Whoah. THAT helped.
So I still wasn't happy with the cooling on my laptop the other day- it's got a soldered copper thin-fin/copper base heatsink with 2 50mm blowers to cool the CPU, and a big heatspreader on the northbridge, GPU, and some IC that I think might be the clock generator. (It also has a 25mm fan cooling the PCMCIA slot but that's not important...). Anyhow, the heatsink had already been lapped to +/- 0.0003" but I still was having to use a massive amount of thermal compound to get a good interface between the PIV and the heatsink because the heaspreader on the CPU was so unflat (hey! I just made a word 
). So I pulled it apart yesterday, and I lapped the CPU's IHS and re-lapped the heatsink. This time though, I used a different block, so they're now flat to +/-0.0001", which means that in reference to one another, they can't be out by more than +/- 0.0002"... and I lapped them to a 3 micron finish, which is way beyond 2000 grit... I now only need a very, very thin layer of thermal compound (which is more normal with respect to my desktops...). How thin? It's translucent. And the contact is perfect (I checked).
Now, when the fan first turns on, the air coming out of the heatsink is HOT, and it rapidly cools to lukewarm. This is a good thing- it may seem counter-intuitive, but as long as the heatsink is at or below the CPU temperature (which it should be) in low-flow applications (like a notebook) the hotter the heatsink itself is, the better. The reason being that a hotter heatsink means that the heatsink is closer to the actual CPU temperature, which means more of the CPU's heat is getting to the heatsink, which will keep the rest of the notebook cooler, and it'll help extend battery life because the fan won't run as often.
I also glued about 1.75 of those Thermaltake RAMsinks (the heatsinks that come with heatspreaders in <a href="http://www.thermaltake.com/products/memory/hddr01.htm">this</a> package) onto the heatspreader for the GPU/NB/Clock Generator, which basically doubled the surface area of the heatsink... With my experiments before the mods, a comair-rotron 24v/235cfm 172mm fan running @ 12v and something like 100cfm positioned on top of the notebook (with the notebook upside down) dropped the CPU temperature to about 95*F (idle) and the GPU/NB/Clock temperature to about 86*F (idle) in a 72*F room, so I'm thinking that with these mods it'll probably get the video/chipset temp into the low 80s/high 70s, if not ambient, and the CPU temperature into the low-mid 80s. Unfortunately, I can't use the computer while it's upside down. :banghead: So, now I need to build a cooling pad for it. But not one of those super pathetic ones they sell at Newegg, Fry's, BestBuy, CompUSA, etc. No, I'm going to do something with 2 of these rotron fans and 2 12v power supplies hooked up in series (24v). 470CFM from a notebook cooling pad. As compared to what, 25 from the retail ones?
). So I pulled it apart yesterday, and I lapped the CPU's IHS and re-lapped the heatsink. This time though, I used a different block, so they're now flat to +/-0.0001", which means that in reference to one another, they can't be out by more than +/- 0.0002"... and I lapped them to a 3 micron finish, which is way beyond 2000 grit... I now only need a very, very thin layer of thermal compound (which is more normal with respect to my desktops...). How thin? It's translucent. And the contact is perfect (I checked).Now, when the fan first turns on, the air coming out of the heatsink is HOT, and it rapidly cools to lukewarm. This is a good thing- it may seem counter-intuitive, but as long as the heatsink is at or below the CPU temperature (which it should be) in low-flow applications (like a notebook) the hotter the heatsink itself is, the better. The reason being that a hotter heatsink means that the heatsink is closer to the actual CPU temperature, which means more of the CPU's heat is getting to the heatsink, which will keep the rest of the notebook cooler, and it'll help extend battery life because the fan won't run as often.
I also glued about 1.75 of those Thermaltake RAMsinks (the heatsinks that come with heatspreaders in <a href="http://www.thermaltake.com/products/memory/hddr01.htm">this</a> package) onto the heatspreader for the GPU/NB/Clock Generator, which basically doubled the surface area of the heatsink... With my experiments before the mods, a comair-rotron 24v/235cfm 172mm fan running @ 12v and something like 100cfm positioned on top of the notebook (with the notebook upside down) dropped the CPU temperature to about 95*F (idle) and the GPU/NB/Clock temperature to about 86*F (idle) in a 72*F room, so I'm thinking that with these mods it'll probably get the video/chipset temp into the low 80s/high 70s, if not ambient, and the CPU temperature into the low-mid 80s. Unfortunately, I can't use the computer while it's upside down. :banghead: So, now I need to build a cooling pad for it. But not one of those super pathetic ones they sell at Newegg, Fry's, BestBuy, CompUSA, etc. No, I'm going to do something with 2 of these rotron fans and 2 12v power supplies hooked up in series (24v). 470CFM from a notebook cooling pad. As compared to what, 25 from the retail ones?
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Comments
I like it!
You want it to hover in front of you?
Think ittle give any room to OC?
What kind of lappy ya got there?
It's a Sager NP5620, which is the same thing as the Alienware Area 51, and various other notebooks. The 5620 is the oldest model, and has the 845m chipset which means 400FSB & DDR266 max, but it's still faster than anything Dell had until recently (2.4GHz Northwood) so I'm happy. And it does ~5100 in 3dmark2001se so I can't complain too much