Five insane upgrades that you should never do

Lap Your CPU

Overclocking your CPU isn't particularly crazy. With a bit of care and common sense, anyone can squeeze a little extra speed out of their processor. But if you want to push your hardware to illogical extremes, you'll have to get your hands dirty. And that means lapping your CPU.

Lapping is a fancy word that machinists use for sanding. In this case, you'll be sanding the metal plate that sits on top of the CPU. This plate, known as an integrated heatspreader, serves not only to keep you from crushing your CPU core when installing a heat-sink-and-fan combination but also to transfer heat away from the processor. Sanding it to a flat finish ensures that it makes optimal contact with the heat sink.

But since the heatspreader's surface already comes machine-lapped from the factory, why repeat the process at home and risk destroying a perfectly good CPU? A reckless disregard for safe computing is one answer. But if you were to look at your processor through a microscope, you might be surprised at what you'd find. Though the surface may appear smooth and flat to the naked eye, your CPU's heatspreader actually contains many microscopic nicks, depressions, and other flaws that prevent it from making the best possible contact with your CPU cooler.

Thermal pads and pastes help fill in those imperfections, but only by lapping your processor to an ultrasmooth finish can you be assured of whisking away the most heat. Of course, you'll also be whisking away your warranty, but unless you're one of those sane people who run their processors at stock speed, you've already voided it anyway.

What You'll Need

You can find the coarser varieties of sandpaper at any local hardware store or supercenter; but for 1000-grit and finer sheets, you'll likely have to visit an auto-parts dealer. Look for variety packs to save on costs, and don't fret if you can't find full sheets--you need just about a foot of vertical space to work with.

Set Up Your Workspace

Lay down the pane of glass so that you have a completely flat, supersmooth surface to work on. A level kitchen table will also suffice, but so long as you're going to risk destroying a US$100+ processor, will you really miss another $5 for a sheet of glass should something go wrong and your endeavor become an epic fail?

Grab a full sheet of 400-grit sandpaper and cut it in half, and then secure one of the pieces vertically to your work surface by placing masking tape around all four sides. Now might also be a good time to call your mother if you haven't talked with her for months. The resulting good karma might later make the difference between a cooler-running processor and one that refuses to boot.

Prep Your Processor

Because you'll be removing layers of nickel and copper from the heatspreader, you want to protect the CPU's circuitry from getting all gunked up. We're not just being OCD here; mixing metal flakes with internal circuits is not only a sure way to fry your processor, but it can also destroy your motherboard. To keep that from happening, take four strips of masking tape and butt each one up against the raised part of the heatspreader, folding the excess underneath the CPU. This will prevent any flakes from sneaking under the heatspreader (where the CPU core sits exposed) or dirtying up the contact points on the bottom as sand and metal start to fly.