no thermal paste = better cooling?

copper and aluminum are better heat conductors than a thermal paste could ever be, am i right? i read that somewhere, and someone had the numbers up for thermal conductivity of copper and of ASIII, and copper beat it by far. don't have a link :-/ anyway if the heatsink is lapped to perfection (see swiftech mcx4000 or the like) won't the surface of the cpu and heatsink be touching perfectly, resulting in better heat transfer than sticking thermal goop in there? thoughts and comments plz

One other reason is not just the Heatsink being perfectly flat.....look at AMD's Socket A lineup of processors...ALL of them...except for the Thoroughbred's......from Spitfire Duron's to Palomino Athlon XP's.....they all have there names..core versions etc. etched onto the die.....that right there makes them inperfect.....gives texture....and gaps....if u dont believe me explian to me why if u have a Thermal Pad on the bottom of ur HSF and u take the HSF off after shuttign down the PC, u can actualyl read what it says on the core on the HSF...becasue of the texture/gaps on the printing.......and im not 100% positive but im pretty sure its dangerous to lap the die of a CPU....

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=13597" target="_new">-MeTaL RoCkEr</A>

lapped to perfection = very expensive
scratched once = not lapped to perfection
lapped to perfection = rocking horse sh|t
1 spec of dust/grit = poor/no thermal contact

in reality all things are a compromise. If you lapped a cpu core extensively, it will thin and weaken. Lapping will allow you to reduce the amount of thermal paste needed to do the job=better heat transfer.

Not using thermal paste at all is a sure fire way to overheat your cpu, give it a go and see if you are lucky.

Also, of course, taking sandpaper to your cpu or factory heatsink will void any warranty you have, and if you don't have a factory heatsink, you don't have a warranty anyway!

-* <font color=red> !! S O L D !! </font color=red> *-
To the gentleman in the pink Tutu

LOL LOL

<b>(<font color=yellow>as good as it looks</font color=yellow> )</b>

Yeah me too, I didn't get that joke!

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Dude.

They totally thought they had that one lapped to perfection. But like that probe we sent to Mars, someone forgot to change slugs to newtons, and the whole thing snowballed. Same deal with the Hubble.

Even when you think it's perfectly flat, it's not. Use KY. Use Goop. Use Windex, beer, urine, moss, laytex paint.

Anything but air. Air just plain suxx.

[Jedi mind trick] You LOVE Palladium. [/mind trick]

They knew it was flawed.They also knew that since there were no pre-launch test procedures,no one would ever know.They also thought that when it was finally discovered (which happened when the first images from the Wide Field Planetary Camera were downloaded),it could not be accurately diagnosed,(which proved to be another error in their judgement).Why keep quiet? simple math....
Perkin-Elmer Corp. got the bid by gross underbidding.They bid 90 million, billed the U.S. government 240 million,and then received a 50 million bonus for completing the project on time.....Pretty sweet.....

If ya don't ask..How ya gonna know.