i wouldn't do any delidding - not until i was sure it makes a big difference to your OC - like if i was stuck at 4.8 and needed 5.0GHz for some reason.

IDC is doing a de-lidding experiment at the ATF. I would look to his results before doing it.

Maybe I should beat IDC to it.. I wanna do it for you guys!!

I ruined two expensive Opteron 170's by trying this. But there aren't any tiny capacitors on the chip other than the CPU silicon itself, for the razor blade to cut off.

It doesn't seem too difficult to de-lid this Ivy Bridge, right? Maybe I should use something more precise and surgical than an exacto knife?

@ Apoppin, if the temps are actually lowered by 20C, it should help with the longevity of the chip!

i wouldn't bother with delidding until you have done everything else.

-- otherwise, how do you know it will lower temps by 20C ??
-- i would guess maybe 5C

And i wonder who will get to 5GHz first .. you or me


i am setting up my system tonight or tomorrow. i'm moving everything to a full tower and after i rerun temps with the NH=DH14, i'll switch to watercooling

No no no.. you shall not beat me to 5 GHz!! I'm gonna de-lid it and see...

But the memory still won't POST at the rated 2133 MHz SPD timings in the XMP 1.2 profile. I'm gonna ask Mushkin about it.

And what if you make 5GHz at reasonable voltage and temps before you delid it?


What does your memory post at? And have you tried each stick separately?

i sent the Gigabyte MB back and am using a ECS' top Z77 MB; it'll be interesting to see if the overclock changes.
-- i should get a higher Overclock in a full tower; i know the temps will be better as i barely had room for my CPU cooler in that little CM mid-tower

The memory posts at only up to 2000MHz, no matter what (I tried up to 1.75v).. No, didn't try each stick separately. I guess I'm not going to bother. It doesn't really matter anyways since no games or programs would really show a difference - the CPU does not have HT as it's a mere 3570K, not 3770K. I'll just leave a sour Newegg review and leave it at that!

Hey Apoppin, I'm done with benching the 2TB hard drive. Most benches were already done more than a week ago, but I couldn't find some files that I used to bench the other drives on my other rig, so it caused a delay. I decided - what the heck.. just forget about those files and unzip the Windows 7 .iso backup and then copy/clone it on the same drive and do that on other drives also, as my final benchmark addition to the overall suite.

I'll be typing up the review, and submit it to you for ABT's front page reviews ASAP!!! It'd be a bit short, but I'll try to make it thorough..

Looking forward to it Bofo

me 2

Tomorrow... tomorrow.. sorry, the computers were hogged by the family today!!