i was reading that thermal paste is for filling the air gaps between the heatsink and processor. so would polishing or wetsanding the heatsink and the processor(the heatsink ontop of the dhip like the 64's) help lower temps, and require less thermal paste??? or would it make it worse?? -Major
Well, i dunno about the less thermal paste but I do know u should put as little as possible (really thing layer) regardless if its been sanded down.
I'm not sure how much of a difference you will notice, but it will improve the heat transfer. Most decent heatsinks have near mirror finishes which you won't improve much upon, but you may have noticed on some cpu heatspreaders that the corners are a bit higher than the center of the chip. If you google "lapping the cpu" you will find a bunch of guides that will show you how you can sand down the cpu heatspreader and heantsink surfaces. I don't really think its worth the effort unless you really want to squeeze a few extra degrees in.
Yes, definitely. The best contact will not require thermal paste! BUT only if you do it correctly. You can make it worse very easily. And mirror finish doesn't mean the surface is flat. Having the surface flat is far far more important than having a smooth surface.
I've polished my heatsinks, but would never try to do it with the CPU, since there's quite a big risk that it gets damaged in the process. There's no difference in the amount of thermal paste used though. Cheers Olle
thanks for the replies... no im not thinking about sanding the actuall cpu just the heat spreader they put on top. just curious for my next build, im not gonna go n try to screw up my current rig
Don't waste your time sanding. Just remove the IHS straight away. But be very careful of the heatsink you are using, since the pressure on the processor will be very different when you remove the IHS, and the socket cam might not clear the heatsink. http://www.overclockers.com/tips1197/
