Watch Der8auer rip the heatspreader off Intel’s $2,999 Xeon W-3175X CPU

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Delidding the best CPUs for gaming is not for the faint of heart, or faint of wallet—one wrong move and you can kiss that shiny new CPU goodbye. It's fun to watch other people risk their hardware in such a manner, though, and it didn't take long for professional overclocker Der8auer to give Intel's beastly 28-core/56-thread Xeon W-3175X processor the delidding treatment.

The Xeon W-3175X is not an inexpensive part. Far from it—Intel's asking price is $2,999 per chip in 1,000-unit trays, which means the consumer cost is likely to be even higher. It's also the most expensive CPU Der8auer has ever delidded.

Of course, it's not likely he's paying for these parts out-of-pocket. One of the perks of being a pro-overclocker is being supplied hardware for this sort of thing. We don't know if that's actually the case here, but we imagine it is.

In any event, it's interesting to see Der8auer go through the process of removing the integrated heatspreader (IHS) from the Xeon W-3175X, which you can watch for yourself in the video above. It's a big chip, and Der8auer reckons the added surface area is the reason it took considerably more force to rip the IHS off than it does for a mainstream desktop processor.

Removing the IHS also gives us a look at the comparatively substantial amount of thermal paste that sits underneath. While Intel has reverted back to a soldering solution on some of its newer chips, the company said it would use thermal paste on the Xeon W-3175X. We can also see the the stacked PCB design

Der8auer makes the whole thing look relatively easy, though we wouldn't recommend trying this at home. If you do, well, good luck!

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).