CPU & Heatsink Lapping - Are concave, convex, or flat heatsinks best for cooling?
CPU & Heatsink Lapping - Are concave, convex, or flat heatsinks best for cooling?
2016-05-05
CPU and heatsink laughing 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 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
until skull Canyon nook features a 6th
generation Core i7 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 especially mirrors are very
flat once you have 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'd use a fairly standard progression
of grits consisting of 400 600 800 1000
1500 and 2000 wet the sandpaper starting
at your lowest grit and leave some
standing water on it in order for the
heatsink to glide nicely take the
sandpaper down to your surface and get
to work keep note of the direction the
heatsink is facing and slide it up and
down the paper five times totaling 10
total passes when doing this control the
tilt of the heatsink 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 heatsink press into
the sandpaper instead once you have
completed one round of this rotate the
heatsink 90 degrees once if you
completed 10 full rotations it's time to
move up a grid as you can probably guess
it's an extremely tedious process I
would highly recommend putting on an
audiobook 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 all day it most
of those were super old posts but either
way it was fairly consistent for people
to achieve anywhere between 1 and 5
degrees of improvement in cooling
performance after lapping awesome
perfect candidate for a workshop video
that might actually have a conclusion
that isn't you know
really 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 Evo's there are
there's a lot of them I then spent three
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 over volted to 1.3
5 volts to 67 degrees Celsius in an
ambient room temperature of 19 degrees
after lapping it cooled the same CPU
with the same fan speed to 70 degrees
Celsius but the ambient temperature of
22 degrees meaning that the temperature
of the room went up 3 degrees and the
temperature of the computer are more
specifically the CPU went up 3 degrees
also known as not a damn thing change I
was frustrated as I am now I felt like
the results were off like I probably did
something wrong I needed to 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 titled our lapped CPU
heatsink test platform here's where it
was reinforced that the surface
scratches and imperfections are less of
a big deal than the curve here is where
it was reinforced that the curve or lack
thereof is kind of what matters not
really how shiny it is here's where I
learnt 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
remove 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 laughing
your CPU or CPU heatsink from reading
the article it seems that concave 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
basis of popular blocks in the past like
the D Tech fusion and Apogee GT so while
we don't have anything obviously concave
to test for you we hope you still found
the methodology for laughing we
presented useful and we'd love to see
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the forum well you're wondering what to
watch next if we check out one of the
previous knitted 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
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