Poor Quality Wraith Prism LED Cooler

[MortalMan]

I recently built a new PC. This time I went with the AMD 2700x that comes stock with the Wraith Prism LED Cooler. I still had some artic silver 5 thermal paste left over so I scrapped off the stock thermal paste that came with the Wraith Prism LED Cooler and applied the artic silver instead.

What I found under the stock thermal paste shocked me!

The heat sink looked scratched up, and dented. From what I understand in order to get best possible heat transfer from the cpu to the heat sink you want both to be as flat and scratch free as possible.


I was wondering if anyone else here has removed the stock thermal paste from there wraith prism coolers? What did you find under there?

https://ibb.co/jDLUQJ
https://ibb.co/m2yYkJ

<a href="https://ibb.co/m2yYkJ"><img src="https://preview.ibb.co/kc6xCy/20180531_114716.jpg" alt="20180531_114716" border="0"></a>
<a href="https://ibb.co/jzKLFJ"><img src="https://preview.ibb.co/bXnU9d/20180531_114943.jpg" alt="20180531_114943" border="0"></a>

 

[Mr.Scott]

It's a cheap stock cooler.
Looks about like almost any other direct touch heatpipe cooler.

BTW, the paste you took off was better than what you put back on.

 

[Johan45]

I can't say mine has that scratch in it but it does look the same. They actually work well for a stock cooler IMO and for future reference the paste on it works just fine.

 

[Lochekey]

From the picture it does not look to bad. While you are correct that the scratches and dents will not help with the heat transfer the overall difference in a lapped vs non lapped set up is typically only a few degrees. For a stock low cost cooler the additional costs associated with this are not worth the gains from a business perspective.

Even most intel coolers are only rough finished and not perfectly honed.

If you want you can try lapping it but the gains you get will probably be minimal. You will gain more by focusing on getting a good mount with your chosen paste. I would suggest applying paste to that heatsink and spreading it with a card to fill in around the gaps in the heat pipes then scrape of the excess and apply new paste to the cpu before mounting the cooler.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Don't lap it hard. Heatpipes are very thin. If you go through one you can throw it away.

 

[Lochekey]

I guess i was to long winded to beat the pair of you.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Nope. You added good info.

 

[trents]

To get that big dent out I'm afraid you would have to lap too deep and would wear through the heat pipe walls. I wonder if you could fill the dent in with solder and then lap it.