Renewing an old Zalman 7000 heat sink

How's it go'n everyone. I've got this Zalman CNPS7000B that I've had sit'n on a shelf for a while and I'm gunna use it in my next build. I noticed that it looks like it's tarnished and got darker just from sit'n around in the humid air here in Florida (kinda like how an old penny does). I was wandering if anyone has ever tryed to shine one up and make it look new again. I considered the katchup idea like with a penny, but I'd have to get it all off and that would be a problem only because you can't just rinse it off with water because the the water would just cause it to tarnish up really fast again.

As you can see by the picture, it just doesn't quite look as shiny as a new one, and I'm sure anything that a little acidic can cleen it up. Even some sort of chemical bath (after the fan itself was removed of course) would be great, but I'm not sure what would work good. Thanks in advance guys!







Ok, well I decided to give something a try. I found a product under my counter called Varnex. It said that it cleaned a hold slew of metals, including copper, so I figured I give it a shot. I took the two screws off the side holding on the fan, poured all of the Varnex in a little plastic bowl, dropped in the heat sink, and it shined up right before my eyes! I rolled the heat sink around in it so get everything coated, rinsed it off in the sink, and took a hair dryer to it turned to high and had it all dryed off in about 2 minutes before it started spotting up, and now the thing looks brand new!



So besides the god awfull smell of the Varnex (honestly, smells like rotton eggs; no kidding and I'm not exagerating), this was a painless fix!