M15x Cooling Mod! KoI Style :)

I know you noticed power differences with AlienFX on, using expressport usb slots to power fans and what not but do you think having these things off might improve benchmark results?
Seems unlikely as the processor is at the limit of what it can do at that particular voltage. We might have to get imaginative to get more performance out of it.

I wonder if anyone with a 920/940xm with Windows 8.1 can run Passmark CPU Mark on 3.3 or 3.6 Ghz and report back your score.

 

I was creative yesterday

The chip took 15 mins to reach 80c where it levelled off. This means our limit isn't the airflow but the capacity of the heatsinks and heatpipes


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I'm pretty happy with thermals at the moment. Have you tried Gelid GC-Extreme thermal compound! Better than ICD7 IMO.

I would be open to ways of increasing heatsink cooling capacity though.

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Any kind of overvolt is going to overload the heatpipes. I wonder if we can put a third heatpipe or mount a new heatsink altogether.

Then I might consider overvolting once again.

My cooling mod above was ridiculous. I had one fan underneath and the other sucking out air from the heatsink plus the cpu fan spinning at maximum. It actually didn't quite reach 80c I was over exaggerating but I was expecting under 70C. We HAVE to address cooling capacity if we are serious about pushing the cpu harder 24/7 was real use. I need it for video encoding and games mainly. So temps are important.

We could easily mount desktop cooling but I think we ought to keep the cooling (other than the external fans) inside the laptop chassis. I feel bad butchering it further lol. Plus we then also easily keep the mobility factor going.

 

I want to find some kind of formula to see the ratio of airflow to heatsink size, and whether if I double the heatsink and half the airflow if we get better results.
I was thinking of adding some heatsinks on the sides of the laptop where the heatpipes go near the chasis. The chasis would need to be cut in order to install two more exhaust holes with heatsinks on the gpu pipes and cpu pipes, and the fan would have another exhaust which would make air flow in both heatsinks .

Any opinions on my idea?

 

For the cpu heatpipes there is promise for your idea. There is nothing in the chassis that gets in the way there. On the the GPU side you have the esata, usb port and audio/mic ports. Also with Maxwell coming I don't think we need to improve the gpu cooling. It is more than adequate.

Supposing you are able to cut the chassis and mount heatsinks inside the exhaust vents created along the heatpipes how and where would you mount the exhaust fan? I don't see any space! What is your plan here?

Otherwise I like your thinking!

edit: I see you want to mod the fan itself that is a very interesting proposition!! I can see it working well for the cpu fan. Considering the esata and usb ports might be difficult to implement for the gpu.
Other question I have is by having two exhaust vents wouldn't the air pressure be lower? We might need to use a more powerful fan? Very hard to mod a different fan to fit.

 

Hmm this is a tricky. The cpu heatplate and fan chassis are 1 unit in the M15x. Also the heatsinks wrap around the side of it. How would you open the fan to create a new exhaust port? Looks pretty much impossible to me

edit again: looking again. You can mod the fan. Just vent the fan under the heatpipes. Nice.

 

I think it would work for the gpu too, but the heatsink would be thinner.
A problem would be to find a proper heatsink and to mount it on the heatpipes, it would be done somehow like our gpu heatsink, with a heatpipe going under the heatsink and one going through it. That may be a bit tricky.

The question is: theoretically would it improve anything if the heatsink size increases and the airflow decreases? On the current setup, with our powerful fans I think it would, but how much? I need to find the formula for it, maybe also find the cfm for our fans at different rpms to see how the max temperature depends on the cfm airflow for our current heatsinks and extrapolate some data from it.

Edit: Does anyone know if the cfm/rpm is linear? Theoretically it should be.

 

The fans are both rated for around 7.7cfm and max 5000rpm. I think it would help.

We are definitely limited by the capacity of the heatsink/heatpipes for the cpu. The GPU seems to be more easy to cool substantially using powerful fans underneath. However I used 2x 50cfm fans and the system fan and the cpu temp still climbed up to nearly 80C at full load in prime 95 at 3.2ghz. I believe another heatsink would be the next step definitely. I also tried +200mv. With all the cooling at my disposal temps flew up towards 100C in under 30 secs. Need more data

 

Ok so, directly proportional if length if the heatsink increases the thermal resistance decreases. In the image you can see that if you have more cfm, there comes a point where the thermal resistance decreases only slightly so maybe the optimum point is reached in our systems (size of heatsink/airflow).

My first idea was to install some heatpipes and heatsinks from gpu and cpu to the optical bay, with another fan and heatsink in the bay. I discarded the idea as I did not want hot air to be blown on my hand constantly. It would still work though if you were left handed )

 

Erm I use it a secondary HDD bay. Soon to be 2TB. I can't stuff heatsinks in there lol

Why not your idea from before. Shouldn't be impossible to mod the cpu fan to have a second exhaust port and then mount a heatsink in the side of the chassis!

 

an easy way to see if the airflow exceeds the capacity of the heatsink to dissipate heat would be to set lower RPM values for the fan at high temperatures and see what difference this makes. I'm pretty sure we need all the airflow we can get. CPU heatsink is much bigger than GPU one, with the same sized fan.

Interesting ideas though.

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Of course we need lots of airflow. But at this point we also need more heat dissipation surface area. Our heatsinks could have a vacuum cleaner sucking it and it wouldn't make much difference. The heatpipes can only carry so much heat at any one moment.

If no one intends to overvolt then the cooling suffices. However I reckon another heatsink mounted with dual heatpipes to double our cooling capacity could take on +200mv! We could take the chips from 3.2ghz to 3.8ghz and then stick single core on 4.2 ghz. Something that might be needed to keep pace with new gpu hardware.

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With maxwell looking to be so efficient we also have the extra power to put towards the cpu


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Like with everything else, I think we're waiting for someone other than svl7 to carry out these mode before attempting them ourselves.
I haven't actually tried gaming at 3.6ghz because even 3.3ghz made no difference to 3.1ghz.

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I might be prepared to give it a try but I am hoping chopsy will give a hand Cutting a hole in the side of the laptop better be worth it haha!

We need to find a suitable heatsink first. I have no idea how to attach the new heatsink to the current heatsink. Also modding the fan would be a first!

 

I have almost a month until I finish my finals, after this I'll have time to dedicate to this project. I'll take all the measurements, see if it's viable to install a new heatsink and try to do it. For the fan modding I think I'll buy a new fan to butcher. Firstly though, I have to finish my finals

 

No problem man. Take your time. In the meantime I did a blu-ray encoding job on handbrake at 25x 100% load and look at the lovely temps!!
I haven't done this in 2 years. Last time I did it was before my modding but with native fans running at maximum. Today I run same settings plus 1 50cfm fan underneath. 2 years ago My temps stabilized at 95C!

Now 17C drop! I really want to get this mod up and running when you are done with your finals chopsy. Imagine a lovely voltmod and 3.8ghz encoding. Perhaps even try 4ghz haha.
You see 88C in throttlestop that was before I turned the 50cfm fan on rofl.

Good luck btw!!

 

+1 on the Gelid GC-Extreme thermal compound! I recently switched to this thermal paste from IC Diamond and it shaved a few degrees off my CPU/GPU in both idle and load. Plus the included spactula it provides you with makes it so applying this thermal paste is much easier and quicker!

 

Really I might give this a try!


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Is it electric capacitative like AS5?


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My usb-powered fans have started to become a bit annoying. When they are blowing downwards they are silent but when blowing upward into the innards of my laptop they rattle and make an awful lot of noise.
Really need to find a better fan solution. Just for fun sometimes I game without them on and reach 74 degrees on GPU!

Definitely excited to see what progress you chaps make on this on-going custom cooling project.

 

No, it's non-conductive and is a very good thermal paste. I've been looking into thermal pastes and from the research I've done, this seems to be the best non-conductive thermal paste pretty much. If you want conductive thermal pastes the best one is the coollaboratory series especially the liquid pro, but a lot of people are scared to use it as it is liquid metal which can pretty much destroy aluminum with ease. But us laptop users we fortunately have copper heatsinks (most of us anyway I think) and not aluminum heatsinks like some of the aftermarket heatsinks for PCs.

Apparantly thermal pastes like that coollaboratory can make a material like aluminum feel like ripping wet tissue papers, have a look at this haha:



For anyone interested in the different thermal pastes, I found this on a website and this was all done on a i5 3570K @ 4.5GHz (45X multi and using 1.4Vcore):

 

Only 1c difference between gelid and ic diamond. Not worth it right?


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