Opteron 165: Should I lap the stock HSF?

Opterons have quality heatsinks so you dont need an aftermarket one unless your going over say 2.4-2.6

i have the 165 with stock heatsink..at 2.5 and its cool idles around 35C...

I do have good airflow in my case though. Unless your going to go crazy stock should be fine.

Here's the thing: you can screw it up if you don't know what you're doing. Wusy has grinding and polishing experience, but many people have problems keeping things flat. So, if you plan to do this by hand or with some kind of jerry-rigged setup, you might end up with a HS mating surface that isn't flat. A mirror polish is cool, but it has to be flat or you're hosed.

Thanks Wusy, I've been browsing various guides on lapping and I found that one to be very informative. Obviously I don't want to mess anything up so I am making sure I know what I am doing. At this point I just got my system and haven't even put it together (I am doing it today after work) so I don't think I am going to have the patience to do lap the HSF right away 

Most likely I will just do a mild OC for the time being and see what I can do without lapping it, and then later on if I am not satisfied with the perfomance of the stock cooling I will explore other options. Thanks for all the responses though!

otpy 165 oced 2.8 with stock cooler and 1.45 volts
idle 32c full load both cores 48c

daaaaaamn! nice results. what kind of hardware are you running (mobo etc)? Post some CPU-Z screenshots or bios pics so I can try to emulate you. My goal is to stay below 50c at load and run minimal overvoltage. I went with DFI for motherboard because I wanted the most bios options and stability available and because 4 DIMMs at 1T is pretty hott.

Well, if you are going to spend your time lapping a stock heatsink, consider that removing the IHS will take you about the same amount of time and yield a much lower temperature.

If you got a drill, you can make a trendy keychain out the now useless IHS :


Note that you will have to modify or adapt your cooling system to compensate for the 3mm difference if it relies on a clip based mounting system.

Just an update:

I scraped that stupid heat pad and applied some Arctic Silver. In a couple of hours of minor tweaking I have it running stable at 2.35 Ghz at the stock x9 multiplier. I'm running a ram divider for now (216mhz) but I think I can bump the memory speed up a little bit now that I've loosened the timings a little bit (2.5-3-3-8 from 2-3-2-5).

Idle temps are at 24-26 and load is at 35-38 (1.4v). I'm going to leave it that way for a couple of weeks and then try to work my way up to the magic 2.6ghz mark. Thanks for the input guys, I'm happy with these temps so I don't think I'll be lapping this thing for a while.

his butt isnt smooth at all so no worries

  :mrgreen:


also nice key chain

around 1.5 volts @ 2.7ghz, I use a SI-120 but it still gets to around 50C. I do have an SLI setup, 2 GTX's so they do heat the case up a little bit, but I don't mind the heat just as long as it doesn't get to the point of doing damage. I may remove the cap from the cpu if I get bored, heard that is decreases temps alot.

Speaking from experience on lapping engine components if you want to lap anything it needs to be done between the two parts that are going to touch, ex valve to valve seat or its worthless. So on a hsf you need to lap it to the cpu ihs. Also you don’t use sandpaper, use lapping compound, it is very similar looking to as5, and it’s like liquid sandpaper but much much finer than regular sand paper. You put some on the two pieces you are going to lap then gently rub them together in a circular motion.

Also I think the idea of removing the ihs is a much better solution (or just use as5, that’s what it is specifically made for, to fill minor imperfections in the surface of the hsf and the ihs)

Banusflakes, if you would like to do this to your hsf and want a more detailed explanation just pm me and I would be glad to help you. However, I don’t know anything about doing this to a cpu and a hsf, I have never done that before, I only know the technique when it comes to engines but I do have some ideas that are running through my head now that might work for the cpu to ihs where my experience with engines would come in handy like how to keep the two surfaces flat as mentioned above.

Up to 8C apparently.
The contact between the core and IHS fairly poor.

Not to mention that this temp drop allows for running the CPU stable at a slightly higher frequency and/or a lower Vcore.

In my case, I got all of the above and a nice keychain  

I have a 165 and the stock cooler does a nice job. It's running at almost 2.7 right now and the temps are in the low 30s at idle and go up to 48-50 under load. I will be replacing it with an aftermarket cooler though because I do find it rather noisy. It's the loudest fan in my case when under load. At idle, it's pretty quiet.

Ok heres a question for you wuzy.

Why not just varnish the heat sink and cpu with AS5 or another such thermal paste. It should give you similer results I would think. Please corect me if I'm wrong, and if you don't know I think I'll try it out with in the month.

I'm not a wusy, but I'll answer anyway. Some people advocate putting some thermal paste on then buffing it off. I've done it and it seems to work.