Der8auer recently delidded the newly released AMD Ryzen 7 8700G APU, revealing its monolithic die and demonstrating a significant decrease in temperatures.
Delidding, a technique adopted by a decent amount of so called “enthusiasts”, involves removing the CPU’s Integrated Heat Spreader (IHS) and applying a higher-quality thermal compound, such as liquid metal, to achieve temperature reductions.
This practice has become common for Intel Core processors starting from the Skylake era due to Intel’s preference for non-soldered thermal interface material from 3rd Generation “Ivy Bridge” until the 11th Generation “Rocket Lake” CPUs.
Despite Intel’s shift back to using solder, Intel Core processors still exhibit high power consumption and excessive temperatures, making delidding somewhat necessary despite the added complexities associated with delidding a soldered CPU.
Delidding is primarily pursued to achieve lower temperatures during intensive workloads. Der8auer is known for delidding most flagship CPU releases from both AMD and Intel.
This time, he has chosen to experiment with AMD’s Ryzen 7 8700G APU, adding an interesting dimension to the process.
The Ryzen 7 8700G isn’t your typical CPU; instead, it’s designed as a cost-effective, compact, and energy-efficient solution. It combines an 8-core/16-thread Zen 4-based CPU with Radeon 780M graphics, featuring 12 compute units of RDNA 3-based graphics on a desktop platform.
This is the essence of an APU (Accelerated Processing Unit), where integrated solutions of power-efficient CPU and GPU are commonly found in mobile devices. However, the Ryzen 7 8700G introduces this concept to the desktop, although with some significant caveats.
The Ryzen 7 8000G series presents good value, particularly with the 8700G priced at $329 MSRP.
Featuring 12 CU’s of RDNA 3 graphics, it competes at the same price point as the Ryzen 7 7700X processor. However, the APU only includes half the total L3 cache at 16MB compared to 32MB in the 7700X, along with lower base and boost frequencies.
Therefore, despite both offering 8 cores on the same architecture, don’t expect identical performance levels, the APUs will undoubtedly be hindered.
Furthermore, as is typical with mobile devices featuring AMD Ryzen APUs, the integrated graphics solution within your processor significantly relies on the speed and setup of your system memory (RAM).
On a positive note, since these 8000G-series APUs adopt a monolithic design compared to the conventional chiplet design of standard Zen 4 desktop processors, you can expect an improvement in the memory controller.
This improvement facilitates reaching higher DDR5 speeds, resulting in enhanced performance across gaming workloads and beyond. However, many review outlets have limited the Ryzen 7 8700G and other APUs in the 8000G lineup with insufficient 5200MHz DDR5 memory, as this figure is the reported “maximum” memory frequency.
Naturally, the performance outcomes with these processors will vary significantly. However, considering the reduced costs of higher-speed DDR5 memory over the past year, the additional investment of $20-40 for faster RAM beyond 5200MHz is absolutely worthwhile.
Another significant drawback of the 8000G-series is the absence of a soldered thermal interface material, unlike traditional Zen 4 desktop CPUs. Considering these chips are essentially repurposed from mobile platforms with a higher power envelope, this isn’t entirely surprising.
However, Der8auer observed a remarkable temperature reduction of up to 25 degrees Celsius after delidding the Ryzen 7 8700G, which is quite astonishing.
What such a drastic temperature deduction actually means is that the stock thermal interface material on the Ryzen 8000G-series is absolute shite.
Der8auer conducted testing on the Ryzen 7 8700G across three configurations and with three different power/clock strategies. Initially, he tested a stock 8700G as provided, along with PBO (Precision Boost Overdrive) and a manual overclock at 5.0 GHz.
Following delidding, he repeated the same tests using an 8700G with a Thermal Grizzly KryoSheet between the die and IHS, and finally, with Liquid Metal.
He observed that the manually overclocked Ryzen 7 8700G would perform approximately 5% slower than a Ryzen 7 7700X in Cinebench with the 5.0GHz overclock. Nonetheless, some individuals may favor the APU due to its significantly superior integrated graphics (iGPU).
According to the chart, the KryoSheet graphene thermal interface solution achieved temperatures that were 10 to 15 degrees cooler than stock. Remarkably, the application of Liquid Metal resulted in temperatures approximately 20 to 25 degrees Celsius better.
With the final overclock using liquid metal, the result surpassed 20,000 in Cinebench R23’s multi-thread test, achieved through a 5.3GHz overclock at 1.37v. Temperatures remained below 80 degrees Celsius.
Again, this doesn’t really come as much of a surprise given how the Ryzen 7000 series mobile processors are articulately designed and binned for efficiency, with the desktop based Ryzen 7 8700G having a configurable TDP value of 45 to 65 watts, which is a far cry from the 105W TDP of the Ryzen 7 7700X for example.
Combined with the fact that the IHS (Integrated Heat Spreader) for the new AM5 platform is somewhat hindered to allow for seamless backwards compatibility with previous generation AM4 cooling solutions by being slightly thicker.
Undoubtedly, AMD has saved some money by opting for standard thermal interface material instead of solder for a processor that arguably doesn’t require it. The Zen 4 architecture, particularly in terms of boost functionality, operates with a focus on maintaining a specific temperature threshold providing better cooling for a Ryzen CPU results in greater and more sustainable peak boost frequencies.
https://www.igorslab.de/en/the-dirty-business-behind-hwbot-competitions-a-field-report-as-editorial/
Certainly, while Der8auer portrays himself as a reputable professional overclocker, I argue that he operates more like a con artist. He is known to own the professional overclocking website “HWBot” and serves as the CEO of Thermal Grizzly, which is the thermal compound company of choice for many proficient YouTubers.
His journey began with reselling binned Intel Core Processors on platforms like Caseking for a premium price.
But of course, a cooler processor means a quieter system, or greater performance, sometimes even both. I usually despise the entire concept of delidding a CPU, but given how the Ryzen 8000G-series features a monolithic die and isn’t using a soldered thermal interface material, there’s actually some credibility to delidding these CPUs due to the significantly reduced risk of killing your processor during the process which is more common than you’d probably think.
