Intel IHS Lapping and Removal For LGA775 CPU’s

Trying to Remove the IHS Safely

While we should have been happy with lapping the IHS we went one step further and removed the IHS. This is not something we suggest that anyone should try and in fact there is only a one in four chance that it works. Even if the processor works after IHS removal the load plate has to be removed from the socket as the core of the processor will sit below the load plate when it’s locked down on the CPU.

We started out by running a razor blade under the IHS cutting the adhesive material that attaches the IHS to the processor. After we ran the razor blade all the way around the processor we found that the IHS won’t budge as it’s soldered to the core as we previously mentioned.

To get the heat spreader off we used four razor blades and placed two under opposite corners to apply force on the IHS. We then got out the Sears Craftsman propane torch and fired it up.

We then lightly heated the IHS with the torch for a few seconds at a time. The torch was never left in direct contact with the IHS for more than a second at a time. After three or four passes of the torch on the IHS a loud pop happened and the IHS went flying off the die.

After the dust settled this is what the scene looked like. The IHS was off the processor and the CPU looked like it had seen better days. The processor was cleaned with Isopropyl Alcohol 91% and the extra solder on the core was scraped off using a plastic credit card.

After the CPU was cleaned we used four layers of electrical tape on each side of the core to prevent cracking the die and removed the load plate off our abit AW9D-MAX motherboard so the water block would make contact with the core and not the load plate. We applied Arctic Silver Lumiere to the core and after a test fitting to make sure the water block made contact with the die we fired up the test system. The system would power on, but sadly it wouldn’t post. It seems our Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 Processor didn’t like the surgery we performed on it, but hey that’s the price we expected to pay before we started to remove the IHS.

Legit Bottom Line: Lapping the IHS on all Intel LGA775 processors will improve thermal temperatures and we found out the hard way that removing the IHS is a really quick way to destroy a good processor.