CPU lapping - good or bad?

[ElAwesome]

Hey guys,

has anyone of you lapped your CPUs? How much improvement did you get for this?
I somehow can't imagine that shrubbing away material that is meant to cool down your CPU can lower your temps.

For those who don't know what CPU lapping is:

http://www.l3p.nl/other-builds-mods/cpu-lapping/how-to-lap-an-i7-2600k/

 

[samisnake]

did it to a q6600 for the sake of it.
didnt really do anything, other than look cool.

i think if you are in a scenario where every degree helps, it might be worth it, but for an average user its pointless.

as an idea of how itll help temps, the IHS (intel heat spreader) isnt always flat, same with the bottom of heatsinks/waterblocks etc.
lapping it brings those surfaces back to a flat level, plus exposing the copper, so when the heatsink and ihs are mated, they are completely flat providing better heat dispersal.


heres my q66 just after lapping

 

[ElAwesome]

I really does look cool, but only until you apply thermal paste...

 

[samisnake]

yeah exactly.
i mean its 'fun' to do (as long as nothing gets damaged), but i havent done it since. just no need.

 

[the_gael]

Hey guys,

has anyone of you lapped your CPUs? How much improvement did you get for this?
I somehow can't imagine that shrubbing away material that is meant to cool down your CPU can lower your temps.

For those who don't know what CPU lapping is:

http://www.l3p.nl/other-builds-mods/cpu-lapping/how-to-lap-an-i7-2600k/

Have not lapped my last two but I had good results with lapping a couple of Xeon W3520's (i7-920) - with these I had a 2-3 degree temp improvement. I think what might be happening is that we remove the coating with the writing whose purpose is to look good and we are left with the actual cover over the cpu hence the improvement. Not sure if this improvement is still the same as there might have been an improvement in the coating since then - I am a little out of touch with it now as I only do mild over-clocking.

edited to add
Oops importantly I forgot to say that I also changed compound so I think the improvements I saw were a combination of the better surface mating, better compound and the removal of the "paint"

 

[Einsteiniac]

As mentioned the reason it works when done right is that it makes the heat spreader perfectly flat. The reason we use things like thermal compound is because these surfaces are not even. So the thermal compound fills in the gaps. Thermal compout is less efficient however than the heat sink material. So the less compound you can get away with the better the heat transfer and the cooler the cpu.

 

[the_gael]

yeah exactly.
i mean its 'fun' to do (as long as nothing gets damaged), but i havent done it since. just no need.

agreed - I no longer do it because while it was fun to see what results I got with it the gains were not such that I would consider doing it again for daily use over clocking.