Swiftech Apogee GTX - supposed to be bowed?

[Munkul]

i bought one of these blocks s/h off ebay, looked at the base, and it looked warped. so i measured it with a square and it looked about .5mm out all over. So i blagged £10 back off the seller, and was happy.

Now i was going to have the base surface-ground and re-polished (i am an engineer by trade) but then found out that there is something that i had never heard of, that these blocks may be supposed to be "bowed" - that is, higher in the middle of the base. apparently, it helps with the heat transfer

so, was i wrong to blag half the cost back? and can anyone honestly say that they have knowlege of this and whether its a good thing or not?


all input appreciated

cheers

 

[El Fiendo]

From what I understand, most heat spreaders are slightly concave. So to compensate for this these are manufactured bowed, so that there is better surface area for heat transfer, a better distribution of force along the chip, and less TIM build up which can start to act like an insulator. In fact, if you search the web you'll find threads that ridicule people for lapping their blocks. Mind you, if you lap both the heat spreader and the block, I'd imagine you'd get a much better surface area then a bowed block.

As for good or not, it has been observed that bowed blocks lower temperatures by 1 or 2 degrees on unlapped chips, however I have yet to see how it holds up to both being lapped.

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

Yeah they are slightly concave. IF you want the best results as El Fiendo mentioned, you will need to lap the IHS of the CPU and the Heatsink for the best heat transfer.

 

[Munkul]

cheers.