CPU and heat sink lapping that is a topic that I wanted to make a workshop
video on and actually spent many hours attempting to do just that what the heck
is it well theoretically your heat sink has teeny tiny little grooves and nooks
and edges on the surface imperfections that will theoretically cause issue but
even worse than this there are the curves convex concave or even the
sought-after lack thereof also known simply as flat these are are all but
variables in the overall equation of cooling performance within your system
and some matter more than others the theory behind lapping is to neutralize
said variables to remove the Curves and Imperfections and create something flat
shiny and
smooth Intel skull Canyon nuck features a sixth generation core I processor and
Thunderbolt 3 learn more in the link in the video description down below to
better explain how it is done I will explain the process from the start and
we can use some of the seemingly endless footage of myself doing so in order to
represent this You Begin by gathering materials you need a strong sturdy table
that won't move shake or bend when things are placed on it the table
surface would hopefully be glass but if not you should Source some relatively
thick and heavy glass or a mirror as glass and a especially mirrors are very
flat once you've sourced the flattest surface you can it's time to stop by an
auto parts shop you need sandpaper and a lot of different grits of it I get wet
and dry sandpaper and I would recommend you use a fairly standard progression of
grits consisting of 400 600 800 1,000
1500 and 2,000 wet the Sandpaper
starting at your lowest grit and leave some standing water on it in order for
the heat sink to Glide nicely tape the Sandpaper down to your surface and get
to work keep note of the direction the heat sink is facing and slide it up and
down the paper five times totaling 10 total passes when doing this control the
tilt of the heat sink so that it is able to travel without skipping or tipping as
it goes along but don't push down let the weight of the heat sink press into
the Sandpaper instead once you have completed one round of this rotate the
heat sink 90° once you've completed 10
full rotations it's time to move up a grit as you can probably guess it's an
extremely tedious process I would highly
recommend putting on an audio book or watching a movie or something during the
process just make sure you don't lose count there was tons of evidence online
of this working really well for people albeit most of those were super old
posts but either way it was fairly consistent for people to achieve
anywhere between 1 and 5° of improvement
in cooling performance after are lapping awesome perfect candidate for a workshop
video that might actually have a conclusion that isn't you know actually
it doesn't matter what you do because trust me it's not just you that's
getting tired of that I want things to matter I hate it when things are just
whatever Cable Management whatever fan placement whatever thermal paste
application whatever I'm tired of it too
so I grabbed a hyper 212 Evo thinking that it would be a good candidate
because of how many freaking people own them if there's one small Improvement
here it would have the biggest impact on the community due to just how many hyper
212 evos there are there's a lot of them I then spent 3 hours sliding a heat sink
back and forth the base of which had quite noticeable imperfections when I
started and looked you know super nice and shiny when all was said and done
before lapping it was able to cool a 4790k overvolted to 1.35 volts to 60 7°
C in an ambient room temperature of 19°
after lapping it cooled the same CPU with the same fan speed to 70° CS but
the ambient temperature of 22° meaning
that the temperature of the room went up 3° and the temperature of the computer
or more specifically the CPU went up 3°
also known as not a damn thing changed I was frustrated as I am now I felt like
the results were off like I probably did something wrong I needed to do do some
research and I did and armed with my recent results I found many additional
sources of information many disagreeing with each other which is always
frustrating when trying to get to the bottom of something when you're researching anything having people
disagree with each other is kind of annoying the most thoroughly tested
documented and investigated resource I could personally find was from Silent PC
review namely the article 1366 also
known as the post-title ourl CPU heat sync test platform here's where it was
reinforced that the surface scratches and Imperfections are less of a big deal
than the curve here's where it was reinforced that the curve or lack
thereof is kind of what matters not really how shiny it is here is where I
leared that due to the manufacturing process of direct contact coolers like
the 212 Evo they're all basically flat
meaning that the sanding that I did just removed some material and made almost no
other difference at all so do you think lapping is useless no you probably don't
and that's a good thing it made no impact when I did it but as
someone who appreciates science that sample size is bad and if I thought it
was enough I should probably feel pretty bad not even silent PC review really
tested a wide enough range of heat sinks in my opinion and I wouldn't expect him
to we need a community of people for that I suggest you go read the article
on silent PC review and if you would check out the Forum Link in the video
description and let everyone in the community know including myself what
experiences you have had with lapping your CPU or CPU heat sink from reading
the article it seems that con cave heat sinks are bad flat ones are relatively
neutral and convex ones have a bit of an advantage thanks to their stronger
mounting pressure directly over the CPU die as it curves this information has
led water block manufacturers and enthusiasts to intentionally bow the
bases of popular blocks in the past like the dtec fusion and apog GT so while we
don't have anything obviously concave to test for you we hope you still found the
methodology for lapping we presented useful and we'd love to see your results
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you're wondering what to watch next maybe check out one of the previous
Workshop videos the the answer to every single one of them is it doesn't matter
but there's going to be one of them up there so check it
out