Following the sidegrade from the 2060 Super to the 1080 Ti, I upgraded the CPU from a 9400F to an 8700K.
Due to budget constraints, I couldn’t afford to buy new products and had to get them second-hand. 😢
I didn’t get a boxed retail version, just a bulk product.
I planned to delid it anyway, but I found out after buying it that it had already been delidded. 😑
If the lid had been removed, the seller should have mentioned it. Of course, it’s partly my fault for not checking thoroughly. Between the poor packaging of the graphics card and this CPU issue, I feel like I’ve had a run of bad luck.
To open up the case, I gently laid it on its side.
When I removed the cooler, I found that there was indeed a lot of thermal paste applied. 😑
The extracted 9400F was immediately put into its box and sold on the second-hand market.
After installing the 8700K,
Just placing the cooler like this and using it…
is definitely not the right approach. I’m just checking to see if it boots.
After confirming that it boots successfully, I was about to apply thermal paste, but I found out that the TF8 was out of stock.
So, I used the leftover Gryphon thermal paste.
As long as the thermal paste is decent, the difference in thermal conductivity mainly affects how quickly it transfers heat initially. The final temperatures aren’t dramatically different.
While reattaching the cooler, I checked if it was possible to install a liquid cooler with top exhaust in the Daven FT808 case. The already tight upper space, combined with the RAM heat spreaders, makes it look like I’d have to change the case if I want to install a liquid cooler. 😤
After roughly overclocking to a 47x multiplier, I ran AIDA64.
As expected, the latency is something AMD can’t match. 😂
But these days, AMD has improved so much that for general use, there’s no significant difference. Since I mainly play games, I probably won’t be using AMD in the future either.
Then, while gradually lowering the voltage and checking for stability, I found that Cinebench ran fine at 1.23V, but Linpack (LinX) wouldn’t run at all. 😑
So, I lowered the RAM overclock from 4000MHz to 3600MHz.
When I tried running LinX again with the memory set to 4GB, it somehow managed to pass. However, when I set it to the maximum capacity for 20 runs, it couldn’t even make it halfway. 😢
I spent the entire night tweaking all sorts of settings and running tests, but…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
😔
LinX just wouldn’t run.
At this point, I thought it might be because of the air cooling. But later, I discovered that the CPU had already been delidded.
I ended up buying a total lemon at a premium price. Damn it. 😢
LinX Legacy wouldn’t run either, and I was extremely frustrated. So, I decided to just use it at 1.25V for now.
After that, I bought a delidding tool, an S830 case, and a Deepcool Gamer Storm 360mm AIO liquid cooler.
I thought this would solve everything, but the real challenges were just beginning.
Stay tuned for the next post.