M14x Heatsink Mod

actually completed this a while ago, was waiting for a friends input on the design before going public. but to make a long story short, just now posting about it.

the temps under load are much lower due to the secondary fan output. without the secondary fan output this mod is useless. reason being, heat soak takes place on the extra added copper and the heat energy only slowly escapes thru radiation... since no air flow can remove the heat quickly, what ends up happening is the fan runs constantly because the extra copper soaks up some of the heat energy it just holds onto it keeping everything attached to the copper warm. the fan moves air over the sock heatsink fins but it has nearly no effect because the heat energy is actually being stored in the new copper not the heat pipes.

so what the secondary fan output does is allow about 30-40% of the air to be directed over the new copper and exits out of the vent right under the RAM slots. you can actually feel the warm air come out when the fan spins. :thumbsup:

whats awesome about this mod is the stock function is not affected in anyway and it just runs cooler! no special maintenance or handling is required and all ports, panels, etc still retain there stock function.




PARTS!



Cut outs marked



Unneeded material removed



Test fit



Cleaned and scuffed with wire wheel



Lapped and polished







Hours of cutting and grinding later...







Secondary fan output







You can see here where the secondary airflow is directed



Some of the secondary air flow hits the GFX memory on the back side of the MoBo as well



More clearance was needed



Painted



Finished!




FINAL PRODUCT: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m14x/702068-m14x-heatsink-mod-2.html#post9056402

 

This is Great !! Good Job

Do you have the Temperatures of the CPU and GPU of the Before and After Mod results ??

 

Very slick Bro. It takes some real balls to break out the dremel on an R2. I'd also like to see the before and after temps. I thought about doing something like this when i first saw a similar less involved mod a while ago. I probably would go for it if it was my out of warranty R1, but my R2 stays pretty cool after a good IC diamond re-paste.
have you noticed if much less air comes out of the stock exhaust? I had questions about how the fan pressure would work with another outlet. though I can see how without it, the heat would probably just stay put right on top of the chips, so its definitely necessary for the mod. again, nice work!

 

It's a good idea what you did, but you may have a lot of heat in the middle now and may or may not melt the plastic bottom cover in time. There was a reason why Alienware didn't leave that open, so that the fan sucks all that heat and throws it out. You would probably need to make some modding on the back cover as well and have it kept on a good laptop cooler, in my opinion...

 

thank you guys.

i hope this will help a few that are having major issues with temps after a repaste. personally i didnt have major temp issues but i wanted to lower my temps in general to prolong the hardware life.

i however did experience some throttling at a point or 2 during the summer with gaming and also wasnt thrilled about the fan noise while just surfing the web. so these where the 2 main reasons i did this mod.

as far as before and after temps i did actually take a video of before temps while playing crysis and also duning a IntelBurn run. sadly they were both taken on a phone that died and im not 100% sure if i had backed up the video/pics at this time but ill do some digging. are there any test you would like me to do for proof of concept?

as far as fan noise, its is a bit more quiet. reason being that the percentage of air flow directed out of the secondary ouput removes static pressure from the fan in general and reduces the force on the air passing thru the fins of the heat exchanger at any given RPM. not to mention the secondary output has very little resistance (which is what causes most or the fan noise)

no further modding is needed. i can better explain.

the bottom cover is cool to the touch. in fact its cooler than the palm rest on the HDD side. at any given time the area in question is always cooler than it was from factory. reason being, in the stock config the fan does not draw any air out from inside the laptop. it simply goes in thru the fan intake and then directly out the back of the laptop. the only area affected by the airflow pattern is the heat exchanger side of the heatsink assembly. all the heat radiating off the heat pipes, etc remains inside the laptop and can only slowly creep away out of any holes open to atmosphere or absorb into other materials inside the laptop till they reach heatsoak (mobo, aluminum casing, plastic casing, etc).

with the fan on, the hot air is moved out of the laptop because of the air moment from the secondary fan output and escapes out of the vent hole located by the RAM slots. where before the heat energy just hung around.

with the fan off (CPU temp under 45-50c) the surface of the newly added copper never gets as hot as the surface of the OG heat pipes for a few reasons. 1. more surface area but heat energy load remains the same. 2. (and most important in this situation) the energy build up will heat up the CPU/GPU side of the copper well before the side with the heat sinks. so the side with the heatsinks will always be cooler (true with any properly functioning heatsink). so if the CPU is reading 50c (right before the fan kicks on) the temp of the outer surface of the heatsink is likely less than 50c. in my tests it was never above 33c. so technically cooler than my 7200 rpm HDD.

 

Looks great! I really need to get cracking on my cooling mods too. Just got to finish my x51 cooling system first.

 

thanks man. my priorities will soon be changing as well. im sure my time to mod and tinker will be soon reduced to nothing... lol.

i was seriously going to go the 2nd fan route that we had talked about. it would be more idea IMO but it got all complicated with finding a 2nd functional fan header and im not sure how the exhaust ports would have turned out due to my limited tools ( basic drill & dremel). not to mention since this is my only "real" gaming PC now, down time was also a issue.

 

What sort of temperature difference did you see at load after modding?

 

Did you try using that fan heading I showed you a few months back?

There is no plug, but there are solder pads for it.

 

This is awesome!
Too bad I can't handle such materials myself.

The question is, why didn't Dell / AW think of such things? I'd gladly
pay 100 bucks more if the stock cooling system would be decent...

 

This is just amazing! Thanks for the tutorials!
How much time did it take? And it must be really daunting to do it yourself!

 

simple. dell doesnt give a about us, all they care about is the money. im going with another brand next time for sure.

 

sorry for not updating sooner guys...

well i turns out i cant find my video with my original temps before the mod. regardless of missing what might seem like important data points do i remember the temps weren't horrible... but they were not "good" even after a re-paste, i couldn't get the fan noise down to a acceptable level while gaming unless turbo is off (which defeats the whole purpose of turbo).

ive been very fixated on numbers in the past, benchmarking, etc but i find this makes my life complicated and wallet empty. so this time im after one goal. acceptable fan noise with minimal spending.

now since after the mod i have been playing Fallout Vegas full settings @ 1600x900 and the fan noise never goes into "crazy" mode anymore.

however...

i just grabbed Skyrim on the Steam Christmas sale and i cant even enjoy the game... that lil blower fan stays @ 100% the whole time. so its back to the drawing board. i have played with a few ideas and had some back & forth with Mr e Johnson. but to be 100% honest i havent really chose which way i want to go. i have tons of random gear over here to make stuff happen. heat pipes, water coolers small fans, etc.

the first thing i might try tonight is a TEC cooler. i already have all the materials for a mock-up. just need to see if it will be effective enough... in the past i have tried TEC cooling on my desktops but the power needed to remove over 700w of heat is pretty crazy and the electric bill reflected it. this time ill just water cool the hot side of the TEC and the cold side will be hooked up to the intake fan of the M14x some how. if i can get a nice drop in ambient temp it could be the difference i need to quiet this sucker down under load while still being 100% portable. only drawback is the TEC cooler wont be portable. so it will only take advantage of the lower temps when sitting on my desk. but TBH i have yet to do any serious gaming anywhere else yet. soooo

if there is interest i can post pics of the trials and whatnot?

 

interest present here, can't wait to see this :thumbsup:

 

Got a rough draft built.

120x240mm radiator, swiftec apogee drive (water block, pump combo), swiftec heat sink 196w TEC, 350w powersupply.



After 10min. Ambient temp 18c @ 33% humidity.



Fabrication of cooling pad concept: ambient air is drawn in from a opening, passes over a heatsink, the heat energy is removed out of the air using a TEC (or "peilter"), then the water block absorbs the heat energy and the water carries the heat out of the box to a radiator where the heat energy is removed from the water loop.


inside (from left to right)

reducer / heatsink (cold side) / TEC / waterblock (hot side) / water pump / hoses



outside air is drawn in thru this opening, then hits the chilled heatsink, the heat energy is then drawn out of the air along with humidity.



outside

the foam gasket makes a good seal, so air is drawn into the laptop only from inside the box where the chilled air is being made.



test fit



concept done.



i know it looks rough... but this rough draft was just to make sure it works good enough to actually build it. i didnt want to waste money buying materials from the hardware store to make a product that worked on paper but barley worked in the real world.

im thinking of making the finished product out of plexi since its cheap and easy to work with. wood would not be a good idea since i will have to have some kind of drip tray. as in the summer months i imagine the condensation will be a issue since this basically works identically to what your window AC unit does.

Real world test done in Fallout NewVegas.

Walked up and down Freeside, when got to the end shot a bunch of ppl in the same order to trigger more AI calculations.

Id say 10c is a nice difference (based on CPU package MAX avg) Considering that with the chiller running, the laptop fan was basically barley audible. The noise from the 250mm fan and water pump (at 5volts) is whisper quite. So id call this a success to a certain extent.

I imagine that with higher CPU loads the delta between the cooler and CPU temps will shrink. But the pros seem to out weigh the cons in this case considering i already owned all this hardware.

running 10c colder under load is probably more than id see with any respectable laptop cooling pad. on the other side of the coin this may not be as ideal if starting from square one. estimated cost for what i just built in the "rough draft" form would probably run around $100 if you scavenged ebay and your local PC superstore for cheap clearance items.

the basic build list would include:

random heat sink

TEC

water block

water pump

hoses

radiator

power supply

fans

I may try to run Skyrim later tonight when i get home from work. I wanted to test it today but there was an update and my slow connection would have had me waiting 40min before i could play.

with chiller



with out chiller

 

well...

after weeks of testing and screwing around with simple to extreme ideas, i think i have come to my final solution.

Custom nameplate cut out & matching mesh epoxied to bottom panel



New inside arrangement



Underside finished



U3 cooling pad arrangement



Bottom panel and cooling pad alignment



finished!



the TEC chiller that i was working on worked pretty well. i actually seen about 15-20c drop in idle temps and about 10-15c drop in load temps. but with this cooling pad mod i have a nice 10c drop in load temps and the cooling pad only uses about 4w vs the TEC chiller using about 200-300w...

there are some ways i can tweak the chiller to get better results and possibly get the power draw down to about 100-150w. but it would cost another $50. at this point the most demanding game i own is Skyrim and with the setup pictured above i can max out the game (at 969mhz GFX core clock) and the fan noise is basically a non issue, which is what this was all about to begin with. so mission accomplished!

the laptop is still 100% portable, the internal cooling mods still give me better temps when away from the cooling pad & when on the cooling pad (where i basically do all my gaming) the fan noise has been DRAMATICALLY reduced under load.

copper heatsinks & U3 cooling pad can be found on Newegg for about $65. the double-sided tape for attaching the heatsinks you can find on ebay for a few bucks and the foam weather sealing i used on the cooling pad i grabbed at a local hardware store for like $3.

so basically whats going on here is the foam seals the air flow from each fan to the port its directly under. the left and middle fans blow into the laptop and the right side fan pulls air out of the laptop. so we have 2 exhaust ports (the original fan exhaust out of the back and the RAM vent underneath) along with 2 intake ports ( the main system fan intake underneath and the modded vent in the middle underneath)

the U3 fans in their stock form are not great. they are very quiet, but they barley move any air at all. so i tried using some 12v fans i had laying around hooked up to a speed controller, but all the fans i have made a electronic clicking sound at low RPM that was noticeable enough to be annoying. trying to keep the spending to a minimum i looked into other options the successful one being modding the stock U3 fans. basically these lil guys come with a ton of protective grills. so i got rid of ALL OF THEM. now they move at least twice the air they did and are even more quite which i didnt even think was possible.

i really hope this helps some ppl out. you could probably get some descent result from just getting the cooling pad, adding the weather foam and removing both sides of the fan grill material. but i cant say for sure since my laptop was already modded with the heatsinks befroe i bought the cooling pad.

any questions? just ask!

side note: i didnt notice any better temps with the nameplate cutout mod on its own. however with the forced air from the cooling pad it did help to even out the flow patterns.

 

still experiencing heatsoak when not gaming...

a 2nd fan may be the only easy way out of this..

 

Nice Job on this mod!! I'm an electronics/mechanical engineering technician and this is some good work. I'll be doing this mod on my rig this weekend and ill post pictures of my version... I'm going to keep the wifi antenna bridge in tact and ill be cutting out some of the bottom cover to ad a mesh vent. this will require some precautions to avoid static damage to the motherboard. ill be using static shield bags cut out to fit inside proper and tidy. Ill also be painting the heat sinks blue with thermally conductive spraypaint..... i like the secondary fan outlet.. im going to design a vent and print it out on our 3D printer to move air toward the new mesh vent that i cut out.... ill post pics and if anyone is intersted in the vent please pm me

 

thanks!

id like to see the pics!

ive since removed the copper heatsinks as i believed they may have been causing heatsoak. i fabbed some thinner aluminum heatsinks and had pretty much the same problems.

basically gave up....

later on i did a reinstall of my OS and randomly realized my fan was on MUCH less while installing all my core software. then the next day the almost constant fan business was in full effect again? finally tracked it down to MSI afterburner. *SHAKES FIST* it keeps the GPU in a constant ON state if the program is in the foreground. regardless of whitelist settings. like i would open Chrome in full screen and the GPU would turn off. then id minimize or resize the chrome window and bam GPU truns on... was so messed up. so need less to say the answer was no only run MSI AB when gaming. not like i need to know my GPU temp etc when its not in use anyway right?

so i may go back to adding a second fan and those aluminum heatsinks but for now i havent been gaming much so my fan is barely in use ever.

few shots of the craziness:

 

Impressive work some guy Where you found the aluminium heat sink, you bend the heat pipe or it was already like this? What are you planing to use to control and power the fan? I found this fan controller Intelligent Fan Controller | Dangerous Prototypes

this fan controller is compact and can manage up to 8 fans and 4 temp sensors. So it might be used to make a new cooling management system in the m14x

 

pretty much everything i used was sourced from scrap i have laying around. i made the aluminum ones and the heat pipe is from a Dell D20 (i think) heatsink. took me about 2hrs and a lot of paticents to bend it that way. in the end it worked well but the lil fan i had planened to use on the exchanger ending up not working out. that lil micro fan moved a lot of air for its size but.... ended up being too loud and even low RPM. i even removed the outer case and it got much more quiet but this brought out the typical fan "click" noise you hear when a fan is running out of its spec range. it was audible during anything but gaming so it had to go.

TBH im not sure where ill go from here... now that i know MSI was possibly the problem i was mistaking for "Heat Soak" i might add the aluminum heatsinks back in but im not 100% sure yet.

 

Where did you find this mesh??

 

actually had it laying around. was a grille from a 80mm fan port on the side of a old Alienware desktop. it was actually curved and i hammered it flat.

im sure you could find something similar at a local PC shop in the "clearance" section, or find some larger sheets some ware online.

 

How did you mod the stock U3 fans so they would move faster?

 

so which heatsink mod did you end up with being the best? (= i will soon make some mods to my m11x. heatsink probably also make a new whole in the backplate and i'm thinking of making som airflow mods 2. but what is you experience? i see that extra heatsink thing and it is really cool (or is it?) but i dunno if i should go for small copper heatspreaders, copper plates or an extra heatsink?