Thanks for the reply. I also did a Google search and read several more
articles.
I like the wet polishing technique and the reminder to use distilled
water to help prevent static buildup (when polishing the CPU's heat
pad). While lapping the heatsink should be easy, I'm leery of polishing
the CPU's heat pad. I don't believe it is too thick and I definitely
don't want to be trying to get a mirror finish only to find the guts
getting exposed. Anyone know how thick is the heat pad on the Athlon XP
(at its thinnest point)?
Using fine-grit paper, say at least #400 or higher, it would take a
long time to sand all the way through, you won't end up doing so by
accident. Once you get through the outer coating it's silvery
colored, that is sufficient enough to make it flat providing you apply
even pressure. It really isn't necessary to do much lapping on the
core though, what little benefit there is, is from removing very minor
surface irregularities. On the Palominos there was laser-etching
across the whole core so more extensive lapping was beneficial, but on
the Thoroughbreds and Barons the etching is only in the corner. What
I do is take a Q-tip, a tiny bit of metal polish, placed in a dremel
tool and just do the etched corner and barely around the perimeter,
only a slight wiping of the top, not enoough to wear through the
colored outer coating. It really does't make much difference though,
but be sure that you apply even pressure if you're going to lap very
deep to avoid chipping the corners.
I'm thinking of getting the MSI KT600 Delta-LSR motherboard which has
their Corecell circuit to monitor various temps and allow changing the
fan speed. I'll put in an Athlong 2500+ Barton and overclock it (I've
seen some users get it up to a 3200+ equivalent by getting 166MHz FSB up
to 200FSB, and since the multiplier is the same for the 3200+ then
you've basically upped the 2500+ to a 3200+). The mobo handles DDR400
memory (which the KT400 did not although their KT400A did) and I'll also
be putting in DDR400 memory, so I'd like to get the FSB at 200MHz to
make full use of the memory speed and hopefully get the 2500+ boosted to
a 3200+. Hopefully the Thermaltake Silent Boost full copper heatsink
and 80mm fan (
http://snurl.com/37sj) should suffice since it is rated
for up to the 3200+, plus hopefully it will be quieter than some coolers
that run at 40 to 50 dB, and hopefully the Corecell will find that the
CPU fan doesn't have to always be running at max spin. I'd like to
overclock but I would still like to keep it quiet. With the
overclocking, it could be the temp is always high resulting in the CPU
fan always having to run fast. But I figure lapping the heatsink will
still give it some edge in handling the overclocking. I figure to use
Artic Silver 5 for the heat paste. The heatsink ($35) and paste ($8) is
still way cheaper than the price differential from a XP 2500+ to an XP
3200+ ($230).
I'm just not sure about lapping the CPU's heat pad, though, since
removing a tad too much and the new CPU is scrap.
It's not easy to sand too deep, though the less you sand the more
likely you'll end up with it flat... Just get it flat, don't worry
about trying to reduce the amount of material between the 'sink and
the core. Put most of the work into lapping the heatsink itself.
One thing that can help when lapping the 'sink is to "break it" a new
piece of sandpaper before letting it touch the 'sink. Rub a scrap
piece of metal over each grade of paper to rub off the tallest of the
grit-particles, as they would produce deeper scratches in the heatsink
that take much much more work to sand out later. If you don't get rid
of those largest grits you'll end up with a mirror-finish 'sink but
with many tiny scratches that take forever to sand out with the finest
sandpaper. On the other hand, that last 20% of the lap-job, towards a
mirror finish, has quite diminishing returns, is more or less a matter
of vanity rather than a performance boost so long as you're using
heatsink compound.
Dave
