Toy Corner: Part 1

One of my good friends recently described me as, "a nerd stuck in a jock's body." I think that's a pretty good description of me.

In our house we have very little storage so we have ended up with three "toy corners" where our stuff has kind of gravitated to. One of those corners is filled with Heathers scrapbooking stuff, the other two are filled with my things. Today we'll cover the "nerd" corner.


The Nerd Corner consists of my computer (that I built), a 5.1 speaker set up, printer, and sometimes Heathers computer or my work laptop.

I learned my way around computers initially because Dad let me play games on his work computer. This was a great place to learn how to trouble shoot and fix computer problems because I always knew that if I screwed something up I HAD to get it fixed before dad got home or he would kill me.

As you can imagine I got pretty good at fixing computer problems.

From there I got sick of paying someone else to build a computer for me (stupid Dell and Sony) and I HATED all the prepackaged software that came with their computers so I decided to learn how to build one myself.

Well, a couple weeks ago I decided to take my nerdly pursuits to the next level--I decided it was time to learn how to overclock my computer.


For such a nerdly undertaking there are a few things that are absolutely necessary: caffeinated beverages (3 Diet Dr Pepper's), multiple computers on/at the same desk (my laptop and my desktop), and all the lights in the house turned off.

I started overclocking the computer at 8:00 pm on Friday night and worked straight through until I finished at 5:00 pm on Saturday. Suffice it to say Heather thought/thinks I'm crazy.

In the course of overclocking I noticed that my computer was running too hot and as a result I hit a wall as to how hard I could push my computer. I was determined to make my computer just a little bit faster which lead to the next weekend's project: lapping my CPU.

***warning, about to get even nerdier from here on out***

For those of you who are less nerdy than me the central processing unit (CPU) is essentially your computer's brain. When you turn on your computer you run a current through the CPU which lets it think. That current also causes the CPU to get really hot which is why all modern computers have a heat sink (essentially a big block of metal with a fan--think the radiator on your car) to help keep the CPU cool. Here's a picture of my CPU and my old heatsink:


The heatsink sits on top of the CPU and the heat transfers to the heatsink by way of direct contact (or, more technically, conduction). For conduction to work the two objects in question need to actually touch. Unfortunately even a well manufactured CPU or heatsink is not very flat at the microscopic level. Since the two surfaces aren't very flat you always put a thermal interface material (TIM) between a CPU and a heatsink:


The reason for all this effort is because air is TERRIBLE at conducting heat (for Dad, Lynn and Bill: 0.021 W/mK). TIMs are ok (0.4 - 8.0 W/mK), but still not as good as metal-to-metal contact (385 W/mK for copper). So, the goal is to make both the CPU and heatsink flatter so they have better contact:


To "lap" is a machining term that means to rub two surfaces together with an abrasive between them to get the two surfaces as flat and smooth as possible.

So, to do this I needed a REALLY flat surface--a table or counter is no where near flat enough to do this right--so I got a piece of plate glass. I taped a piece of sandpaper to the plate glass and then proceeded to rub the CPU across the sandpaper (careful not to put any pressure on the CPU because that would cause it to flex and not be as flat as I need it to be). I'd rub it back and forth for about 30 secs, rotate 90 degrees, rub, repeat for 1 hour. After each hour I'd go to a finer grit sandpaper. I started with 400, then 600, then 1000, then 1500.

That's right, I sat there doing this for 4 hours for the CPU, and about 2 for the heatsink.

Here's the before picture of the CPU:


After 1 hour of 400 grit:


After 1 hour of 600 grit--notice the clearer reflection:


The end result:


I used the lined paper here as a poor man's flatness test. The lines in the reflection are straight which means that the surface is pretty flat.

So, what was the result of my 6 hours of work? The CPU ran about 10 degrees cooler!

Oh yeah, then I figured I could do a little more and stuck some extra fans into my computer case. It now pushes more than 500 cu. ft/min of air through the case to keep it cool.

Just for some perspective here are some other things that push around 500 cfms or air:

room blowers...

...leaf blowers...

...and BMW turbo chargers...



Bottom line--I'm a nerd and I'm ok with that.