The integrated heat spreaders put on CPUs at the factory are not the most thermally efficient material you could have on there, but what are you going to do—rip it off at the risk of killing your $500 chip with your clumsy hands?
Yes, that is precisely what enthusiastic overclockers have been doing for years, delidding, or decapping (though the latter term is used less often in overclocking circles), chips through various DIY techniques, allowing them to replace AMD and Intel’s common denominator shells with liquid metal or other advanced thermal interface materials.
As you might imagine, it can be nerve-wracking, and things can go wrong in just one second, or one degree Celsius. In one overclocking forum thread, a seasoned expert noted that Intel’s Core Ultra 200S spreader (IHS) needs to be heated above 165°C for the indium (transfer material) to loosen. But then the glue holding the IHS is also loose at this temperature, and there is only 1.5–2 millimeters of space between IHS and surface-mounted components, so it’s easy for that metal IHS to slide off and take out a vital component with it. It’s quite the Saturday afternoon hobby.
That is the typical overclocking bargain: You assume the risk, you void your warranty, but you remove one more barrier to peak performance. Now, though, Thermal Grizzly, led by that same previously mentioned expert, Roman “der8auer” Hartung, has a new bargain to present. His firm is delidding AMD’s Ryzen 9800X3D CPUs with its own ovens and specialty tools, then selling them with two-year warranties that cover manufacturer’s defects and “normal overclocking damage,” but not mechanical damage.
In a video explaining this business for which almost no bank would ever provide capital, Hartung/der8auer makes it clear that “AMD has no clue what we’re doing here” and that AMD will not help his business with anything. Thermal Grizzly is buying the CPUs from German store Mind Factory, spending the labor time to delid, test, and verify each chip, then selling them at a markup. That markup will mostly cover returns, as Thermal Grizzly has to eat the more than 500 euro cost of any chips that come back under warranty.
You can also see the process by which batches of chips are put into a precision oven and baked, first at 170°C to loosen the indium and glue, then again upside-down at 160°C to let the IHS fall off. “It smells like CPU barbecue in here a little bit,” Hartung says, while what he describes as “$10,000 worth of CPUS is going to be melted.” After that, the chips are cleaned up, slotted into a testing system, run through a Cinebench R23 test, and monitored for their temperatures. Each customer receives the chip, the IHS, a USB thumb drive with a detailed shot of their chip and its IHS lid, and a verification card stating the temperatures the chip reached during its testing.
Thermal Grizzly’s delidded Ryzen 7 9800X3D chips are currently going for $712.95 in the US (VAT and shipping included) or about $230 over the official $479 suggested retail price. The chips are sold out as of this post’s publication, but more will likely come available as they bake them. Hartung states in the announcement video that his firm may expand to other chips in the future, presumably after he finds out how many people like a slightly less risky kind of tinkering.