 What the heck? Look at this thing. I have never in all my years seen a CPU that looks anything like that. That's it. That's the CPU. So the bare die is exposed. It's got like this looks like it's an aluminum like mounting plate thing that is then screwed into what would normally be the mounting plate for the socket where the CPU would fit. The back plate's normal, but hold on, here we go. This is it. What even are these things? How would you be expected to install them? So our story begins with a word from our sponsor, Corsair. Corsair's Hydro X series of custom water cooling components has great performance, RGB, et cetera, et cetera. You're gonna find out a lot more about it as the video progresses because we're gonna be using Hydro X setup to cool this. Okay, not this. This is a motherboard, but inside this box is something the likes of which I have never seen anything quite like. So this is actually a big long note from Tim, a big fan of the channel and the new local supplier of BGA to LGA 1151 CPUs. And Tim has actually sent us over a whack of these CPUs to check out. And what's interesting about them is that these are laptop processors. So BGA or Bald-Rid array chips that are designed to be soldered directly onto a motherboard and then with some kind of custom cooling solution applied over top of them, like heat pipes or whatever the case may be. So these are these laptop CPUs, these BGA CPUs that are soldered instead of to a laptop motherboard to this carrier adapter PCB. And then in turn, no, wait, okay, so no, this is actually a super thick PCB that the Bald-Rid array CPU was soldered onto. And then there's gonna have to be pass through traces inside it, which we can't see. And then it's actually just machined out on either side so that this bottom LGA 1151 compatible surface here full of contact pads can fit properly in the socket. Wow, there's a couple things that are unique about this solution. One of them is of course the adapter and the second is this piece right here. So this is the SU-PCH named presumably for Mr. SU who is running this operation. Now this does a couple of things. Number one is it takes our custom PCB here and allows us to have it held in place. So there's actually four little mounting holes on the corners and those correspond to four little pegs on the inside of this adapter plate here. The second thing that it does is it acts as a shim, which is a way of keeping the CPU safe when you're mounting a cooler to it. Now in the old days, desktop processors, just like their mobile counterparts, had exposed dies like this, but nowadays, in order to keep them from getting cracked while people are applying heatsinks to them and stuff like that, most manufacturers cover their chips with an IHS or an integrated heat spreader. Now that comes with actually a heat transfer penalty, but it was seen as not being as important as keeping the things from getting cracked and chipped and broken. So this shim that goes around it prevents us from putting a CPU on top of this thing and accidentally having it rock back and forth and chip off a corner or something like that. Now let's have a look at some of the CPU options that are available here. We've got a Core i7-7820HK. That should actually be an overclockable chip. I'm gonna wanna try that one for sure. Next up, we've got a whatever this is, and whatever this is. So these are apparently a QL2X and a QL3X. So these are engineering samples that never got formal names. So one of them runs at 2.4 gigahertz base, 3.5 gigahertz boost, and the other is 2.7 base, 3.8 boost. And apparently both of them will overclock in the range of 4.2 to 4.6 gigahertz and stay there. So these are unlocked chips and you can get them for as little as 80 to $90, which I guess reveals the whole point of all of this, which is that if you happen to have an old Z170 motherboard or something similar, and you want a whole lot of performance for not a lot of money, this could be a very interesting way to do it. The last chip that we've got here appears to be a 7700HQ and this is a qualifying sample. So most of the CPUs we've got are not legitimate CPUs that were pulled off of boards. These are like qualifying and engineering samples. So this whole thing we're doing is super duper condoned by Intel, I'm sure. I actually have no idea what's pre-installed in the board here. So we'll find that out soon enough. First, I wanna just make sure it's working at all. So you're gonna notice that I put a very, very small amount of thermal compound on here. That's because the die is very, very small and we don't need to cover a whole lot of surface area. Now, Mr. Sue claims that with this mounting shim here, you can actually install just a normal freaking Intel stock cooler. So I think that's the first thing we're gonna try. I'm gonna be really interested to see what the BIOS reports about this thing. We ready for the magic moment? Our RGB RAM is lit up. We basically have all of the functionality we need now. Let's see if we can get into the BIOS here. F2, delete. This doesn't appear to list a CPU model anywhere in here. Yes, so we are unlocked. Ah, here we go. Oh, so this is a 6700HQ. Why would that be unlocked? That shouldn't be unlocked. Okay, so why don't we throw one of our, well, first let's get into Windows. Let's get some hardware info fired up here. Everything seems to be working relatively normally. There it is, 6700HQ running just like you would expect. Now, as expected, the CPU is running really cool, like 19 to 22 degrees at idle. Let's go ahead and just throw a quick blender render at it and see how it looks after that. Even this pinner Intel stock one on it. Under load, we're looking at 45 degrees Celsius. So I think it's pretty safe for us to crank that multiplier up to the maximum middle reach and let's see what our performance looks like. As it is, we're turboing to just 3.1 gigahertz on all cores. Think we can do better. All right, so as expected, yes, that 35 multiplier is indeed the max single core turbo frequency of this particular chip. We're just gonna see if we can hit that all cores. Now, I have no experience trying to overclock Intel's locked mobile chips, even just to run all cores at the single core boost frequency, because even if Intel did allow this kind of behavior, no mobile device manufacturer in their right mind would allow you to do that kind of thing because you would overwhelm the cooling. And I guess I have no more experience than I did before, because as you can see here, it doesn't work. We're still running at 3.1, but that's okay, because between the qualifying samples, the engineering samples, and the straight up K-series unlocked chips, we can still do some overclocking today. So I was actually in the middle of swapping CPUs, and I realized that we haven't actually seen under this thing yet. So let's have a look at what, if anything, Mr. Sue has modified about this motherboard here. Yeah, it looks like not really anything. All they've done is remove the normal mounting plate here. You know, it would have that little lever and all that kind of stuff. So they've just removed that. And then the CPU is held in by the hold down plate or the shim up here. This shim that came pre-installed seems to be like a pre-production one or something, because it looks like it actually has some, some sanding marks on the top, like they were trying to dial in the height just right. So we're gonna do away with that one. We're gonna use one of the finished samples here. What CPU do you wanna go for, Alex? Do you wanna go for one of the mystery meat ones, or do you wanna go for the 7820HK, the expensive one? Pick a hand. That one. That one? Okay. We're going with this one. No, just kidding. No. It's a little looser, I think, than a real CPU. I mean, I shouldn't say it's not a real CPU. It is a real CPU. It's a little looser than one that you're supposed to put it. Oh, wow. That's interesting. Okay. So when I removed the mounting plate before, I heard a plank. That's what that was. So here's our original back plate here. So I'm gonna have to hold that on while I install the CPU. So it's a little janky here. That's okay. Back in my starving student days, I would have easily put up with this much jank to save like a hundred bucks or whatever. Just a little bit of thermal compound. You really don't need a lot on these bare dies. Look at that. Even the amount I put on before, almost all gooped up around the edges there. The good news though, is that means that our mounting pressure was pretty darn spot on, which means the height of their adapter is about right. Oh, turned off. Turning back on. Probably memory training or something. Nothing yet. So here's one plot. Remember how I said, I really wasn't sure how tight it was supposed to be, cause there doesn't seem to be any kind of stopper to prevent you from going ham on this thing. I'm gonna try backing it off a little bit and making sure that the tension feels kinda even, you know? Okay, let's try that. So that didn't help. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna grab the other one, the one that was in my right hand, and we're gonna give that one a shot. LTT shirts, also a thermal paste wipe. LTTstore.com. To be clear, I'm not actually recommending rubbing a shirt all over a CPU. It's just, my cameraman wants to go home on time, okay? Bios has been reset. Beautiful. All right, let's have a look at what we got here. So this little puppy runs at 3.4 right out of the box. So what does that make it then? Not sure. Oh, this is the boring one. This one's locked. Okay, swapping CPUs again. I gotta say, the review sample ones really look like they've been through hell and back. This one has what appears to be glue or something, or a thermal compound on the bottom of it. So we had assumed the two green ones were like the weird engineering sample ones, and then the blue one was not, but that turned out to not be the case. So what I'm really hoping is this is gonna be the QX2 engineering sample, because that one's apparently good for 4.5 to 4.6 gigahertz. Oh, that ain't a good sign. I mean, it posted, hey! Oh, interesting, yes. So Mr. Sue's associate who sent us over these CPUs had informed us that they might be a little touch and go when it comes to PCI Express Gen 3. We might want to change our PCI Express slots to Gen 2 to avoid some complications with the Nvidia driver. So we're gonna go ahead and try that, but first I wanna know what chip this is. And we don't know. Oh, bummer, I think this is the slower one of the two engineering samples. Stop, man. They're not labeled. I'm having a hard time keeping track of which ones are which. Hey, there we go, we're in Windows now. Heck yeah. Hacking. You know what? Why don't we dial in the overclocking settings that they recommended here? Yay, all right. 4.2 gigahertz. Let's go ahead and do a quick stress test. So it is a disadvantage to run at PCI Express Gen 2, but not a huge one unless you're running some kind of like compute application on your graphics card. Now what is a problem is if you go to run a stress test and your system restarts kind of like that, but yeah, so that's engineering sample CPUs for you. All right, so we're pretty close to water cooling the 7820HK, but before we do that, I wanna try that one that wouldn't post one more time. It's possible it just bricked itself while I was touching it. It's also possible it just, we didn't get a good mount, so. Oh boy, wow. Oh wow, the reset button isn't working. Wow. Hey, oh, it's off. Hey, oh, it's off. So what we're gonna do then is we're gonna move on to our proper like real CPU, our 7820HK, which does happen to be the most expensive one out of the bundle, but it's also the only one that is legitimately unlocked and overclockable. Something I haven't mentioned up until now is that motherboard compatibility with these CPUs is not a guarantee. There are a handful of chipsets, including H310, Z390, that would be compatible with seventh gen desktop chips, but that will not work with these, even with a modded BIOS, and as I am now coming to, if you want your motherboard to work, even if it has a compatible chipset, you will need a modified BIOS, which Mr. Sue says will be available to download at some point. Code C1 again. I wonder if it is to do with tightness in the socket. Maybe I overcooked it a little this time. It needs a fidget spinner when you have a screwdriver. Hey, nice. System experience to boot failure, but blah, blah, blah, load optimized defaults. All right, so we've got our 7820HK, all our RAM is detected, everything is looking perfectly le normal. Now we're on A2. Okay, so we did an isopropyl alcohol wipe on the bottom of the CPU, just to make sure the contacts were all good, and it does seem to be booting now. Come on, baby. Come on. Just boot. Max link speed. Okay, so we're already at Gen 2. I don't know, why don't we try Gen 3 then, who knows? I wonder if it has something to do with our M.2 storage. Let's just try stuff. Hey, we're in. All right, so now we're looking good. Let's make sure this BMW render runs at stock speed, then we can overclock this puppy. Oh, we'd be blending slow. What is this? What is this speed? Yuck. Screw it. Let's overclock it. So challenge number one, we're hitting right off the bat here, is that our XC7 water block has pre-applied thermal compound in a, on a much larger patch than we're gonna need for our processor. So we're gonna open by just cleaning off all of our thermal compound and using something much smaller. So what's cool about this mounting mechanism is that on both the bottom and the top, it doesn't interfere with using a completely normal cooler in any way. So I can just go ahead and chuck my water block on here and I should be pretty much good to go. All right. Well, I don't think this is either mine or Alex's finest wiring or plumbing job, but we're going for performance, not looks here. All right, let's see if I got the plumbing the right way around. Ooh, that's what a non-lubricated pump bearing sounds like for the uninitiated. Get that air bubble out of there. What are you doing? Dang it. I got the radiator actually. Oh, I got the whole thing the wrong way around. Well, realistically it won't make much difference. This thing is like a 45 watt CPU. Should we turn it around? No. We should probably turn it around. I don't think you need to. We should probably turn it around. It's going through the CPU block backwards. Do you think it's gonna make any difference? A couple of degrees. You know what? No, we're doing it. We're turning it around. We didn't think this through. Okay, so here's the plan. Yeah, you pull and pinch, I'll plug. Okay, but what about this hole? That hole's fine. Okay, ready? Three, two, one. Shoot. Oh, that's so many trees. Okay, now we're going the right way for the loop to actually bleed and the performance to be right. That was worth it. Totally worth it. Oh, look. So apparently this chip will do about 4.6 gigahertz, 1.3 volts all cores. Let's see if it'll do it underwater. Wow. Sure didn't. So we're stable in Windows. We are booted to Windows. Stable is a strong word. We're at 4.4 gigahertz. Had to back it off a little bit. Let's go ahead and try a quick stress test and see if this is actually working. Are we thermal throttling? We're thermal throttling. Yes. I did. So you can see that our shim actually interfered with us getting good contact between our CPU block and our processor. Something a lot of people don't know is that thermal paste is actually not a great conductor of heat. All it's meant to do is fill in like micro gaps between the two pieces of metal. So when you actually have like a thick layer of paste in between, you get very, very poor thermal transfer. So I'm not 100% sure how to solve this problem. Maybe we could see if it's down to manufacturing tolerances and try a different shim. I mean, even just to the eye, it looks like it's a little below. I wonder if it's relying on a cooler design, kind of like the stock cooler. You see here how the slug at the bottom is actually slightly raised compared to the aluminum fins. So that puts quite a lot of pressure. Corsair's water cooler by contrast is exactly flat. So we remounted the CPU and it's not booting now. Honestly, it doesn't matter anyway though, because this is clearly very poor contact again. What we're gonna try and do is use the one that came pre-installed on the board. Okay, so I'm just gonna throw that on there and then see if we're get, oh, that's so much better. Look at that. Okay, I'm expecting much better results this time, assuming it actually posts. Okay, this is it. This is go time. And you know what? We're gonna go straight to 4.6 gigahertz. Hey, we got into Windows this time. Turns out having a functioning cooler is a good idea. How about that? What do you know? 4.6 gigahertz, there it is. Interestingly, one of our CPU cores isn't reporting temperatures. Let's fire up a blender render. Bloop, and it's gone. Let's try that again. And... It's back. No, it's gone. Blender's just gone. We're gonna drop the frequency a little. BRB tornado. Let's see if our rendering program manages to stick around with the, whoa, and it's gone. We're gonna dial back the frequency. Okay, 4.5 gigahertz. Let's try that again. Hey, that's more promising. Wow. Hottest core, 47 degrees. Coolest core, 25 degrees. That's the thing about having a bare die is like very slight difference in the amount can make a really big difference. Performance looks like it's getting a very significant uptick. Look at this render chug along here. This is great. Of course, if what we were after was 3D rendering, oh, yeah, we might need to do the graphics drivers here. Of course, if we were gonna be rendering all day and we had $150 to spend, we would just go for a core i5-8400 or something like that with six cores. The only reason we'd want a quad core that's higher clocked would be for gaming. So how's the experience there then? Well, it's fine, I guess. We did have to drop the frequency down to 4.4 in order to get it completely stable in game, but I think the overall problem that we're running into here is that the benefits of a solution like this simply do not outweigh the drawbacks at this time. We're paying 150 bucks, which means for less than that, we could pick up a 6,700K or something like that on eBay for even less, or we are really rolling the dice as we experienced with those unnamed 0000 CPUs where we're potentially getting a great value or we're ending up with something that's not gonna be particularly usable for us. Now, if you're the kind of person who likes to tinker, you've got a motherboard that happens to be compatible with the BIOS mod lying around anyway, and you just wanna have some fun and maybe take something that is currently non-functioning and get a decent little gaming rig out of it for 70 or 80 bucks with a weird CPU upgrade, hey, recommended, but it just isn't the kind of thing that personally I would daily drive, and I think Alex is on the same page over there. You know what I would daily drive though? The Massdrop X-Bear Dynamic DT177X Go headphones are made by the renowned German manufacturer Beyerdynamic. They feature a closed back design, their latest generation of 45 millimeter Tesla drivers, a wide frequency range and weighty controlled base. These are a favorite for recording studios and they're easy to drive from portable sources without an external amp. They feature a durable design with aluminum ear cups, a spring steel headband and metal yokes and hinges, and you can check out the link below to get yours on drop.com today. So thanks for watching guys. If you enjoy budget upgrades like this one, check out our recent video on this weird Chinese X79 motherboard that you can pair with a refurb CPU to make for a very potent gaming machine without spending a lot of money and it's gone.