[pHaestus]

Bah I got locked out of forums and couldn't reply earlier. I (lol?) forgot my password.

Anyway my rationale for sticking with AMD CPUs for testing is due to the diode being accessible for my data acquisition. Motherboard readings are both coarse and unreliable and that's a bad combo.

But while playing with my hacked up AMD64 I quickly noticed something that probably plagues all modern CPU users: the damn things pop out of the sockets when you try to unmount coolers! This bends pins, this can mess with my wiring, and this probably affects the TIM interface as well over time. It also gives me pause before spending a lot of time getting test numbers (imagine if I have to start over with a new CPU every couple weeks!).

If I were to "pop the top" on my test box then this would be the reason why.