Skylake delidding, Does it improve Thermals?

Skylake delidding, Does it improve Thermals?

| Source: PC Watch Author: Mark Campbell

Skylake delidding, Does it improve Thermals?

Japanese Publication PC Watch has delidded Skylake revealing a tiny CPU die and a much thinner IHS, than previous generation Broadwell and Haswell based CPUs.

Despite being on the same 14nm FinFET process, Intel's new Skylake i7 6700K is significantly smaller than their Broadwell based i7 5775C, which is simply down to the integrated GPU within the Skylake chip itself. The broadwell based 5775C has over 2x the GPU execution units as it's Skylake equivalent, 48 compared to 24, and has a 128MB SRAM Cache for the iGPU.

Right now it is unclear why Intel has given the Skylake 6700K a lesser GPU then it's predecessor, but it likely attributed to Intel wanting to decrease power consumption or to cut costs. Remember that a smaller and less complex chip is easier to produce and is less prone to yield issues.

PC Watch has used the popular vice method for deliding their i7 6700K, but it is worth noting that this method is somewhat more dangerous than with previous generation Intel CPUs, as the substrate of the CPU is much thinner. With Skylake the IHS is only 0.8m thick, compared to Haswell which is 1.1mm thick.

Skylake does use a thicker IHS (integrated heatspreader), so there should be no compatibility issues with existing socket 1150/1151 coolers.

After delidding their i7 6700K PC Watch tested the CPU with different thermal compounds and compared it to the temperatures of the stock CPU. Testing was conducted using Cryorig R1 Ultimate cooler and was tested at stock speeds and with a light overclock of 4.6GHz at 1.325V on an ASUS Z170-A motherboard.

These tests were conducted with stock TIM, Prolimatech PK-3 and Cool Laboratory Pro thermal compounds, with Intel's stock solution being easily beat by both aftermarket compounds.

With the Cool Laboratory TIM we see the most significant decreased in thermals, with the CPU dropping from 74 degrees to 58 degrees at stock settings and from 88 degrees to 68 degrees at an overclock of 4.6GHz. These results are highly significant, showing again that Intel's thermal solution is simply not as good as it can be, which will again force professional overclockers and enthusiasts to delid their chips in order to get the best thermal performance.

You can join the discussion on Delidding Skylake on the OC3D Forums.

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