Heat sink

[MaxPower]

I have a Thermalright SK6, should i lap it or not!?!?

[DarkArctic]

It's up to you. I don't know if SK6's need to be lapped. Trail you fingernail along the base, if it catches or feels rough then it needs to be lapped. Or if the base is uneven then you could lap it.

-DarkArctic

[VegetaQ]

Originally posted by DarkArctic
It's up to you. I don't know if SK6's need to be lapped. Trail you fingernail along the base, if it catches or feels rough then it needs to be lapped. Or if the base is uneven then you could lap it.

-DarkArctic


This is true. I got my new swiftec and it was alredy very very smooth. Only reason to lap would be uneven surface.

[tyshy]

This is a dumb question but what does lapped mean. Does it have something to do with the hs being mounted to the cpu better or with more surface area? How do i "lap"?

[MechCD]

I mainly concerns the "old" days of the celerons and their large "cores". Most of them were not flat,a nbd people found that by polishing the CPU core with high grit sandpaper allowed better thermal contact with the heatsink,a nd therefore better temperatures. Nowadays its more for making cheap heatsinks perform slightly better. Most decent heatsinks won't have a much temperature increase because they are already darn flat. One note: Shiny doesn not always mean flat!

[rivercom9]

Lapping is essentially smoothing out the heatsink base in order to remove the rough surface so that it can make better contact with the CPU core. Lapping requires the use of some sandpaper, depending on the initial roughness of the base of the heatsink, you may want to start with 800 grit sandpaper with a fairly smooth base with some small scratches. If the base is rougher, you may want to start with 600 grit wet/dry sandpaper. Do your sanding on a very flat surface with good support. I do mine on my granite kitchen counter. Start sanding the base of the heatsink in a figure 8 or in one direction until the entire base is completely flat. After this, you then move onto your next grit until the scratch marks from the previouse grit are removed. Repeat these steps until you get to the 1500 grit. These are the basics to lapping.

So to review the basics, start with 800 grit, then to 1000, then finish with 1500 grit. If you would like, you can go to 2000 grit, but the effects of this is not very substantial. After finishing, make sure to clean the base very well with some isopropyl alcohol. Do this a few times jsut to make sure

[CrystalMethod]

I use a peice of machined aluminum my father left here years ago. It's perfectly flat to 10000ths of an inch. I've heard of glass being used. You also want to "wet sand" it rather that doing it dry. Get a bottle (spray bottle works really wel) and every couple of passes, put some water on the sand paper. You have to get the wet/dry type of sand paper for this obviously. What this does, is that it helps keep the paper from getting clogged up with what you're sanding off. It's also helps remove some of the larger metal particles that have come off through the sanding process, and that could scratch, or gouge the heatsink, making the whole process a lengthy and time consuming job.

[dreadlord79]

A good rule to remember is if you can see yourself in the HS base, it doesn't need to be lapped! If its a little "cloudy", you should clean it with isopropyl alcohol to see if the "cloudiness" is removed. If its not, hit it with 1000, 1500 or 2000 to see if you can get a mirror finish.