I used to totally agree with that
mkopec
, which is why I'd never delidded anything in the past. I've owed every generation of Intel's microarchitecture from Nehalem all the way up to now at Kaby Lake. I was too paranoid. I'm not too sure exactly when these delid tools came out but my Skylake builds were "fast enough" for me that I didn't care to delid, and really the issue reared it's head at Ivy Bridge so there wasn't any point prior to that unless you were completely nuts about OC'ing.
Having said that, the best I can put it is that yes, of course there is risk in doing this, but in my opinion there is as much risk in delidding with these tools as there are in just putting the computer together in the first place. Bump a capacitor while assembling, forget to plug something in, whatever... you get my point. You're voiding you're warranty, yup, but I'm sure we all do other crap to computer parts to void their warranty as well.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the actual delidding process is so easy with these things that I'd trust my wife to do it. The biggest risk after you take the screws out of the tool is and get the glue/stock thermal paste cleaned up and then you're putting your thermal paste/liquid metal (especially if using liquid metal) onto the die. In the case of Kaby Lake and the 7700k in particular, there is 3 (capacitors?) fairly close to the die... don't get your liquid metal on those things. Cover them with nail varnish or high quality electrical tape or they make these electronic protector pad things, if you don't trust yourself not to get shit onto those. Scraping the glue off was surprisingly very easy. If future CPU's require delidding and these tools are available, I'll do it. I think it is just as "stressful" as putting thermal paste on to the die is.
I hate to sound like a broken record but it really was idiot proof after watching a couple 2-3 youtube videos and an article or two.
Obligatory: There definitely is risk, don't come crying to me if you buy this stuff and break your processor for one reason or another.
Here is a photo of the capacitors (or whatever the fuck they are) on the CPU that I said were the biggest worry of mine while I was cleaning everything up: