Roman ‘der8auer’ Hartung has reemerged on his YouTube channel with a new video that offers insight into exactly what lies under the hood of the most expensive consumer Intel CPU money can buy. Yes, he is delidding and cracking open a Skylake-X Intel Core i9 7980XE processor to reveal the actual CPU die, just for the fun of it. The new video is in fact a kind of follow up to his previous video where he attempted (and failed) to successfully recover the die a Core i7-6950X.

The first step in actually getting to the die is removing the lid, a process so familiar to Roman that’s almost as easy as removing his shoes. Using a Delid-Die Mate tool which he designed himself he the delided the Core i9 7980 XE with easy and then proceeded to remove the liquid metal and the glue reside that remains. He used acetone to clean the CPU, a great choice for this kid of job.

With the previous die shot video involving the Core i7-6950X, Roman had a few issues actually removing the die from t he package of the CPU. The answer it seems is that the chip needs to heated up to temps above and beyond 450 degrees Celsius. Doing so however means that you may well encounter some rather noxious fumes, fumes that should be avoided. The reason for the high temperatures is not that you need to melt the solder. In fact these temps are needed to get through the underfill layer of the chip. After removing the underfill, the die is then retrievable. Before examining the CPU die with a USB microscope which is capable of 220x zooming and features polarizing features, Roman examines the remains of the CPU package.

You can find Part 1 of the i9 7980XE Die Shot adventure here on the der8auer YouTube channel.