Direct-die WCing! Cheap and easy.

[SoulsCollective]

That same damn small die is just as small when in contact with a copper water block. There is no way to increase the die size post manufacture. Adding material to the top of the die will only make it transfer heat less efficiently.

The only positive thing the block lends to the equation is a greater thermal mass than an equivalent volume of water. Flow and pressure will be the limiting factors in the capabilities of hot-side heat exchange in this direct die design.

Die size? No. Surface area? Yes. Reductio ad absurdum, the argument that "adding material to the top of the die will only make it transfer heat less efficiently" would mean that noone would use heatsinks.

Yes, you have some inefficiency coming from the TIM, but you also have a hundredfold increase in available surface area to dissipate that heat from to the coolant stream.

Except that it has worked - there is a thread floating around here that I saw a few days ago where someone in fact had already done this - his temps, if my memory serves me correctly, were mid-30s full load, over 4GHz.

I think you misread my post - noone here is saying this can't work It's just that it's an oversimplification to say that it can't not work - too many variables.

The arguing over the validity of this idea in this thread cracks me up, I just hope the OP doesn't decide not to share their results due to the arguing from people who clearly have no idea what they are talking about! To the nay sayers: go come up with something innovative.

If direct die cooling was a bad idea than no one would ever remove the IHS to cool it, all that achieves is the removal of a couple layers of material to transfer heat through.

I think you're badly misreading the comments here. Noone to date has made any negative comments. In lieu of results, we're theorising, which naturally means discussing the potential pros and cons of an idea.

I also think you're again missing the point - noone is arguing that removing the IHS won't increase thermal transfer efficiency. However, this is different to merely removing an IHS before reattaching your heatsink/waterblock- there you still have a larger surface area over which air/coolant will move. Here you have the removal of all inefficiencies from the equation, but a net decrease in surface area available over which to dissipate heat to the coolant.

For more on this, read the above quoted post from Cathar. He puts it better and knows more of the science than I have a confident grasp on.

My personal opinion is that we'll see a decrease in temps, but as I keep pointing out, there are too many variables to call this one right now.