Lapping the CPU?

[MacrossPlus]

I saw this thing over at overclockers.com where they were lapping the blue part of the Intel PIII Chip and it was lowering their temps a lot. Is this kind of thing safe? There were no instructions on the site, just a couple pictures from people who did it (blue core on the PIII and after pictures of it that were white). Is it a good idea to do this? And if so, how do you do it? What kind of sandpaper do you use etc.?

 

[bacillus]

<< Is it a good idea to do this? >>


no it's not. reserved for the extreme o/clocker only, as the gains are outweighed by the potential risk of cpu damage/death!

 

[BurntKooshie]

Lapping was popular when there were heatplates. The idea was to get the heatplates as flat as possible, this way they wouldn't have nearly as many gaps (and thus, thermal grease could be applied in even thinner layers). Now that everything's flip-chip, the die is extremely close to the surface, and if you do much lapping, you'll get straight to the core, and kill the chip.

Lapping the heatsink on the otherhand - that's not a bad idea (most people did both if they lapped the CPU). It does help lower the temperatures, but only because they had poor thermal conduction due to air pockets that weren't filled with thermal grease.

 

[conlan]

On the old Celerons with the die on the back of the slug you could see some gains lapping the slug down. The celly2s and P3s have the die right on top covered only by a thin protective layer. That being said, I went ahead and lightly lapped my celly2 566 just last week. I used 1000 grit, then 1500 grit and stopped when all the blue color was gone as didnt want to trash my die. Due to a bad BIOS flash i'm just getting the rig back up working this weekend, so i dont know if it improved anything yet.I would think you would see better gains lapping your HSF if it's base is not flat and smooth.

 

[MustPost]

um... whats lapping?

 

[conlan]

Here is a decent guide to lapping HSFs, only i wouldnt stop @ 600 grit paper as the author did. Continue on with the finer grits till you reach at least 1500 grit.

 

[JimMc]

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