Quote Originally Posted by IronBalls View Post
I'm not the first one to achieve this. To my knowledge, two people achieved it before me.
The first one goes by the name of shrimp

http://forums.extremeoverclocking.co...d.php?t=332705

The second one, who inspired me to do this, posted a video on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukq783v0nMQ

So I must be the third or so.

"He warned about issues with chips dying at higher voltage when delidded to what appeared to be quick temperature swings and the IHS acting as "a buffer"...but I think bad contact was the real problem."

Must be a bad contact. I noticed that temps go up and down less fast. So heat transfer should be better. After all, there is direct contact between the core and the waterblock.
ShrimpBrime de-lidded Phenom II X4, but not X6...(I see at the end that he recently did, but by the pictures, the CPU looks damaged.)
The video on youtube is interesting. I hadn't known about that one, but they probably already knew to be careful about the SMT components touching the rubber seal.

I think the problem chew* had, were probably small hotspots on the die (possibly caused by air bubbles) or etc. It is good to keep in mind though that the indium solder does indeed act as a "buffer" and heatspreader to avoid hotspots when contact is good. For example, with perfect contact, and if one part of the die, say, the IMC heats up rapidly or more than other parts, the solder can help spread that heat across the die.

@cab - The solder has a melting point around 110c and thermal conductivity around 80W/mK vs ~5W/mK for normal thermal paste.