As long as the SoC makes *good* contact without a thick layer of thermal paste, sure.Yeah but bad idea is who designed that, it's just stupid going from die, thermal paste to a copper sheet that does nothing then another layer of thermal paste until it goes to the most efficient heat transfer point which is the part that will actually cool it... It only loses heating transfer efficiency...
By removing the copper sheet as long as the whole die makes perfect contact with the cooling plate it should always be a lot more efficient in cooling it, just like when intel decided to stop soldering the IC place above the die after their 2nd gen I3\I5\I7 lineup and then the 3rd and any newer gen after some point would loose like 20Cº by just removing the crap thermal paste and going liquid metal, but for extreme OC nothing goes as efficient as completely exposing the die and make direct contact from it to a proper cooler, however in Desktop CPU's they probably all now come with the cover so that ppl don't make too much force attaching coolers and cracking the die like it used to happen a damn long time ago when PC CPU's had the exposed die like in laptops...
Even by just sanding a bit a Desktop CPU copper cover the temps drop a bit since the most efficient cooling is a proper cooler and not the copper cover, so the thinner the cover the more efficient will be the heat transference to the cooler and the thicker the cover is, the more heat will be trapped there and the top of the cover will never have as much heat to transfer to the cooler than the part inside that makes contact with the die...
But you are wrong about the heatsink transferring heat more efficiently than the IHS. Assuming they are both made of the same type of metal, they will both transfer heat at exactly the same rate. It's inherent to the type of the metal itself (which is why copper heatsinks are a bit more efficient than aluminium ones, they transfer heat better)
Plus, the dimensions and finish of the IHS are precisely made so that the least amount of thermal paste is needed for the entire surface to make good contact. Sanding it down will likely make the surface more uneven or slightly slanted meaning there will be a thicker layer of thermal paste in spots, negatively affecting cooling. The only way sanding it down would improve thermals is if you do it finely enough and with such precision that the surface stays completely flat but is smoother than the factory finish, so that even less thermal paste is needed to make good contact. That's easier said than done though, and has nothing to do with the IHS being a worse thermal conductor.
Are there two sheets of copper? I know there's one attached to the heatpipe. Doesn't that go directly onto the SoC?
Last edited by The Real Jdbye,