Lapped my Ultra-120 eX (pics and results)

[graysky]

When my Ultra-120 X and I have to say I'm a little puzzled. The base where it should contact the heat spreader is not smooth at all, it's actually grooved! You can see a scratch which is where I gently ran my thumb nail over the surface; I could feel the rough edges.

Have a look for yourself:


Anyway, others encouraged me to lap it which I've never done before. After wrestling with the idea for a couple of days as well as reading many articles/guides, I decided to give it a go. $20 worth of sandpaper, a $2 piece of flat glass, and 4 hours of careful work (and sweat) later, I was left with a pretty darn flat HS. You can see by the pictures that this particular one was quite concave instead of being flat which isn't good for keeping contact between the HS and IHS of the CPU.





Did it work you're probably wondering. The temp data as measured in speedfan.exe for a ~1 h x264 encode (uses all 4 cores with a CPU load of >99 %). I had speedfan log the temps (which it does every 3-4 seconds) and I averaged the whole data set per core for the 2nd pass of the 2-pass encode (the 2nd pass is the most CPU intensive). Room temp for both experiments was ~23 °C. By the way, I added a constant of 15 to each core in speedfan since it incorrectly displays temps for quads by 15 °C.

System specs: Q6600 @ 9x333=3.01 GHz (stock voltage), P5B-Deluxe in an Antec p182 case.

Before lapping the HS:

Core 0: 66.9
Core 1: 66.4
Core 2: 60.6
Core 3: 60.6

After lapping the HS:

Core 0: 64.9
Core 1: 64.4
Core 2: 59.0
Core 3: 59.4

Delta:

Core 0: 2.0
Core 1: 2.0
Core 2: 1.6
Core 3: 1.2

[Bipidri]

makin' XS.org backups here ?

I loved lapping my own eXtreme. so easy to work with. not like my Artic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro that I had previously. damn thing destroyed 3 sandpapers.

on a scale of 1 to 10, ease of lap sessions
my Conroe's IHS: 10
Artic Cooling : 3
Thermalright u120 eXtreme: 8

here are my pics:
Thermalright stock ISO base:
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y29...i/SSL10653.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y29...i/SSL10654.jpg

lapped up to 2000grit
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y29...i/SSL10691.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y29...i/SSL10680.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y29...i/SSL10679.jpg

[graysky]

I think maximizing the sources of info is a good thing. Post threads where the highest number of people are likely to read them.

Nice pics and nice job judging by them by the way. Do you have any before/after temps?

[KorruptioN]

Fine grooves aren't significant - Thermalright has always been doing this. It's more about the flatness of the mating surface.

[graysky]

Originally Posted by KorruptioN

Fine grooves aren't significant - Thermalright has always been doing this. It's more about the flatness of the mating surface.

I dunno if I'd call the grooves stock base fine man, they were pretty darn big if you asked me. I agree with your last statement though, it's all about the flatness.

[jonnyGURU]

Yep. Remember really early on, during Socket A/370 days, there were a few Thermaltake units out there that had a slight curve to the surface? Couldn't really even be seen with the naked eye. Caused a lot of problems for a lot of people since those chips didn't have heatspreders on them.

[Bipidri]

Originally Posted by graysky

Do you have any before/after temps?

sorry mate. I attacked lapping directly after opening the box and checking everything looked ok (like confirming that 2 heatpipes; 1 either side; was not soldered to the base side). So I will never know what I gained from lapping it to 2000grit.


by the way Graysky do you know if anyone tried and stabilize running their Conroe at 4 GHz ?
I have a feeling this eXtreme begs for trying it. unfortunately, I am blocked by my memory (cheap V-Data) on my P5B-Dx, so I've ordered a 2x1gb DDR2-667 3-3-3-12 Crucial Ballistix kit and aim to run them a 1:1 synch FSB 444-450 MHz. I really hope things will work out smoothly.

[signmeuptoo]

I lapped my Thermalright XP-120 after using it unlapped (it was quite concave and nickle plated beforehand) with arctic silver ceramique. My lapping used special paper I bought off this fellow online, some special colored papers he sells, and then used Mother's Polish. I also changed my thermal compound to Coollaboratories Liquid Metal. Guess how much temps dropped? Over 14 degrees C!!! MY temps now, using my very hot chip, are as low as 30 degrees.

[Bipidri]

Very Nice !

no problem removing your heatsink I presume? I heard the Liquid Pro would ''fuse'' but a guy named ''Chaos Minion" iirc said he just needed to run a full TAT load for awhile so it would 'melt' and easy to remove.

I was almost gonna buy some. as I could not find around here Shin-Etsu X23 or Artic Cooling's MX-1.

[graysky]

Thought I read somewhere that Liquid Metal is corrosive to aluminum?