Why you should bother lapping your Heatsink?

[robertxtm]

there are two kinds of cpu coolers, one is flat and the other one is concave.

[izlude2]

do they sell "already lapped" coolers? also it's already april 2nd 2011, please recommend to me the 100% best air cooling solution out there (willing to dish out the cash) i'm ditching liquid for fear of.... tubular necrosis eeek

[taejamhaha]

@izlude2 you must lap to make it suit with your processor.

[lasermac83]

My Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. B is like this. Had to lap it down.

[RenegadeFury]

epsilon delta time

[heatfilter]

And this is the difference between leet and noob. Noobs wonder how come the cool guys gets such great scores and temps and the leet already know (but we were all noobs at one time so it's all good)

[asus3571]

looks like a thermalright heatsink they could always use a lap quick fix dont get a thermalright

[Rhythmeister]

@asus3571 what an insult to Thermalright, they make the BEST heatsinks out there. I suspect you mean ThermalTAKE!

[asus3571]

@Rhythmeister no i meant thermalright i know they make excellent heatsinks just seems i only see people lapping thermalrights thermaltake has come a long way with their new frio its one of the best u can get no other heatsink including the d14 can take a 990x to 5ghz on air (frio ock)

[taejamhaha]

@Rhythmeister especially, their Frio and Frio OCK, concave ones

[mogul1265]

Wow what a pos. Geez. Grind before you waste 10 years with sandpaper.

[cheesyboofs]

@mogul1265, IMHO Grinding takes off too much metal to quickly it would be easy to make the problem worse. The metal under the nickel plate is copper and this is quite soft it doesn't take that long to sand down - about an hour.

[ensile]

removing inconsistencies so two surfaces 'mate' together more accurately will always improve heat transfer, you only have to look at thermal dynamics. Whether you need to or not you'd have to decide. Arctic Silver alone dropped 10 degree's off my old 6600gt. i was impressed, I should have lapped it, but I wasn't over clocking.

[crazyprime]

If my heatsink was like that new I would take it back that is horrible.

[cheesyboofs]

All - Just to update you, two years on and this lapped Q6600 and heatsink are still going strong, overclocked at 3.4ghz and used daily - sweet.

[vikkiandbradley07]

@cheesyboofs

when are you considering a upgrade of your Q6600? if and when you are let me know

and to the prev comment you made to me i suppose thats true, if they can get ample tollerences and i suppose the daily user wont really care or even give it a moments thought there cooler and cpu are well out, in the more informed advanced pc user we change it becasue we know we can drop like 10c if not more depending on state of cpu before lapping!

[TheShortsChannel]

@cheesyboofs You don't even have to Lap. I put a whole tobe of thermal paste (high qualtiy)on my intel q9300 quad core, and now it never gets above 60 celsius. EVEN WHEN GAMING! :O

[glowyrm]

@TheShortsChannel

That's a joke, right?

[TheShortsChannel]

@glowyrm no it is not... I REALLY DID DO THAT

[TheShortsChannel]

@glowyrm i did the same with my ATI radeon hd 6850 and now i can sefely overclock to 850 core 1150 mem wihtout overheating :) i used soem brand called coolmaster on my cpu, and antec formula 7 on my gpu

[zomgbbqwth]

the uneveness of the cooler grill in this video...

should be one out of a thousand... cos mine doesnt move at all~ and there's no light gap when i put a credit card's edge on it~ :D

[cheesyboofs]

@zomgbbqwth - how do you know yours is not the one in a thousand that happens to be flat? :0p

[vikkiandbradley07]

@cheesyboofs

you know what gets me, spesh with cpu's more then gpus, how long they've been making them and they cant ge the surface to be flat, i mean 10 minutes more work to produce a quality cpu so the end user doesn't have to fix what intel and amd should have done in the first place!! and then loose the warranty for makeing the product better then it was before!!!!!!!!

[cheesyboofs]

@vikkiandbradley07 - I think its all down to tolerances. If they were to spend 10 extra minutes on each CPU they churn out it would impact on production. The fact that these chips even with sticky gunk fall well within 'tolerance' means they are happy.

If the fact that you have to spend 10 minutes (more like an hour) sanding this thing down so you can run the knakers off these chips and get an extra 1Ghz per core is time well spent in my opinion.

[acefilms2008]

@cheesyboofs no, there is a reason that the manufacturers make it uneven for heatsinks, its to get greater pressure and contact between the CPU and Heatsink, near the middle where the CPU die is, but because you lose alot of area contacting the CPU and the heatsink because the heatsink is curved outward, the CPU is curved inward, the reason lapping give better temps, is because you are removing the nickle plating, Copper better conductor

[snipski0894]

@vikkiandbradley07 A metal serface can never be flat its impossible

[vikkiandbradley07]

@snipski0894

define flat. because from the naked eye and a very flat edge you can

but not on a microscopic level, but then thats the same for every object in the word, nothing is "smooth"

[snipski0894]

@vikkiandbradley07 I mean microscopic

[iceM4]

@vikkiandbradley07 they dont lapp it, because nobody does, AMD doesnt have to do it, because intel doesnt do it. plus laping is done by overclockers, and they will do it no matter what, so not doing it, means they make, idk, a 100 dollars from a 299 procesor, as opposed to a 100 dollars from a 300 dollar procesor, because it would cost a dollar to do it, though theyd probably charge 10 bucks for it :-) (completely hypothetical num. btw :-) ) And besides, they dont care, their sales are fine :-)

[wmsky33]

There is nothing about an HDT heatsink that makes it inherently flatter than a solid metal heatsink. I've seen both good and bad HDT heatsinks. Xigmatek makes good ones. Others do too. Don't buy a heatsink until you've gone through a at least 3 online reviews that agree that it is good.

[Scott97169]

Lapping a heatsink is the most uncomfortable miserable process you can undertake. Get a heatsink with HDT (heatpipe direct touch), Xigmatek has this and i'm not sure about others. The contact surface with HDT is extremely flat and even so there's no need to lap those.

[InvokeZero]

No comments needed on his part, the light gaping through was quite enough. Going to be lapping my heatsinks from now on.

[SysAdmin86851]

I can't believe that shit !

you'd think them damn things would be perfectly flat from the factory !

that thing'd need a good amount of thick thermal grease to cover the gapping holes...

I know the processors weren't, but a copper heatsink should be... wow was that a true ?

[DarkCraft41]

Mass production does that, you can't spend the time making sure it is perfect when you need to make 10K a day.

And NEVER use a thick amount of grease that will only make it worse. the grease/paste will act as an insulator and not allow as much heat to get to the heatsink. The way to fix this is lapping it to a level and smooth base.

[BenjaminLeePalmer]

Wow, that is insane! That's it! I'm uninstalling my heatsink and lapping that Mother F er like right freaking now. Thanks for the video. 5*

[Percivalis]

lol, that's abominable

[alenchaplin]

damm! i never tested mine before....

[MGlBlaze]

I have a TRUE 120 copper. My base isn't quite thta concave, but it's still noticable. I'm going to lap it tomorrow morning. xP

[alex98uk]

I want to lap my Q6600, but I don't have the balls. Did my Big Typhoon once though.

Is it worth lapping a D-Tek Fuzion V2? They come with a very bright finish anyway?

[intimidate2161]

Mine is a little worse then that, so I'll be lapping soon also.

[dragoss16]

Only cpu lapping it worth , cooler lapping is useless and hard as hell .

[cheesyboofs]

IMHO Its not worth doing one without the other. If you look at the links to the AFTER shots up on the right you will see its not hard as hell as both are made of copper and copper is quite soft.

It just takes time to do well, that's all, but will let you run a 2.4 quad core at 3.4 on air fine. I have now been running this CPU at this speed for over a year now since this post and it has worked flawlessly.

[Fyrezerk]

Why are people so challenged in understanding the concepts of lapping? Anyone who thinks lapping creates larger voids needs to follow these instructions...

1) Go outside.

2) Kneel on sidewalk.

3) Slam head into sidewalk.

4) Repeat.

[AirForce194]

lol good one, lapping helped me knock 10c off my CPU underload.

[MGlBlaze]

Well actually lapping CAN create larger voids... if you do it very, very wrongly. xP If you do it right, it does lower your temperatures a fair bit.

[EAGarcia8]

i never lapped a cpu heatsink or a cpu, but if i did wouldn't it create a void or larger space between the heatsink and cpu, since your removing the metal?

[cheesyboofs]

NO! You're removing metal so there are no voids or large spaces. You do them both on a bit of glass with some VERY fine wet and dry to make them both perfectly flat. Then you will only need the smallest bit of compound between the two.

[christiaanck]

Awesome. Now my question is answered!!!  Thanks!!!

[slayeriskilling]

Hehe, mine AC Pro 64 was like this one before i lapped it^^

[BlazEajayaday]

Fail

[Born2killx]

I'm too scared to lap my CPU and heatsink. Oh well. :D

[Petronilus]

Thermaltake must have an extremely poor QA process to allow this crappy level of quality on the most critical parameter to get out from their factory. Or perhaps this cooler is flawed by a too flexible CPU block causing it to bend from the stress of all the heat pipes?

Perhaps >99% of users don't do lapping and pay a premium for this cooler!

Making the surface flat is trivial in modern manufacturing. Really no excuse...

[cheesyboofs]

Some people argue that good Heat-sink manufacturers actually add a bump in the middle because CPU's typically dip in the middle creating a void, a hot spot. Have you ever lapped a CPU? If you have you will know that they are also not flat! I say sand them both and take the ambiguity out of the equation.

[jz33040]

cheesy, Petronilus is talking about the poor QA, and not whether or not to lap. It would obviously cost them more to make the heatsinks flatter, but now that I think about it there is a way they could do better. If they used a machine method to sand them properly, they could get to the point, under higher production, that it would be fast and economical enough for them to sell lapped to maybe 95%. If any company does this, I'd bet they could charge a little more, and it would sell well.

[Petronilus]

Yes, we are talking pennies in a mass production for the most important tolerance. But there could be another reason for this problem called poor design. If the block is stressed by the tight pressure of the heat pipes and the block is too thin then the result could be some level of bending of the block. In such case the CPU surface should be processed as the last manufacturing step.

[Sp8rk3y]

wow thats pretty uneven my thermaltake V1 was much more flat to start with however i still lapped it

[CilitBang321]

woah! Didnt know they were that uneven! I've ordered mine, and ill probably lapp it directly! Though i've heard that Thermalright intended to make it uneven, dont ask me why but that's what they said :P

[cheesyboofs]

ALL heatsinks are uneven, it would simply cost too much to machine them all mirror flat. Just look at the thickness of the gunk on the stock Intel supplied heatsink. I have now been running my Q6600 (2.4Ghz) at 3.4Ghz for some time now and it never gets above 64 even after 4 hours stress testing.

[jz33040]

Having it purposely uneven will allow for the thermal paste to have a cavity to go into. That maybe be what Tehermalright meant. IF it's 100% flat, the thermal paste would have no where to go. But having it flat, creates a better conductor so it wins anyway. But having it nearly flat with thermal paste might be better. Having it very concave or convex would be bad though.

[stegopainx2]

jz33040, Thermal paste is only meant to fill in microscopic voids. If there are voids in the surface, the paste will get in there and fill them in. The point of heat paste is not meant to create a layer between the heatsink and CPU.

[MastaSquidge]

Loooooooool.

Yes because you know better than years of testing by thousands of enthusiasts amirite?

[SkypE092]

ur an idiot.. u want the most "connection" between the cpu and sink.. hence more heat transfer.. if ur cpu is as bad as this 1 u have about 3cm square area thouching the cpu.. after lapping it u could have up to 9ish..

its a cpu to cpu situation every 1 that comes out the factory is different..

my friend had a fucken shocker.. he just took it back and got a new 1... then lapped it further..

[MastaSquidge]

Hey fucktard, i wasn't replying to the video. I have lapped 7 of my own heatsinks and i know full well the point of doing it.

I was replying to the comment by JZ33something who said this will create no space for the thermal paste to go. Which is clearly wrong.

[bososz]

then why not use the reply button!? or quote...

[MastaSquidge]

I did... youtube fails.

[bososz]

lol, it does doesn't it, now i look like an ass. ahwell w/e

[RickArter]

Nice example of why to lap all my sinks so far have been uneven it sucks. To the average guy they do not care as long as it runs but people like us we care about that temp weather its 1 degree or 10!

[cheesyboofs]

LMFAO,

Cheers LaTrance

[LaTranceInsomniac]

he hasnt lapped it yet , hes showing how uneven the surface is you noobs !

[H8Feeder]

lap on glass moron.

[jplum1556]

thats why u lap on a flat surface