Quote Originally Posted by sesdave View Post
If the IHS is concave and the HS uneven lapping will provide better contact and reduce temperatures - check the 10c drop in the link posted previously. Achieving even flat surface on the CPU and HS is the objective - if already flat dont waste your time lapping. Mirroring adds nothing as paste will still be applied to complete the thermal transfer connection.
MB and HSF are part of the overclock but CPU heat output is a main contributor to restricting the overclock. He has a good CPU(lucky swine -lol) but he hasn't maxed his overclock out. So when raising FSb and other parameters he will be limited by the amount of vcore that can be applied for stability before the resulting temperature rise causes instability or fries the CPU. Water and air cooling have a limit to what they can hold the load temps at no matter how good they are - so any reduction in the heat output under load is good to achieve the maximum overclock. That is why people use phase for extreme overclocking.

Hans, I'll admit I was a little skeptical before my first lapping. I had an E6600 that ran somewhat warm, so I decided to lap the heatsink and CPU, and it ended up running 7c cooler! That's not too shabby! Also, my MSI *is* the Platinum edition with the crazy heat pipes which kind of make mounting a fan to a Thermalright U-120 somewhat tricky! I've owned Asus, Giga, A-open, Abit, and Intel MB's, yet this MSI definitely has impressed me.

Sesdave, you make some good points! Once I lapp everything I'll ramp up this CPU to see what it can really do! *oink*


- Sker