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Which of these two base-plate finishes would you rather have?

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Cathar

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 8, 2002
Location
Melbourne, Australia
Which of these two lapped base-plates is better?

The left one or the right one?

flat1.jpg
 
Hmm, knowing this is a trick question, it is hard to answer without using my special flatness scope. Since I know the Storm is on the right, and guaranteed flat to .00005" (or was that .0005"?) I would say the Storm on the right. The shiney block on the left looks, well very shiney, but the reflection looks wavy to me, or is that my eyes getting older? It could be flat AND shiney, but my answer if firmly the block on the right, and I'm sticking to it.
 
nikhsub1 said:
Since I know the Storm is on the right, and guaranteed flat to .00005" (or was that .0005"?) I would say the Storm on the right.

The block base on the right is not a Storm base-plate, and it is not a machine lapped guaranteed flat base-plate. It's an old plate I had kicking around. That plate was lapped by hand.
 
nikhsub1, have you got a 3D monitor or something because even with a CRT rounder than I am. I dont see a "curvy" reflection
 
Cathar said:
The block base on the right is not a Storm base-plate, and it is not a machine lapped base-plate. It's an old plate I had kicking around. That plate was lapped by hand.
I'm still taking the one on the right, looks flat to me.
 
I will admit though, the left one has rougher surface around the edges which would mean uneven finish, even so, it would probably allow for the perfect amount of room for some AS5
 
Was the one on the left done by hand or machine? Obviously I would rather have it either way. :rolleyes:
 
If course, the right one. Though it is obvious what you are doing Cathar. :p

Lets all learns a lesson and revamp our assumptions about what reality holds for us. The pretty blocks can be the devil in disguise. Also, you can lap with the best of them. :clap:


:cool:
 
look at the wood grain seam on the left block and notice the wavy line

honestly any block that shiny btw most likely used brasso or some other polishing agent that left residue .

it may not be the case here but its possible
 
Wow. The shiney plate's worse than the saggy plank floor I sanded today.

What are we looking at? It appears to be mosquito netting.
 
Sean Lindstrom said:
What are we looking at? It appears to be mosquito netting.

Yes - it's actually good for something other than keeping mosquitos out.

Really this is a poor-man's flatness test. The hand-lapped plate on the right is actually not really flat either (it's certainly MUCH better than the block on the left though), it's just that this poor-man's flatness test is unable to show its deficiencies very clearly. It all depends on how far one wants to go in the definition of flatness.

The whole point of this exercise was, of course, to point out the difference between reflectiveness and flatness in a relevant way.

Heck, if waterblock review sites included a test even as simple as this, they would be giving people infinitely more useful information than they do now, which is to show some nice shiny reflective bases and comment on how great they are with absolutely no understanding of the vast difference between the concepts of flatness and reflectivity.

Really, it has to stop now. It has gotten out of hand. It's gotten to the point where anything that is shiny and reflective is perceived as great, yet anything that is non-reflective is perceived as crap, with absolutely no justification or intelligence behind the comments other than, "Ooh - shiny! It MUST be good!"
 
Then I have a question for you cathar. How has your own research into the famed precision of Swiftech blocks associated with the common review-item-in-mirror-like-finish positive test. In other words, are you less confident of their machining processes than the WC reviewer pundits or is Swiftech deserving?
 
jackrungh said:
Then I have a question for you cathar. How has your own research into the famed precision of Swiftech blocks associated with the common review-item-in-mirror-like-finish positive test. In other words, are you less confident of their machining processes than the WC reviewer pundits or is Swiftech deserving?

Be careful not to read too much into my discourse here.

All I'm trying to do is to effectively explain with visual examples how there is no correlation between reflectivity and flatness.

i.e. one cannot show a picture of a highly reflective base-plate, like most web-sites do, and then make any assumption as to its flatness and hence its suitability to make good thermal contact against a CPU.
 
Showing pictures of the baseplate used to be a lot more useful... back when you wanted to know if the manufacturer spent ANY time on lapping it. These days, it's assumed that the base will 'look' shiny so the pictures don't help us. Regardless, expect to see those pictures for years to come =/.

That's a pretty clever flatness test =p.
 
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