under the spreader, I can't imagine that they soldered it on or used even very good TIM and it may actually have some kind of gap between the spreader and core.

 

I couldn't find anything on google about using acetone to soften or remove an IHS, just some talk about it. I don't have anything other than my Celeron G1820 to experiment with that's recent enough to be using the same glue as what's out now, but then I got to thinking that whatever the Chinese use likely is not the same as what Intel uses anyway so chemically de-lidding an Intel chip vs a Chinese chip is apples to oranges I bet. It'll probably be another week until I get my money back from eBay, then I'll find hopefully a good 4980 somewhere and wait for it to come in. Maybe by then you'll have de-lidded yours and found out what the issue is. In the mean time I may try to do some more research on what the safest way to delid a CPU that's stacked up like these are, I feel like a delid tool would hit the upper PCB since the whole thing is thicker than a normal CPU. I'm scared of razor blades and PCB traces!

[X_X]

Lots of talk and contradiction, use a heatgun, don't use a heat gun, stick it in the freezer and so on.

 

Maybe they have used a thermal tape adhesive or worse (for removal), an epoxy. :(

 

Managed the 167MHz clock strap although seems finicky, eDRAM appears disabled but using a hard BIOS mod to do that for now.

[Bitter]

Maybe the vendor knows how it's attached and what TIM it has? I bet silicone glue and silicone paste.

[X_X]

Have asked but so far not spilling the beans, perhaps a little upset even that I wanted to remove it. Probably going to pull it tomorrow and make some sort of plan.

[Bitter]

I'll keep my fingers crossed! And wait anxiously to see the birthing photos lol