Someone Delidded AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D With 3D V-Cache And It Runs Cooler At Higher Clocks
These days, pretty much everyone ships their CPUs with indium solder underneath the IHS. This special solder melts at a relatively low temperature, allowing it to be used on processors without damaging the silicon. It forms a secure bond between the IHS and the dice, giving reliably-good thermal transfer.
However, the thermal conductivity of indium solder isn't as good as pure metals like aluminum, copper, and silver. So-called liquid metal thermal interface material has superior conductivity as well. For this reason, absolute mad lads like @Madness7771 on Twitter are popping the tops on chips like the Ryzen 7 5800X3D to replace the solder with liquid metal TIM to drop temperatures.
Indeed, this Madness! fellow did exactly that because his Ryzen 7 5800X3D was hitting 90°C under stress tests. We saw similar behavior from the same CPU in our test of the Falcon Northwest Tiki that came so-equipped, and your writer's own 3D V-cache-enabled CPU will skirt that number despite being under a gigantic Noctua cooler.
It's not quite clear why 5800X3D runs so hot, but it might be down to a poor mating between the IHS and CPU. We make that guess because Madness! managed to drop his load temperatures by some 10°C with his delid operation. That's not unusual at all for a delid, but it's a very nice improvement nonetheless.
As you can see in the monitoring results from Forza Horizon 5, he managed to achieve a stable 4.45 GHz where before, it was downclocking as far as 4300 MHz. This isn't a huge difference and given that Madness! was GPU-limited the entire benchmark run, it's not likely to affect his actual game performance. Still, in a more CPU-limited game, it absolutely could help stabilize minimum framerates.
Given the dangers and difficulty involved in delidding a soldered CPU, we obviously don't recommend this for the majority of readers, but those of you out there hard-core enough to pop the top on your brand-new Ryzen CPU for better thermals might consider doing so on the 5800X3D, as it does look like the assembly process leaves some room for improvement.
