[LClan439]

The best heat spreader for a CPU would be if the chip manufacturer would build a HSF directly on top of the core instead of having that "cheap" heat spreader on there. But thats not cost effective for mass production. Having that lapped or nearly flawless surface on the heat spreader easily results in better cooling. Its best if the HSF is also lapped. When you have that nearly flawless connection between the top surface of the spreader and the HSF, you get as close as you can to the HSF actually being the spreader.

When you lap, you do it in stages with the sandpaper. When you start out, you can see just how crappy the surface is. I give the pics of my lap job on my E8400 as evidence.

Here is what the CPU and HSF looked like before:




This is after the first run with the 600 grit. you can see some copper showing through. See just how uneven the nickel surface really in on a CPU heat spreader.




Here is after the 800 grit run. The copper is coming through more. You can tell the lowesrt part of the surface (the surface making the least contact with the heatsink) is the center. the area where the cores are! so this CPU would be a poor thermal performer. In fact, in a short prime95 run, it heated up to over 60c very quickly before the lapping.




Here is after the 1000 grit. You can still see some nickel in the center, this chip's heat spreader was terrible! and you wouldn't know how bad unless you did this.




Here it is pretty much finished. going to do a few more runs with the 2000 grit for sport. Then do the heatsink on the CNPS9500 cooler.




And the final results before reinstall. I used IC Diamond thermal compound. I ran prime95 again, and it never went over 47c.