Monday, August 10th 2015
Intel Skylake De-lidded, Reveals Tiny Die
When Japanese tech publication PC Watch got under the hood (lid) of a Core i7-6700K quad-core processor, what they found was an unexpectedly small silicon, that's shorter in proportion to its width, than previous dies from Intel, such as Haswell-D, and Ivy Bridge-D. It's smaller than even the i7-5775C, despite the same 14 nm process, because of its slimmer integrated graphics core with just 24 execution units (compared to 48 on the i7-5775C), and the lack of an external 128 MB SRAM cache for the iGPU.
The substrate Intel is using on the i7-6700K was found to be slimmer than the one on the i7-4770K, at 0.8 mm thick, compared to 1.1 mm on the latter. The thicker IHS (integrated heatspreader) makes up for the thinner substrate, so it shouldn't cause problems with using your older LGA1150 coolers on the new socket. Intel is using a rather viscous silver-based TIM between the die and the IHS. The die is closer to the center of the IHS than its predecessors were. PC Watch swapped out the stock TIM with Prolimatech PK-3 and Cool Laboratory Liquid Pro, and found some impressive drops in temperatures at stock speed (4.00 GHz) and with a mild overclock (4.60 GHz).
Source:
PC Watch
The substrate Intel is using on the i7-6700K was found to be slimmer than the one on the i7-4770K, at 0.8 mm thick, compared to 1.1 mm on the latter. The thicker IHS (integrated heatspreader) makes up for the thinner substrate, so it shouldn't cause problems with using your older LGA1150 coolers on the new socket. Intel is using a rather viscous silver-based TIM between the die and the IHS. The die is closer to the center of the IHS than its predecessors were. PC Watch swapped out the stock TIM with Prolimatech PK-3 and Cool Laboratory Liquid Pro, and found some impressive drops in temperatures at stock speed (4.00 GHz) and with a mild overclock (4.60 GHz).
112 Comments on Intel Skylake De-lidded, Reveals Tiny Die
That said, I'm just not as compelled to upgrade from my 3770k as I am to upgrade my GPU.
Nothing is eternal, you know, not in this world. :D
That Skylake comes with TIM once again on a premium product and with only two choices and a chipset is something clearly to be dissatisfied about. Not only for the consumers/purchasers but reviewer as well. There's no E4* E6* Q6* and 9* G3* P35 and such as it was before.
However, since Skylake got rid of the additional FIVR, doing the razor method is a little less worrying. Plus, the die is so small and a lot more square than Haswell that you have plenty of wiggle room with the blade.
The user said that 5.1GHz without delid ran into throttling, but I'm not sure what kind of cooling this was under. If this was air, then we're in for a pleasant surprise.
Also --- max load cold doesn't mean it cannot run warmer when the GPU is under intense load.