De-Lid any processor that is soldered

So I had a really sucky processor that I didnt really care about (FX-6300) and decided to see if I could make it overclock better. I took the CPU out of the MBand heated up a frying pan to 350 degrees. It probably didnt need 350, since the solder is so weak but it melted pretty well. Hopefully no damage was done to the CPU core itself, since really the CPU should never get above 160 degrees. But it all went pretty well so far. Got the solder melted and the IHS off the die. I need to clean it up a little bit more because it still has a small raised area on one corner that has extra solder in that area, but overall it should run a bit cooler. I dont know if it still works or not, but I will be testing it sometime "soon". Im busy the rest of the night partying and then probably wont really feel like working on this other computer tomorrow or Sunday but we will see. In the meantime until I get around to testing this CPU some more you can all just discuss whether this was way too insane of an idea or not. Here are some pics.









Anyway, the procedure for doing this is relatively easy. Take your CPU out and get some foam that you can press the CPU pins into to hold them secure without bending anything. Then take a razor blade and carefully try to cut away between the PCB board and the IHS to help get the glue out and break the seal. This step really *shouldnt* matter or be important because if the heat is hot enough to melt the solder then the glue should also melt, however I found this was not the case. The glue held stronger than the solder did... Anyway, dont get the razor really deep because there are a lot of important resistors right behind the glue and if you nick one of them the CPU will be dead. Just cut in a few MM under the IHS to get about half of the glue off, the other half farther inside under the IHS will get a little bit gummy and is easy enough to break through later. Now get a couple Angle nose slip joint pliers, you will need ones that can open 2" or so. Now comes the hard part. Remove the foam since we dont want it melting onto the pins, unfortunately this next step will probably bend a few pins along the edge of your CPU because of how the pliers grip. You can bend the pins back with the razor blade once we are done with everything. Grip the CPU with the pliers at the very end so the tips of the pliers do not stick farther out than the IHS does. Make sure you have a very good grip and the CPU wont slip loose, but not so strong as to be bending the PCB board or anything. Get your other set of plaiers ready to grip the IHS as you will need to be quick on this next part.

With the CPU gripped in one hand and the pliers ready in the other, stick the processor IHS down onto the frying pan. The pan should be probably about 250-300 degrees really as that should be sufficient to melt the solder. Keep the IHS pressed onto the pan with a decent bit of force for 10 seconds. Pull it away and as quickly as possible grip the IHS with the other set of pliers and start pulling. You should hopefully get one or two sides of the IHS starting to come up off the PCB now. After a couple seconds the CPU wont be hot enough anymore though and the solder will have re-solidified. Stick the CPU back onto the pan for another 5-7 seconds and then once more grip the IHS and do some pulling. Be rough, that glue is strong stuff. This time you should be able to get the rest of the IHS loose and separated. Set the IHS aside and get a paper towel or something. Now CAREFULLY put the CPU back onto the frying pan for 2-3 seconds and then as fast as possible wipe away the remaining melted solder that was stuck to the die. Overall it should be fairly clean but there will still be traces left on the die. Not much you can do about it unless you want to get really daring with a razor blade. Chances are trying to clean off any thin layer of remaining solder will just cause you to cut into a layer of transistors in the die though and kill the CPU so I dont think it is worth the risk. Its one thing to melt some solder off and pull the IHS away, another to take a razor blade directly to the CPU die...

When you mount up the CPU into your computer again you need to be careful. If you put too much pressure onto the die from your heatsink then you will crack the core and kill the processor, but not enough pressure and you get bad thermal transfer. So just be careful and dont crank it down all the way, just till things feel snug.

 

Ya I will be going direct to die with this one. I need some melt the solder and wipe the big chunks off still in those pics. I wont be able to get all of it no matter what I do, but as long as I can get it down to a very thin layer that is even then it should be ok. Even if this doesnt work out I wont care that much, I was getting ready to throw the processor away anyway. I wouldnt even feel good giving it to anyone here because it has been running 10-15 degrees Celsius above the maximum temp it is ever supposed to have as well as up at about 1.6v for 7-8 months now. I doubt it will give anything but headaches to whoever uses it besides me. The most I could get the thing stable within heat and voltage specs was 4.3GHz, which is terrible. That seemed to be the voltage wall because going any higher required exponentially higher voltage and I could still only get the CPU up to 4.5GHz with massive amount of voltage. It is the worst overclocking processor I have ever had in my life.

 

So I put the CPU in my MB to do a quick test. I dont have the stock CPU heatsink mounting bracket right now which I need to mount an H100i into this tower, so I am justr holding the heatsink on top of the CPU cores right now. It POST's ok but shuts down within a minute probably from thermal protection trip in the bios because I dont have a heatsink mounted right at all. I am going to try and get everything mounted up right tomorrow or Monday and do more tests but it gets through a POST and can load the bios so the CPU is at the very least 90% alive and working so it is looking good so far.

 

In case anyone cares, I did some more testing a night or two ago on this processor. The temps were only lowered a few degrees, nothing significant. Clock ability was also basically unaffected, I got an extra 100MHz stable and could POST up another 140MHz higher to 5.34GHz. This processor hits its frequency wall at 4.4GHz, so not surprising that even something as extreme as this didnt help much. I went for a suicide run to see how high I could get a validation done at, using 1.7 volts. I booted into Windows at 4.8GHz but after the next reboot the computer never came back on, processor was dead. So that is the end of this adventure, already on to the next. I have a new FX-8350 that is pretty amazing. I posted a bit on it in the FB group if you are interested in seeing it.