This is my first time so feel free to humiliate me.
And sorry if the pictures completely fail; my camera is and I am not far better.

When I got my cpu and heatsink I did the razor blade test, but my razor blade was somewhat old so I don't feel it tells the whole truth.
However, what I did notice was the cpu was rather straight and the ultra 120 was a bit convex.
I worried at first because I thought that if the cpu was infact concave, then the ultra 120's convex plate would actually make good contact.
I wasn't about to let that stop me, though, so I said screw it and started my work.





I bought a piece of glass from homedepot, wet sandpaper 320-600grit from there as well, and 3m wetanddry 800-1000 grit from an auto parts store.



I had a bucket with soapy water but I found myself using it scarcely. Call me crazy but dry sanding worked faster and "better" for me; maybe this is one of my crucial mistakes but I only wet sanded for 3 or 4 sheets (for each part) out of the 24 or so sheets I had.

This is my "holding technique" for the ultra 120. There really wasn't a super comfortable way to hold it, but this was the only way it was stable. Taped it up a little after 5 or 6 sheets, when I realized it was lapping my knuckle away.


Ultra 120


320grit (sheet 1)


320grit (sheet 2)


400grit (sheet 1)


400grit (sheet 2)


600grit (sheet 1)


600grit (sheet 2)


800grit (sheet 1)


800grit (sheet 2)


1000grit (sheet 1)


1000grit (sheet 1) against graph paper


Lapping the heatsink 90 degrees to the left or right (basically doing it side to side instead of up and down) was a bit difficult, and I used at most a half a sheet of paper on lapping the heatsink in this fashion.

The only problem I can report is that the far edges have stripes where the copper is a little less polished. This may have been because I didn't perfectly balance my lapping directions. After the pic I did lap it some more and reduced the stripes to about 1/8" each. At this point I felt no reason to continue as the stripes would not be in contact with the cpu and lapping them to perfection would probably take ~40 minutes. I had spent 3 hours on the heatsink already.

e6600


320grit (sheet 1)



320grit (sheet 2)


400grit (sheet 1)


400grit (sheet 2)



600grit (sheet 1)


600grit (sheet 2)


800grit (sheet 1)


800grit (sheet 2)


1000grit (sheet 1)


1000grit (sheet 2)


As you can see, the grain was different in some of the pictures because I would periodically turn the cpu 90 degrees.

Yea I'm a jerk for not doing cpu with graph paper. :-/
I also regret not doing the "water test" for both the heatsink and cpu after they were lapped.

I did razor test them and they both appeared quite straight this time. I put one against the other and there was a bit of a vacuum pull so I figured it was at least not a complete failure.

I also wish I had taken pics of the AS5 application, as I feel I could probably use some improvement there.
All I can say is that the application was done with a razor blade and I did my best to apply as little as possible. The layer was in fact so thin that extra strokes would remove the grease and leave gaps, so I had to take some time to make sure the whole ihs was covered.


I attached an S-Flex 1600rpm to the ultra 120.
I'll post temps and stuff in a little bit.
I'm not fully knowledged in the ways of conroe temps but right now I'm running it at 3465 mhz (385x9) and I'm getting 65/66 c (Core Temp) with two hours of dual-instance prime95 torture test.

I have to say this didn't reach my highest expectations but it definately wasn't a total failure. I'm going to keep looking to improve temperatures, however. I'm considering lapping it more and buying liquid metal pads or syringe. With the case door open temps go down to 59/60 if I remember correctly, so better fans may also be in the works.


So anyway, criticism is encouraged and thanks for your time and help.