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Results:

After around a minute or two of lapping, your CPU will look like this:

You can see the scratches on the sealant and the dust surrounding the sealant. Now, switch over to the 600 Grade sandpaper and start lapping again. Remember to flip the chip over to have a look at the sealant every couple of seconds. After another half a minute, you can switch to the 1,000 Grade to smoothen the surface and lessen the scratches left behind the 400 and the 600 Grade sandpaper.

Try putting your heatsink on top of the CPU and hold it against some light and look at the surface that is touching the heatsink. Is there a gap where the light is shining through? If there is, it means that your lapping is not done right. Lap the CPU till there is NO gap between the CPU and the heatsink. (Remember to be careful)

Once done, you can clean the CPU by blowing on it to remove the dust and using a piece of clothe with a bit of thermal grease to clean the entire top of the CPU. Why use thermal grease? Well, the thermal grease is sticky by itself and does not have any conductive properties so it’s a great tool to pick up any stray dust that is on the CPU. Clean the CPU PROPERLY and do not leave any thermal grease on the CPU.

Conclusion

Once the CPU is clean, pop the CPU into the motherboard and hook everything up again. Fire up the machine and see if there is a drop in temperature. Beside myself, a reader in our OCWorkbench.com Forum, have noticed a drop of 4-5 degrees Celsius. The reader could now post and enter Windows 98 at 980mhz! Before lapping, he could not even POST at that speed!

Some of you readers wonder, “What is enough?” when lapping and unfortunately, I can’t answer that question. The only reason that is stopping me from answering that is that this CPU costs S$420 and it’s a bit too much to satisfy my curiosity. I’m not trying to expose the core but only trying to lessen the hindrance of the plastic sealant that is preventing heat from being dissipated more efficiently. I hope that those of you that are thinking of trying will now have a guide in lapping the Intel Coppermines/Celeron 2s. Two words of advice, “BE CAREFUL!”

*The author and the website will not be responsible for any damages that can result from this and you have to bear all responsibilities if anything goes POOF!

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PIII Lapping continued