Temperature savings in P95 and y-cruncher
First of all, the CPU survived, otherwise I probably wouldn’t be writing this article right now. 😀 But now we still have to test how much better the temperatures really are. For this, I use Prime95 with AVX2 and the Small FFT preset, with the P cores running at 5.2 GHz and the cache at 4.9 GHz. This is effectively the highest overclocking my CPU could run stably at before the delid. The MSI MEG Z690 Unify-X serves as the base unit, whereby it runs the CPU with 1.35 V core voltage at LLC7. As always, the complete list of hardware used can be found here:
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The temperatures of the P cores are read out via software with HWInfo. Together with the Aqua Computer high flow Next, the delta between core and water temperature can be calculated. The values are recorded twice per second and the maximum delta temperature of each P-core is then determined. Furthermore, 3 test runs were performed with both configurations and the best result was used in each case.
The result is really something to behold:
Config | P0 max Δ | P1 max Δ | P2 max Δ | P3 max Δ | P4 max Δ | P5 max Δ | P6 max Δ | P7 max Δ | Ø | relative |
Stick + XC7 + AC SZ | 64.9 | 75 | 66.1 | 77.9 | 69.1 | 73.8 | 66.2 | 68.1 | 70.14 | — |
Supercool DD + CLLU | 48.7 | 57.1 | 51.7 | 59.7 | 54.6 | 56.5 | 52.7 | 53.3 | 54.29 | -15.85 |
The CPU now runs around 16 °C cooler in Prime95 with the same clock rates and voltages. The RAM overclock to 6800 CL30, which was previously set on the motherboard, also still works smoothly and stably. It should also be mentioned that the conversion to the direct-die block and the two additional quick-connect couplings have throttled the flow in my water-cooling loop from 165 to about 100 lph. Thus, the calculated temperature savings are on the conservative side and could certainly be improved with a pump upgrade.
Benchmarking on the hunt for records
What do you do now with a colder CPU? That’s right, you overclock it higher! Already a few days ago and before the delidding, I had tried y-cruncher 2.5b benchmark with the CPU to have a before/after comparison here as well. This benchmark generates a lot of heat in the CPU with its AVX-2 or -512 instructions, and at the same time places heavy loads on the cache and RAM. So a perfect test to evaluate the gain in compute performance of direct-die cooling.
You might have already seen the baseline score at the colleagues of videocardz, who promptly made a news story out of my tweet about the AVX-512 reactivation on the Z690 Unify-X motherboard. However, this was actually only a side issue for me and a reference value for what should be possible with the delidded CPU afterwards.
With the Direct-Die cooling, the clock rate of the P-cores can be increased by about 275 MHz again and with a few more small refinements of the RAM timings, the 53 second mark can finally be cracked. Before and after, the CPU core temperatures are just under 100 °C, except that the CPU now allows itself a much higher voltage of 1.42 V under load than 1.3 V before and can thus maintain a much higher clock rate. By the way, this result also makes my CPU the fastest “8-core” CPU in this benchmark at the moment, even ahead of some extreme overclockers with liquid nitrogen. 🙂
Summary and conclusion
Considering how few owners of a K-CPU ever touch the clock setting, and then again how similarly small the percentage of them are who push their CPU to the absolute limit with water cooling, the kit tested today is undoubtedly an absolute niche product and not intended for the broad market. However, if you really want to achieve more cooling performance for the daily operation of your Alder Lake CPU and are willing to accept the voided warranty and risk of damage associated with the delidding, Supercool Computers will at least be on your short list.
The manufacturing of the tool is not perfect and the ordering process via conventional chat platforms definitely does not inspire confidence. A simple online store with Paypal integration could really be expected in 2022. You have to be a special kind of person or enthusiast to embark on such an adventure with possible financial consequences. But if everything goes smoothly, the CPU is delidded and the block is put into operation, the result of more than 15 °C lower core temperatures and a thus gained OC potential of almost another 300 MHz is more than rewarding.
Finally, I have a few pictures of the RGB lighting for you, which I also didn’t want to leave out completely. Even though this feature is completely unimportant for the product in my opinion – if you bought the feature with it, you might want to use it. Here, the quick-release couplings come in handy again, so that the black LED frame can simply be plugged onto the block and the color play can begin.
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