Interesting. When I bought the 7980XE - before it arrived- I researched delding. taking the lid off looked easy,...and even someone as clumsy as me could apply the liquid metal without spilling it...but what put me off was the removal of the silicon which holds the IHS to the processor. And getting that off looked really risky in terms of knocking off a resistor.... But I must admit the idea of deciding is very appealing and I'm sure that I won't be able to resist the temptation forever! 10C is a big drop. But I would do it myself, I'd want to be sure it was right.
Building a hack ticks all the boxes for me ...challenging, irritating, time consuming it certainly is..... but the problem solving, learning curve and the elation when it all works is quite addicting.Then you have a "Mac" that outperforms the real thing for a fraction of the price - and those multi core/thread Mac Pro's are truly astronomically pricey.
Remember that heat especially in these processors is exponential. Intel has really optimized their 14nm process, but it's hit a wall. The wattage is astronomical as you push it further and then you have diminishing returns and there is no point to overclocking further.
Also an actual waterloop is recommended for the 7980XE especially if you are overclocking, so the -10c was an estimation with an actual open loop cooling system.
Closed loop AIOs are fine, but they don't move water quickly enough so it's not a good solution for overclockers.
For me I have 2 priorities:
1) Silent system
2) Speed
The 1st always is an issue because the quieter the system, the lower your fan/pump speeds are. So I found personally a perfect balance of performance with overclocking and silence with custom fan curves in the BIOS which took me many days and hours through trial and error (that's why it's painful for me to reset the BIOS ever, but I am able to save the BIOS settings as .cmo files and I can restore when needed).
I really think people need to stop benchmarking their computers. It's cool and all, but what matters is WHAT you're doing with your computer.
Anyway, PC building for me is finished anyway, I barely ever have time to troubleshoot, so most likely this is my last Hackintosh. At least I went out with a bang
I MAY build a Windows machine but it will be a small SFFPC with maybe a 3080 for not so often gaming. My main machine where I sit at every single day is 99% of the time a Mac, so very much waiting for new M-based Macs that are for higher end desktop users.