Lapping your proc

[Toki]

Anyone have experience lapping a proc and wanna share some tips with me? Ive done HSFs before but not the processor itself and i don't want to kill my Q9550. Is there any way to tell if Ive sanded too far or if i should stop soon?

[flearider]

i would have thought with the tolerance lvl in making cpu's you wouldn't have to lap it .. ??

[affiliate13]

Originally Posted by Toki

Anyone have experience lapping a proc and wanna share some tips with me? Ive done HSFs before but not the processor itself and i don't want to kill my Q9550. Is there any way to tell if Ive sanded too far or if i should stop soon?

Hello Welcome.
Since you are in Hawaii if you feel like it post som pix of what you can see out your window and make us all jealous.
The 45nm quads seem to be a bit of pain to get high FSB from. I think lapping the IHS will give you limited returns.
But if you like a project and those couple of degrees are what you need then as long as you know that your warranty is gone, gone, gone doing this then there are a couple of handy guides out there:


How to lap the Intel LGA775 IHS flat - The Tech Repository Forums
Tech ARP - The CPU & Heatsink Lapping Guide

If you do this, i would like to see your results w/ pix (pls)- i have considered doing this for some time and may yet have a stab at the end of next month.

[Toki]

Thanks for the links. I remembered something about seeing copper as you sand but just wanted to make sure.

If anything ill give it a go in a week or two. My system is torn down for some case modding so it'll be after thats done. Ill be sure to report back here with results.

[affiliate13]

I just noticed you are using the Zalman 9700. You might find it limits your best clocking attempts. They were a great cooler awhile back but there are a couple of cheap coolers out there now that should give you better temps:

These are all HDT type coolers and cost relatively little:

Sunbeamtech core contact freezer
OCZ Vendetta 2
Xigmatech S1283

Then you have the old favourites:

Thermalright Ultra Extreme
Tuniq Tower

These should actually make a bigger difference than the IHS lapping

[GSte]

Originally Posted by affiliate13

The 45nm quads seem to be a bit of pain to get high FSB from. I think lapping the IHS will give you limited returns.

As Affiliate says the 45nm quads seem to hit an FSB wall rather than a temp wall so your efforts may not bring much reward, but if you do lap it then let us know your results.

[merdat]

Put a steel ruler across the CPU before you LAP it - you may not need to!!. I would try one of these new cooler thingies first, unless under the ruler test it proves to be very bad. Let us know how you get on .

[Kelainefes]

As they said, if the IHS is flat, you probably won't get a faster overclock after lapping, just anything from 2 to 7 C lower temps.