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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 your results on the forum ifixit.com is your complete DIY electronics repair solution from their nineteen thousand free step-by-step repair guides to their huge inventory of replacement parts and tools with lifetime warranties iFixit has got your repair needs covered today we're talking about their latest and greatest the all new Pro Tech tool kit it's a completely reimagined design but just as rugged and portable as before and it's even easier to use the tools as they are easier to access it includes the new 64 bit driver kit which replaced the former 54 bit driver kit that has more durable case with magnets included which is absolutely nice the 64 bit driver kit is held to the tool roll using magnets 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buy sandpaper at the local shot that's fine buy cool t-shirt like this one or the direct monthly contribution to the pour poram well the direct monthly contribution to 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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