Lapping?

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known12345

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 17, 2007
Messages
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I checked online and highest sandpaper grade that the homedepot nearby my location carries is 600, is this a high enough grade to sand a cpu and heatsink with (ofcourse I will use a lower one first)? Also, where exactly can you find a piece of glass and for how much?
 
600 is too high. 220 is a good starting point. Ace Hardware usually has a good range of sandpaper. Easypckits.com, Performance-pcs.com, and frozencpu.com are good online retailers. As far as glass goes, you should be able to go into hardware store and ask what small pieces they have. Just make sure you're using unused pieces of glass. As previously used ones may be warped or have imperfections that are less than 1 milimeter off, which can make a difference.
 
Check your auto parts stores or the autoparts departments of department srtores. In the paint section, they typically stock sandpaper up to 1000 grit if you really want to go all out. I have 320, 400, 600, 800, and 1000 that came in a 3M variety pack for like 5 bux that I got when I was refinishing my waverunner last fall.

Happy lapping.

Don
 
DonDon's the man on this one, sandpaper's universally cheap & w/good selection at car parts stores, surprised to hear Home Depot was limited. Any of it is good, and if it says '3M' it's likely as good as one will find.

No doubt, if Monster Cable made sandpaper, it would be $27/sheet for its high bandwidth & heat transfer marketing capabilities ;)

What fluid (lube) will you use, & ferrari had a good point, how will the glass be flat-checked? Maybe you have a straight-edge, blade or other solid surface as a base.
 
Get an 8x10 piece of picture glass from home depot for under $2. Sand paper can be had either there or any auto parts store. Just be sure you get the wet/dry stuff. The best lubricant you can use it low odor kerosene (camping supply also at home depot). Failing that you can use a few drops of dish soap in 1 liter of water.

I wrote up this and some lapping techniques over at techarp in this article if you want more tips.
 
Hi,

Sand paper....local auto parts store. The local auto zone had 2000 grit. Any good auto parts store that handles any kind of painting. I do not suggest a home improvement store since they will only lower grit papers due to wood working. I think I saw some high grit sandpapers at Tractor Supply as well. They seem to have a bit more than the normal of most places. If all else fails hit an auto body shop or even a supply house. They will sell to you off the street most of the time. The price will be a bit higher but generally they will have the grit you are looking for. My dad use to have 1200 in his cabinet at home when he did auto body.

Glass you can find anywhere. I got mine through a placing I was working at the time. It is a thicker piece at 3/8 inch thick. The surface is about 10 by 16 inches. Flat and sturdy plus I just keep it around for any other sanding projects that need a flat surface. Also quick tip get an old bath towel and use it to store the glass in. That way it will protect it from small bumps and the like.

BTW, 3M is monster cable of sand paper. However, 3M is generally pretty good stuff.

shaggy
 
Thank you everyone very much for you feedback. I went to home depot and was sad to find that the highest grit they had was 220. However they had a piece of glass, 10x12inch for about $2.30 so it was good. Luckily there was a autozone near by and was happy to find that they sold grits of 320, 400, 600, 800 in a variety pack as well as above 1000+ so that was great.

The reason why I asked earlier about where to find the stuff was that I live in the dorms on campus and have no car so going ANYWHERE is a pain and so didn't want to have to go to a store (like home depot) and come out with nothing.
 
for flat glass, mirrors are always good as long as the reflection isn't distorted?
 
I followed greysky's guide today and lapped my zalman and qx6700

awesome guide greysky! made it simple. got the 8x12 glass for liek $2 at homedepot, and the 220 and 400 grit paper, got the 800 and 1000 at auto zone

speant about 3-4 hours, got both surfaces ultra flat

but damnit, maybe its the as5 take a awhile to set, i dont know, or maybe the zalman 9700 isnt all that. I even set the pc horizontally for now, to help the zalman settle flat, without weight tuggin on it.

right now, with a small oc ( all I did was bump the multiplier from 10 to 12, no change to memory, or fsb...its a qX6700 after all ) and right now, with the +15 added into speedfan for the quad issue,

CPU = 44
core0 = 52
core1 = 52
core2 = 48
core3 = 48


thats hot for not under any real load, right? I mean all im doing atm is reading posting to this board.

or is the CPU = 44 all I really need to worry about, and thats not bad at idle for the oc?

and maybe the as5 needs a day or two at least to really see whats up?

the cpu volt was left at auto, so the p32 evga 680i ar bios auto bumped the cpu volt from 1.25 to 1.29

should I try bringing it back to say, 1.27?
 
XBarbarian said:
I followed greysky's guide today and lapped my zalman and qx6700

awesome guide greysky! made it simple. got the 8x12 glass for liek $2 at homedepot, and the 220 and 400 grit paper, got the 800 and 1000 at auto zone

speant about 3-4 hours, got both surfaces ultra flat

but damnit, maybe its the as5 take a awhile to set, i dont know, or maybe the zalman 9700 isnt all that. I even set the pc horizontally for now, to help the zalman settle flat, without weight tuggin on it.

right now, with a small oc ( all I did was bump the multiplier from 10 to 12, no change to memory, or fsb...its a qX6700 after all ) and right now, with the +15 added into speedfan for the quad issue,

CPU = 44
core0 = 52
core1 = 52
core2 = 48
core3 = 48


thats hot for not under any real load, right? I mean all im doing atm is reading posting to this board.

or is the CPU = 44 all I really need to worry about, and thats not bad at idle for the oc?

and maybe the as5 needs a day or two at least to really see whats up?

the cpu volt was left at auto, so the p32 evga 680i ar bios auto bumped the cpu volt from 1.25 to 1.29

should I try bringing it back to say, 1.27?
Click to expand...

Those are pretty damn good temps, dude.

What are your o/c settings and vcore (you must set it manually).

Multiplier = ?
FSB = ?
vcore = ?

52,52,48,48 are great temps if I'm reading your post right and you're running 12x266 = 3.2 GHz. My machine @ 9x333 = 3.0 GHz runs hotter @ 1.2625V (BIOS).
 
graysky, was wondering, is it possible to over lap a cpu? I mean what would it look like or is there some distinct marks that will tell you you have gone too far? Is it even possible to go over board? I mean Ive lapped my cpu for a few hours and after awhile at 1000 grit stopped. I checked to see the flatness and everything is much flatter then normal except for the sides which still seem to let a little light through, should I keep going or are the sides just normally hard to lap?

I understand that the whole point of lapping is to ensure the entire base if flat but throughout the entire lapping process the sides always seemed to take ALOT longer to lap then the rest of the cpu?
 
known12345 said:
graysky, was wondering, is it possible to over lap a cpu? I mean what would it look like or is there some distinct marks that will tell you you have gone too far? Is it even possible to go over board? I mean Ive lapped my cpu for a few hours and after awhile at 1000 grit stopped. I checked to see the flatness and everything is much flatter then normal except for the sides which still seem to let a little light through, should I keep going or are the sides just normally hard to lap?

I understand that the whole point of lapping is to ensure the entire base if flat but throughout the entire lapping process the sides always seemed to take ALOT longer to lap then the rest of the cpu?
Click to expand...

You have like 1mm of surface to go thru, don't worry, theres not much you can do to "over lap" unless your using a belt sander :p
 
Yeah, you're probably fine if doing it by hand. I lapped mine for quite a while before it was flat on the sides.
 
graysky said:
Those are pretty damn good temps, dude.

What are your o/c settings and vcore (you must set it manually).

Multiplier = ?
FSB = ?
vcore = ?

52,52,48,48 are great temps if I'm reading your post right and you're running 12x266 = 3.2 GHz. My machine @ 9x333 = 3.0 GHz runs hotter @ 1.2625V (BIOS).
Click to expand...

all I have changed was the multi on the qx6700, from 10x to 12x. brought me to 3.2

fsb I left at stock - 266x4 =1066
vcore i havent changed..left on auto, which showed 1.29 in the bios, right now, cpu-z reports it as 1.304.

should I manually set the cpu to 1.29 ish?

my ram is gskill pc6400 4x2gb = 8gb ( running vista 64 ultimate ) 5.5.5.15 ( stock )

not sure that ram would like much tweaking, have read varying reports of oc'n it, so, not wanting to upset the ram, I chose to leave the fsb alone, leaving me with a 2:3 fsb to ram

and now, after 1 day, and playing wow most of the night which added some stress, not like prime yet, but some..which brought the the hotest cores to 62 max, my idle seems to have dropped a bit too

@ idel atm.. temps are 51,51, 46, 46

I did a lot of googling qx6700's today, seems they have always been a hot chip anyways, even stock, no oc, many reports showed uswers at similar temps to mine, oc'd =)

has a 130w ( basically 2x e6700 power usage ) with the 100tjunct , so i guess I am better off than i thought.

I did consider breakign it down one more time tonight, and reseating, and using even less as5, but i was pretty skimpy on this last re seat, after the lapping, so, I'm probably doing just fine.

Once again, greysky, thanks for the awesome lapping guide... you really did make it simple! And it totally makes sense, because my IHS was pretty damn concave.

I wonder if it would be better to replace the as5 with something thinner, especially with a lapped IHS/ HS, even though I was pretty sparse with it, I followed the pic on the as site for the thin line across the the 2 cpus, but its pretty goopy. maybe I need to give it a week or so, they say 300 hours to cure.

hmmm.. any suggestions on what I should go with for a manual setting on vcore at 3.2? auto shows it at 1.29 in bios, cpu-z shows 1.304 at idle, apparent vdroop has 1.26 at 100% cpu while running prime. temps while 100 % all core while running prime max at 72,71, 66,66. hmm.. 8mins in, got a error on core4. so maybe a vcore as opposed to auto is needed, or, I need to see if the vdroop can be resolved.. it s a evga 680i ar board btw.
 
I've found up to 1200 grit @ my local Kragen - or maybe it was Auto Zone? Anyway, you're fairly likely to get high(er) grit papers @ an auto parts place. I've heard Walmart's a good place to check too.
 
XBarbarian said:
@ idel atm.. temps are 51,51, 46, 46
Click to expand...

Wait a minute... your idle temps are 51,51,46,46? They seem kinda high. By comparison, mine is idling @ 34,36,34,34 w/ a vcore of 1.2625V.

XBarbarian said:
hmmm.. any suggestions on what I should go with for a manual setting on vcore at 3.2? auto shows it at 1.29 in bios, cpu-z shows 1.304 at idle, apparent vdroop has 1.26 at 100% cpu while running prime. temps while 100 % all core while running prime max at 72,71, 66,66. hmm.. 8mins in, got a error on core4. so maybe a vcore as opposed to auto is needed, or, I need to see if the vdroop can be resolved.. it s a evga 680i ar board btw.
Click to expand...

OK, this makes sense. Let me change my statements:

72,71,66,66 are about as high as you want to go period (under load). You might try to take the last little bit off as you wanted to do and as well use a small (not tiny or anything) amount of as5. BTW, it truely does take a number of hours to 'break in' in my experience. It won't do it over night... maybe after a week or so. The key is thermal cycles (hot-cold-hot-cold etc.)

As to your vcore, you'll have find where the min. is as described in my guide. Set it manually, torture test, if get no errors after 8-12 hours, you're probably good at that setting. Lower it and repeat. Alternatively, start low, work your way up. Only you can figure out where the min. vcore for your hardware is and that min will likely differ from someone else's min.

As to the vdroop, you'll have to google around for your specific board and the words "vdroop" or "pencil mod" to find out if someone has figured out which surface component to modify.
 
Good infoz yet again, thanks for the reply, Greysky.

yep. a little more work is yet required!

I also ordered some x23 ( or is it x32...brain fart atm ) Have you played with that TIM yet?
 
found good info on the vdroop mod for the 680i. done, and def helped stabilze the vcore.

I run vista 64, so I hadnt used coretemp, but I grabbed it and did the f8 thing to use it.

the VID is listed for this qx6700 as 1.3375! jeesh! If I got a stable 1 hour run with prime at 1.2685 ( dont recall the 4th digit exactly ), then the VID isn't really important at this point, is it? just good to know?

The VID is what Intel puts in the chip as what it's stock voltages should be at, correct? Odd that the bios had seen it as 1.25 for so long before I had tried any oc.

anyways, I ran through a few voltages looking for lowest possible prime stable vcore.

1.2682 proved my lowest stable place. no crashes, etc. sadly though, still saw 77, 77, 73,73 temps after 45 mins off small fft torture.

remember, All I have done is change the multi from 10 to 12. I have left the FSB at 266, left ram alone at 2:3 for a 800MHz ( its 4x2gb gskill pc6400 )

I wonder if going another route may be easier on the system? dropping below 10 multi and playing with the fsb, etc. getting to a 1:1 fsb:ram, etc? just seems like that would require altering even more variables.

I ordered some x23 yesterday from crazypc. should be here in a day or two. As I have lapped both hs and ihs to a nice flat @1000 grit, maybe the thinner x23 will help a tad.

or, as max temps achieved by prime are way higher than game play actually achieves, maybe this is much ado about nothing?

my idle is now down to 48,48, 44, 44, so more thermal cycles seems to be helping the as5 im using atm.
 
I haven't used that TIM, but some people think it's better than AS5. I dunno since I've been pretty happy with AS5. I dunno what the VID really means either. My chip has a VID of 1.2875V but I can run stock 9x266 @ 1.000 V with no stability problems and 9x333 @ 1.2625V.

You're right that p95 will produce more heat than any games, but what else do you use the machine to do? Video encoding will also produce heat levels that are near the p95 values. It all depends on what you use the machine for I guess.

What HS are you using? The Ultra-120 Extreme + a 1600 RPM 120mm fan is pretty much the best you can do on air. If the high 70s bug you, you might wanna get one and consider lapping it too. Failing that, you can lower your o/c which will very likely mean you can also lower your vcore. I don't go that high on my Q6600 for the same reason: heat. 9x333 times 4 cores is plenty quick for me :)
 
odd..I had posted a response to this yesterday..gone?...

Anyways, got the x23-7762 from CrazyPC yesterday, fast service from them. Ordered a Tuniq T120 and a Scythe SFlex E and F, those should come today. ( Got the F with the intention of replacing the case exhaust fan, should help as well. ) From what I could tell, the Thermaltake wouldn't work with the 680i board, unless I turned it to blow vertically, which wouldn't help me at all, so went with the tuniq, as it seems very close in performance.

So tonight, I'll lap the Tuniq, and play with the x23 and report back.

I'm just not convinced the Zalman is too good. So lets see what the Tuniq can do $$, that, and adding a much better case exhaust fan to create some negative pressure in the case.

atm, pre Tunic, etc.

idle @ 3.2 ( multi changed to 12x only, no change to fsb, or anything else, 266 stock fsb, ram at 2:3, 8gb gskill 800 ) and prime small ffs stable at 1.26825 vcore. no other volts changed i.e. nb, busses, etc.

48, 47, 44, 44

Load ( prime small fft ) 77, 77, 73, 73 :mad:

I wonder...with the 8gb 800 ram, if indeed just changing the multi on the qx6700 is the best way to boost performance? I know 1:1 ram would be best, but then i would need to dabble with sub 10 multi, and jack the fsb, etc. 333x10 maybe, but then ram would be 667, or, I wouldnt be at 1:1 to get it to 800? Maybe I shall stay at this 266, 2:3 and see if I can get the 8gb happy with 4,4,4,10 instead of the 5,5,5,15?

Anyways, having a blast learning this stuff, and playing :p Thanks for your knowledge and willingness to share, greysky! and others!
 
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