14 DAY TRIAL // Intel is reportedly using ordinary thermal interface material (TIM) in the most unusual place, namely the underside of the integrated heat spreader, also called the IHS.
Most users probably don’t know, but there are “crazy” people called enthusiasts that are in the habit of snapping of the CPU’s IHS just to get a better cooling result in their extreme overclocking experiments.
Intel used flux-less solder to fuze the IHS to the CPU die on previous generation Sandy Bridge Core processors. Flux-less solder is used to improve heat transfer between the die and the IHS.
Intel appears to be using thermal paste to do the job and that results in slightly inferior heat transfer, but removing IHS is safer for the aforementioned crazies.
The use of ordinary TIM under the IHS may be the likely reason behind the higher than expected temperatures that early reviewers reported about.