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cpu lapping

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actionpie42

Registered
Joined
Apr 25, 2016
I was just working on a little project I thought I'd share with you guys. Anyone else still lapping their heatsink interface and cpu? Take a look at this finish and tell me what you think.
 

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  • 2016-05-05 04.25.47.jpg
    2016-05-05 04.25.47.jpg
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Wow! That is a better job than I ever did. What steps did you take to achieve this?
 
Looks like he probably went up above 600 - 800 grit, and then polished it. Not too hard, just takes a little more time. I haven't bothered to lap a CPU in a long time... but not a bad idea! Only con is when it comes to sell it, or if you have a few and forget what the chips was :rofl:

Anyways, Looks Good!! :thup: Lets see the heatsink base.
 
I don't think many people do it nowadays because contact between IHS and heatsink is a lot better than it used to be. The last CPU I lapped was a Core 2, several years ago I think, but I have lapped a heatsink since then.
 
I remember one of the reasons it came about was back in the C2D days and their concave/convex IHS...
 
I totally forgot about that! Some of those chips were BAD. Lapping an IHS has been a thing since they first put heat spreaders on CPUs, but on those bad ones you could get around > 5* C better temps simply by doing it. I remember when there was a popular method of cutting the glue around the IHS and then placing razor blades at all four corners to heat the CPU with a propane torch in order to un-"solder" it from the IHS... Risky business! But that's how awful those things were.
 
I lapped my Pentium D 920. It had a weird shape to it that you could only see once you started to lap it. I used the glass from a small picture frame and taped various grits of wet/dry automotive sand paper to it. I placed the glass on a table, placed a few drops of water on it and ran the CPU on the sandpaper in a figure 8 pattern (or an infinity loop depending on the angle of movement :) ).
 
Hey everyone!

I'm almost finished with the heatsink I'm probably going to work on it a little more and upload a picture of that. To answer how I came to this level of finish it's true I went above 800 grit. I'm actually not using sandpaper at all but rather my ceramic stones which work dry I discovered. The end finish is 8000 grit. I have the feeling the heatsink isn't going to be quite as perfect as there was one noticeable scratch already present on it. I'm not positive I'm going to mill down enough to get rid of it all the way.

I was most surprised by the shape of my cpu the surface was so uneven (PII X4 970BE) if anyone was going to ask. I'll be sure and get back with you guys asap.
 
It's actually been a really long time since I've used this cpu. It's also going in a totally new setup so it might be a moot point. I figured since I was upgrading why not do some mods while it's appart. For what it's worth in the past I remember under load I was 2 degrees under the "generally known safe temps". This was over a year ago that it was running. I've just not had time to work on it till now. I had it overclocked to 4.18Ghz. I honestly don't have an actual figure anymore sorry.
 
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