Hi all, I've just ordered a bunch of wet & dry grit paper so I can lap my Thermalrite Ultra 120 heatsink but I'd also like to lap my Intel Core 2 Duo E8500. Is this safe to do. Who has done this?

Safe it is, if you do it right. I've never been much for lapping (CPUs ) myself but I'm sure it can make a difference if you overclock a lot.

I triedd lapping my E6600 also on a TRUE 120. Temps improved maybe 1-2° and it didn't improve oc. Too much work, too little gain, imho.

I hand sharpen all my knives and wood working tools on a regular basis so I'm confident that I can lap my CPU and Thermalrite 120 heatsink nicely, but I do wonder if stripping that outer layer of metal from the CPU degrades the lifespan of the CPU chip inside, since the heat is now closer to the dye by a MM or so

How do you mean? The heat comes from the die.

You mean to lap the heatspreader, right? Not remove the heatspreader and lap the die?

An alternative might be to use Thermal Interface Material.

See:
viewtopic.php?p=554129#p554129
and
viewtopic.php?p=554145#p554145

Hey guys my wet & dry paper arrived this morning and I duly went about lapping my Thermalright 120-Ultra first then the Core 2 Duo E8500 CPU after.

The first thing I noticed when I placed a straight edge steel ruler accross the 120-Ultra was that is was very obviously not flat at all with a large central "high spot" which is best case scenario as a high spot is far easier to flatten than a low spot. I worked from 400 through to 2000 grit wet & dry paper than finally polished with Autosol car polish for a mirror scratch-free shine.

The CPU was flat for the most part with a minor low spot to one side so I pretty much went through the same process as with the cooler and then VERY THOROUGHLY cleaned both using a toothbrush, white spirit and plenty of clean white cloth rag.

The results are VERY impressive as I've knocked off 6 celcius from my idle temp which means I won't be needing to fix a fan to my Thermalritght cooler after all.

Guys it is definately worth the effort!

I thought that was intentional... to make it easier to seat the cooler. Did you lapping make it harder or easier to seat the cooler?

It's funny you should say that becuase I actually did find it a little more of a challenge to sit the cooler atop the CPU, but I wouldn't say it was difficult.

Great work! It's nice to improve temps without any added noise. What did you use for a flat surface for the paper?

Hi apoalgies for late reply. I actually used one of my japanese water stones. It wasn't perfectly flat, but it obviously did the job just fine!