Modifying the 7950X CPU for better thermals... VOIDED WARRANTY! 

Pro Tipp Jay: Use a mirror instead of tempered glass. A mirror is much flatter than any normal plain of glass since you would see any curvature of the glass in the reflection of the mirror as a distortion. Thanks to that mirrors are almost universally the flattest object in everyone's household.

I would suggest anyone flat lapping for the first time to use the same flat surface (start to finish) and super cleaning between swaping grit numbers. It will take longer but it will come out near perfect

I think if you had measured the cpu before and after grinding and lapping with a micrometer or vernier caliper, you could turn down the standoff height the same amount to compensate using a lathe and you could have used any cooler on the chip with the proper pressure (You would have to keep the shorter standoffs with the chip after modifying it)

I bet that heatspreader dust is great for the lungs

jay you've been making some great videos recently. feels like old times

It's honestly amazing how much of a difference sub-millimeter tolerances make. I'm so happy I don't deal with anything that precise.

Nice!!! Can’t wait to do this for my own!! Waiting for the Delid kit/bracket

I like how you aimed the copper dust from the belt sander straight at the server intake

Looking at that huge ass heatspreader i'm definitly gonna delid it when i get mine next week. I think it's the best cpu to do that with. Derbauer got 20C. Lapping just seems to be more work than delidding for less temperature gain.

If you wanted to measure the gap between the cooler and the CPU I suggest using plasti-gauge.

Would be interesting if you go to the lowest lapping possible before you delied it. :)

I know you’re not going to see this but I tried the Kingping extreme, Arctic MX5 and now Kryonaute extreme on my 7950x and nothing can drop it even 1c and all cinebench are within the same results at 38100 -/+ 50

Prior machinist and folding knife Maker here, you should never lap with the power sander. When you're lapping a cpu or anything else you want it to be flat and parallel. Using a sander, no matter how flat your platen is, putting too much pressure on one side will cause it to no longer be parallel. Using a surface plate and a figure 8 pattern while turning often is going slowly is your best bet of staying flat and parallel. Yes it takes much longer but precision always does And I wouldn't trust using a surface grinder on a cpu or IHS

It was such a terrible idea to make the IHS that thick for cooler compatibility, AMD could've got newer coolers made or even their own AIO's. High temperatures just ruin overclocking.

thats actually interesting how cpu doesnt go in contact with aio when you sand it down thats like few milimeters

Thank you so much for shaving it down, THIS is the kind of test I wanted to see after the debauer-delid

If you’re going to go for gold and void warranty it feels like a delid and mount swap would be the best way to go. Lapping seems a lot of work for a halfway result.

This was what i wanted to see. I know lapping and delidding both void the warranty but I'm more willing to lap than i am to delid.

It would be interesting to do with with a proper mill. Something that could guarentee precision and levelness.

Next time you replace the belt grinder you should get one that has the vertical disc plate grinder and rest plate. Makes that job a whole lot easier. 👍

You could have easily exceeded 95 C using the belt sander. Wet sanding is your friend when trying to remove metal or plastic! (I have the same sander and can easily melt PLA from my 3 D printer if I get too aggressive.)

Can't wait for the delidding video! I delidded my 9700K and put a copper IHS on it with some liquid metal in between. Runs like a champ!

No hoodies esp ones with strings near rotating machinery type... No ties , no wired headphones , no loose fitting shirts .. You can imagine why. Little sander like that youu would likely stop it with a body part ...but would you want to?

i removed a fair bit off my 5700G and i got some pretty awesome results. allowed me to get 4.7ghz all core stable without going nuclear. before it wouldnt even come close. instantly shot up and crashed haha!

If amd broke cooler compatibility people would’ve complained that not only do they have to buy new ddr5 ram, thru also have to get a new cooler or a bracket (that may have been sold out for weeks). They can’t win.

I think Im going to do this as well, but i started wondering if there is a way to seal around the edge of the IHS to prevent anything from getting underneath during the lapping process. The thought of copper contamination under there doesnt sit well with me, and theres realy no way of knowing 100% if you've cleaned it all out afterwards. Im not sure what materials would be safe for this job, but the 1st thing that came to mind was some sort of clay as i would assume it should be safe when in contact with the SMDs around the edge of the ihs. I also considered a small bead of hot glue as that stuff always pulls away cleanly once dry, and would be more robust than clay, though im not sure if it would be too hot for those SMDs, or if it would let go of them and not pull them off at removal time (probably not, but nothings impossible). I dont think tape would seal well enough, so thats out, and thats about where i ran out of ideas. Anyone else have any thoughts along these lines?

Jay you shoulda gone all the way and showed us the 1.2 mm result. I was hella curious what you’d get, and without reality to settle me down, I keep wondering “what if it would have dropped 10-15 degrees if he went that last .4”….

This Old House meets Jaystwocents, didnt thing Jay would break out the super high-tech gear to modify the 7950, hilarious.

For future reference, a figure 8 pattern instead of circles when sanding makes it much easier to keep it flat

I can't wait to see what Zen4c/x3d can do next year. When they tame the temps and power on that it's gonna be amazing.

Jay figuring out you can reuse original hardware is the gem of info in this video. So flippin cool Edit: Hey since you were able to get the z axes height lower with the original hardware, couldn't you take more off the ihs now?

Jay, I learned the other day there is a much better way to go to the BIOS instead of smashing the DEL key like a madman, using the shutdown console command. shutdown /r /fw /t 0 The /fw modifier tells the system to enter the BIOS directly when it reboots. Make it a shortcut on your desktop and profit.

Have you ever tried lapping the cooler and IHS together with lapping compound? They mirror each other's shape if you did.

i think is a very bad design from amd, i'll skip 7000 series.

I have to admit, I am still surprised that AMD decided to go for a thick-as-heck IHS as its solution to AM5 processors being shorter than AM4. It seems like it would be much more reasonable to do any of the other 3 options I can think of: --Raise the whole mount on the socket side, such that the chip just sits higher --Put out specs for what the new height target is and work with as many of the big names in coolers as possible to help them have brackets ready to adapt their current hardware to AM5 on launch day --The above but also set up deals with those cooler manufacturers such that anyone buying a 7000 series processor gets a code they can use to get a free adapter kit (with AMD providing those companies compensation. (The last seems unlikely, sure, but it's a method by which using your old cooler doesn't cost you money as the end user and it doesn't compromise performance of the chip in any way the way screwing with its cooling system or possibly its mounting system would.) The only logical reason I can see for the thick IHS is if they've got plans for the next generation to be using some architecture that's going to use that extra space for something more productive than a copper slab. Maybe slip a layer of cache underneath the processing chips as an extension of the experiment they were running with the 5800X3D? (I don't know CPU architecture well enough to know that's remotely reasonable, it just seems like shackling yourself to having a thick slab of IHS is a weird choice unless there's plans to use that space for other stuff in the future)

When Jay says this is not precision...lol

You can also use a sanding/polishing product called Micro Mesh to reduce the micro scratches on the heat spreader. Originally developed to sand/polish aircraft windshields and canopies to remove micro scratches and restore visibility (yes it's that fine). The sheets go to insane grits like 20,000.

In my experience over 35 years, I'd say most of you guys use way too much thermal paste like you're frosting a cupcake. Also, if you use a mirror, you can tape the sand paper to the back mirrored side if you think it is the side that will be the flatest. Once I had to take apart 135 Supercomm custom built to order PCs and pop off the cpu cooler and take off a paper/plastic "security sticker" stuck on the cpu and bracket top, and that had the heatsink stuck on top of that. Face palm. 25% of the CPUs were blue screening randomly until I investigated one and to my shock found that going on. I was like, what the heck! I redid all 135 pc's and became the hero of the day by making allt he problems go away... like magic. There was no heat sink paste on them at all, and I don't recall adding any. Maybe I did but I doubt it because I was working remotely way out int he field far from home and you couldn't jsut walk into a Kmart and buy heat sink paste. I just took that blasted sticker off.

Any plans for videos comparing CPU bottlenecks of the 4090? My 5900X runs at 4.95Ghz single core I don’t see 99-100% GPU very often on the 4090 at 4K

*Jay, got a suggestion for you:* People might want to see more mobile builds / laptop mods, e.g. eGPU stuff.

Might want to pre-seal the thing before grinding. Just to be safe

What's the point of all of this if amd says 95c is safe for your cpu and its under warranty? Lowering cpu temps won't change how much heat is being dumped into your room its still outputting the same amount of heat whether it's st 70c or 95c

The last CPU that I have ever seen a RU-vidr do direct chip cooling on was a 7700K by Linus Tech Tips and the results were amazing.

You do not really need to use polish to get a nice reflecting surface ^^ all you need is patience and much finer sandpaper. I used to sharpen and semi polish my Kitchen Knifes with sandpaper up to 10k - and boy, do they reflect and shine :D

On intel 12th gen right now, if I had this in a system, I can't justify voiding the warranty for 100mHz gain and 5c cooler. Interesting finds though! Love the video.

Zen4. Complete with Integrated Heat Soaker. I just find it mindboggling they would hamstring their CPUs to maintain AM4 cooler compatibility. Even then, if you're making a whole new socket, just make the f*cking socket 1mm taller instead of the IHS. Problem solved. It's obviously possible cause all those coolers are also Intel LGA compatible and they have a 1.1mm thinner IHS. The whole ordeal seems just as amateur hour as Intel's bending CPUs but at least that is fixed by a $4 part and won't void your warrantee. Every enthusiast knows a thinner IHS is better but apparently every enthusiast is brighter than an AMD engineer.

It's cool that delidding is back in style with these cpus. I delidded my old 8700k, and that turned out to be tons of fun, having the fastest cpu on the block. I sorta won the silicone lottery wirh that, managed a 5.3 all core.

Linus Tech Tips said in their "We killed it... but then SUCCESS!!!" vid that you DO want scratches, but that was when they delided the CPU and were lapping the actual DIE itself so they could liquid metal it which is obviously way better than regular goo and probably means that large scratches don't make nearly the difference that they would if you were using regular thermal goo. Am I wrong? Is there more too this? I lapped the IHS on my 3900x and I used sharpening stones for knives and even went down to some special hyperfine grit paper of 300,000 grain, I made that IHS the smoothest thing I had ever touched, like actually haha. No polish used. Didn't really notice a huge difference in the thermals lol. A degree C was about all I got.

If you want it really shiny, just wet sand with progressively 1000, 3000, 8000 grit.

Not sure if it's really relevant, but I was toying with my Intel 11400f CPU earlier on Intel xtu, running the xtu 2 benchmark landed me a score of 3500 plus, but the frequency report was all over the place, at one point it said that it ran at over 21GHz at 60c, which has to be bogus. It also ran like 8 other times almost always landing a max frequency of well over 13GHz

Change between all the sides when lapping to minimize unintentional gradients in the surface. Also, if you polish the CPU and the heat transfer block until they physically bond, you will get the best heat transfer. It is pretty cool to see two pieced non-magnetic of metal act like they are magnetic. Looks Great!

Jay, First thing i was thinking I want to polish it 😋😁

This is crazy

Ofcourse AMD says 95c is safe for everyday use. But 95c will ALWAYS have a shorter lifespan than electronics at 75c or 55c. Its just like when car makers now say transmission fluid does not have to be changed for the lifetime of the trans, yeah because the bad fluid after years creates that end of life time.

Cool, I will go for it with direct die, I did it on a 9900K, and it made a 20 deg C difference. Just amazing, but of course, very risky for sure.

Technically, I think a lot of scratches, and actually scratches no just cosmetic imperfections, would actually improve performance. It's exactly why radiators are the design they are, inner part of the cold plate in contact with the coolant has Micro fins. Scratches make more surface area than flat, which means more contact surface to transfer a larger amount of heat. BUT, that's assuming you have an appropriate viscosity of TIM, and actually fill all the Micro valleys.

RIP my peasant 5800x3D 😥😥

20:03 ahhh yes. I was doing that same thing for like 4 hours today. Trying to figure out "why is my BIOS acting weird?" "why is BIOS saying i installed a new CPU when its the same CPU that hasnt been touched since it was installed 3 years ago?" "why is it saying its booting from this drive, but the operating system is on that drive?"

hey jay i realy love these experiments to see the temp diferences. but i would like to see if there is an difference with lapping with sanding paper vs good enough whetstones. you can even polish it with an extremely high grid to smooth out the height difference as with sharpening knives. and to get an perfectly flat stone you have flatening/maininance stones to make the whetstone flat(if that is anny concern at all)

Scratches can keep paste from cracking under ln2 so if that is the plan keep that in mind

Thats one fast server upgrade. 💦

wow jay2cent... your becoming more like what intel employees do from QS team to test and adjusting methods then send the final template for revision for mas production QS stage for passing all tests from temps and power balance testing...this what they do, i wonder why AMD don't do that anymore here ??? its good american wages we need here that its darn shame is that only intel provide wages here what you do as what intel QS team does when receive every ES samples to test the clocks,temps, and power draw then engineers do what you do...adjustments

Even with the lapping, it's crazy how much heat is pouring out of that CPU. I remember it wasn't that long ago we only needed a 120mm radiator to deal with a CPU, and now it seems that 360mm of radiator won't be enough when talking about the long gaming/ intensive software sessions. Great video!!

Why not water seal housing and water cool direct to die? If you do, scratches will increase surface area to water increasing cooling. Btw, HVAC pipes with microgoves have 40% or something like that better cooling performance.

Awesome video Jay 😁 nice to see AMD show up to the table as far as cpu speeds go

I think AMD made a mistake by trying to be backward compatible with AM4 coolers, should have had a thinner IHS and just let the cooler manufacturers figure that out.

Ah yes sending metal dust into the server. No way that can go wrong!

Damn, AMD should have just thrown out the AM4 compatibility here. Now for the next 5 years until AM6, people will be sanding their CPUs 🤣

You can get pretty thick (8-10mm) float glass plates for ~$20 off that AtoZ site. In sunlight, find the side that has a rainbow shimmering effect, that's the side that was floating on the molten tin. Mark it with a permanent marker and use the other side for lapping. I'm still using the glass I had to special order from a glass shop 20 years ago to lap Barton dies!

the nanosecond i heard beltsander is 120 grit i knew jay is gonna overdo it. 120 on a belt is like a lazer. it TEARS through stuff. at most go 360 so you got good control

you have to turn 8 or infinite patterns when lapping , otherwise you wont have a flat surface

At 6:57 Server.... "Throw the 7950 end of the server....". That would be one heck of a way to upgrade it wouldn't it??

At 9:50 Polish.... What about buffing compound?? You know that really super fine grit stuff that's supposed to buff scratches out of paint??

Why wouldn't you use a tool like plasti-guage to measure the clearance between ihs and cooler? This is the same tool used in engine building to measure clearance between crankshaft journals and bearings.

Im a knife maker and when we mirror polish a knife which can be to around 2000 grit sandpaper a trick we use is each grit go in 1 direction. the next grit go in another, That way if your going left to right and see scratches up and down you know those are scratches from the previous grit and need to be worked out. Might have to use a magnifying glass to see the real fine grits,.

If you go out of your way to design and sell a lapping tool for CPUs, why not make one that protects your fingers while you're at it? It would've been easy to make it thicker or just add a small recess to put your fingers there.

I don't know how it compares, but I undervolted a 7700X on a 54 alcore overclock, and my temps never got above 85.

I dunno what's scarier, Jay forgetting to plug something in or Linus dropping things

No shet, it voids ones warranty. It's always been this way, you're sanding the CPU, not to mentione if you were to delid it. Like.. no shet.

Jay reminded me a little of "Tim The Tool Man" Taylor from Home Improvement with how he lapped it with a belt sander instead of by hand as was meant.

@ JayzTwoCents: Can you please do a vid where you undervolt a Ryzen 7xxx and see if that can retain the same frequencies as close as possible? My 5800X I can undervolt 0.09125V and it only looses 50MHz then.

can you please to a quick 1 2 pass on your aio with the finest grit sandpaper and color it with a Sharpe wondering what your cooler flatness looks like please

JayzTwoCents what's your recommendation on non-conductive thermal paste which one is the best

This was hard to watch. Next time just lap the IHS bit by bit until it's flat and don't put it on a belt sander

If anything this shows that AMD messed up by keeping compatibility.

Question, Why AMD or Intel dont do the direct Die coling type like a GPU?

Incredibly interesting video and I look forward to your de-lidding video.

Every 10 degrees Celsius doubles the life of electronics. So two for the price of one.

I'm still confused about the new AMD and the 95C thing.. Is it actively pumping up the power to try and get to that heat level or is it just not bothering to throttle/cool till it hits 95C or what ? I'm so used to cooling just working and keeping CPU temps around 50C at most under load that I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around these IMO bizarre levels of heat.

“I’m not Flat right now” Best quote from Jay

I love kryonaut extreme. Been using it for a bit now. Stuff looks like pink bubble gum. Stuff works great on Video cards and even laptops. Just repasting with kryonaut extreme made my 12th gen laptop not top out as fast and it rarely now hits 100c where as before it would be there constantly. Sure 98c vs 100c isn't much but on a laptop that is a lot. I have seen kryonaut extreme drop anywhere from 3 - 5c on most replastes.

As a metal worker, when you are lapping you should do it in a figure 8 motion.

Shaving off extra THICCness of IHS should be combined with offset cooler mounting to account for CPUs hotspot that is actually on the edge of IHS, imo. Der8auer did test it but came to wrong conclusion in the video since CPU runs to 95 degrees anyway and he was expecting lower temps, but his CPU ran faster (+1300 points in cinebench) with offset mounting compared to direct one which is the fact he missed. (he had corrected himself in comments tho)

Amd should produce two versions of the CPU. One where its 'compatible' with existing hardware but not as temperature efficient, and the other version where the CPU lid is as thin as they can make it, but then it's down to the user to make it fit their mounting hardware. This would require the motherboard manufacturers to also cooperate with the way they create the mounting hardware.

Would have been better to use the Diamond lap sheets for your project. Never use any machine for this kind of lap work at all.

The question is how much temp reduction is the flatter ihs surface and how much the thinner ihs. Next time lap in with minimum material removal first test it and then remove 1 mm and re lap it to compare results. Now that would be interesting to know, whether thinning it really is needed for good results, if you can get a second cpu to test that is.

I know this sounds weird but I think I rather delid and do direct die cooling (I'm old enough to remember this being the norm) sure the die is exposed so you do have to be a little more careful but since getting back into building systems a couple of years ago it feel's like a lot of performance gets left on the table due to "idiot proofing"

9:30 Polish is good when the IHS and the cooler cold plate are polished, it will literally create a 0 gap suction.

There's a very big difference between polish and wax. You absolutely can polish a surface to make it smoother. Polish is just a very fine abrasive. Wax is a coating.

1/4 mm, I loved the metric imperial measurement blend. Lol