Drilling holes in bottom of old notebook to decrease heat?

I have an old laptop that runs really well. It's an old Fujitsu.

2Ghz Single Core. 2GB of DDR2 RAM, 320GB HDD, WLAN, Bluetooth etc. More than enough for my wife.

The only deal is it gets pretty hot.. I've tried mounting it on a cooler which seems to decrease the heat by only about 3 degrees unfortunately. I also looked at the area for where the fan is to cool the CPU. The holes for the fan to breathe are absolutely tiny.. I was thinking of Drilling a couple of extra holes on the HDD cover bay and the CPU bay just for a start.

Would this make a difference or would I just make a mockery of the underside of my laptop? This cooler isn't really making any difference and the pc gets really hot regardless.. would a few drill holes help with heat dispersion?

I've cleaned out the entire computer with canned air and a high powered vacuum, it looks absolutely spotless.. No idea why it's getting so hot as of late...

Anyway would a few.. or many drill holes make a difference? Also, is there anything else that someone can suggest?

Thanks in advance

 

Did you put new thermal paste? I suggest you do that before any drill work. Also what are your temperatures?

 

HDD Temp is 51C
CPU Temp has gotten up to 77C
GPU Temp has gotten to 66C

I haven't replaced the CPU at all so no I haven't put on new paste. I don't want to open the laptop too much.. they're really hard to put back together and there are tons of wires and such that can come out that I can not notice and forget to put back in.

All in all the laptop is too hot to put your hand on almost.

 

Well depending on what paste was there you should replace it sooner or later. If laptop is old you better do that. I am not talking about Silver or Diamond pфste but... that temp status must be under 100% stress, not under usual work.
I had one old lappy. That paste became a ROCK! That is why my little 2cm fan was louder than desktop computer.
Look on youtube if someone already disassembled you model

 

Mmm I could try and dig up some *cough* public manual from the manufacturer that has been 'conviniently leaked' onto the internet. But that might work well too.. I'm just a little reluctant to open it up at this time.

I don't even know where I could buy thermal paste from in Finland... maybe I'd have to try ebay?

This good enough?: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/THERMAL-PASTE...are_Hair_Straighteners_PP&hash=item19c05b59c7

 

I believe it must be some kind of "radio market" where people buy different computer and electronic parts, TV, pults, cables, diods, condensators, resistors, plugs and adapters and other tons of stuff... Well in my country it is usual. Try to find cooler master, zalman, titan or other.
That cheap e-bay thermal grease may be good only for a month if you are lucky. You will need to put new oftenly. Stars is cheap but not very bad as I heard but reviews did not check how long it will last. It is on eBay.
Try to google for Inet-shops which sell this.

 

Don't bother with no name thermal paste. Either IC Diamond 7, Arctic MX3, Or Arctic Silver 5.

 

+1, you can usually buy thermal paste at almost any computer store (not at big block shops but more local shops).

Also if you drill be careful, you don't want to mess up the pressure of air inside your notebook. Basically what I mean is that the notebook chassis is designed along with the cooling system to get the air to flow a specific route, drill a hole in the wrong spot and airflow may be disrupted, or slowed down.

Also if I remember you bought a generic 3 fan notebook cooler off ebay. Consider getting something that is more appropriate for your notebook such as a Notepal U3, your vents are spread and the U3 should let you target individual vents better.

 

1. What notebook model do you have?

2. If you buy a thermal paste watch out for the thermal conductivity! A good one will be between 7 and 9 W/(m*K) and won't cost that much. Especially because you're so reluctant to take your laptop apart you shouldn't risk to do this twice because of some crappy paste that only has 5W/(m*K).

3. It seems like you have a dedicated graphics card. When reassembling the laptop watch out for the height difference between CPU and GPU! This is usually bridged by a thermal pad which unfortunately often doesn't survive such a replacement procedure and the gap can't be bridged by thermal paste alone. So you might need a new one. From a thermal point of view a piece of copper sheet would be much better than a new silicone pad. Usually you'll need one with a thickness of 0.6 to 0.8mm.
I've heard of so called liquid metal pads that are said to have the thermal conductivity of pure metal and the ease of use of a silicone pad and might therefore be an alternative for a copper sheet. On the other hand I've also heard that they tend to slip away from the die when trying to fix the heat pipe. Since I've never used them on my own I can't tell you any more about them.

 

Don't drill holes unless you know what you are doing. The original manufacture didn't think it needed them, why would you question them. I would suggest making sure you don't have a lot of dust in the system. Over the years the fins will get a layer of dust on them. That acts like a blanket and reduces the effectiveness of the cooling system. Also, at least on of my laptops ended up with some dust bunnies in front of the cooling fins. The bunnies block airflow and result in reduced cooling.

 

I suppose but I don't think a few holes will hurt the machine if I take the cover off and just pop it on a grate and drill a few holes in it... I think it'll increase the breathablility. It wont hurt to try anyway.

I don't know if I want to open her up and mess around with the thermal paste. That's going to disconnect a lot of things that require micro tweesers to put back in.

I guess I'll have a go at new paste. There is a place around here called Class Olson that stocks thermal paste. It's all cheap Chinese stuff (the store I mean) so I don't know what the quality is like. I'll have a look.

If that doesn't help I'll go for drilling holes. I'm not sure the overall heat is really due just to old paste though. Thanks to all.

 

First, what model is that Fujitsu?

Second, you can get thermal paste virtually from any computer shop around the country It's just a matter of preference and location if you wish to get something online or not.

Sinä hyödyt siitä mitä Jimm's tietää - Jimms.fi
Only4Pro v2.0
Verkkokauppa.com - Todennäköisesti aina halvempi
BPC Solutions - Palveleva tietokonekauppa

Those were the first shops with also online stores that came in mind, not necessarily cheapest tho.

 

It's an Amilo La1703 and man does it get scorching hot.

 

Hmm. Looks like that has a Sempron in there? I think those are super hot and crappy CPUs.

It might have been mentioned already and it might be captain obvious, but if you're going to drill, you should definitely take the case off first. You don't want to drill right into a circuitboard.

 

I have one La1703 myself. Not much to write home about... nor worth mentioning on the sig either I've found best use for it as I loaned it to my friend.

But on the topic itself, making the holes disrupts the airflow inside as then the fan would not draw air thru the laptop cooling it's components. CPU itself would run cooler but other parts little bit hotter. On the other hand, shortening the components lifespan with extra heat from 20 to 18 years (or something like that) doesn't really matter, the laptop will be trash by then.

 

Replace the paste then leave the bottom cover off, if necessary get some el'cheapo notebook cooler.

And I didn't pay anything for it. It was trash and I fixed it for my own use (for a loaner)

 

Don't mess with the airflow inside the case. Smarter people than any of us on this board have (probably) thought it through and determined how to get the air to cool the HDD, WiFi/BT miniPCI cards, and NB/SB passively. If you started drilling holes just to cool the CPU and GPU, you will alter that airflow and ultimately run into other new issues that cannot be fixed except to reverse the new airflow pattern or to increase the exhaust flow to create additional suction to try to restore some of the old airflow pattern.

Yes, I have done this in the past, resulting in a perpetually overheating HDD and a slightly burnt out miniPCI card that disconnected my WiFi like clockwork once it got hot.

 

I, on the other hand, have drilled like no tomorrow and I see extremely good temperatures. My G51vx still holds the record for coolest running model on NBR, I think.

 

I've had both good and bad results as well. My post was just a cautionary tale of things that could go wrong in case the OP was planning on blindly taking a hole saw to the bottom of the case and slapping mesh grills all over the place. I'd be curious to see how your non-CPU/GPU temps fared, and just where you drilled. Location, size, and number of holes matters, as well as material on grates (if any). However, the biggest factor is the laptop itself.

If the notebook was built with more fan power than needed, more vents might do little to no harm, and could help alot. If it's a silent runner with minimal active cooling (as is the case with many newer slim machines), adding holes will only cause trouble.

 

My machines had some fairly strong fans, since they were gaming machines, so that could be it.

My idea was that I would emulate running the laptop without it's bottom plate on, while still keeping structural integrity.

That's my GX660R. Temperatures--on components that are detected in HWMonitor--are great. My Samsung HDD average in the high twenties to mid thirties, and heat, of course, doesn't bother my SSD. (Granted, my Samsung is a secondary storage HDD, so it doesn't get a lot of activity and sleeps a lot.

With my G51vx, I got maybe an average of of 2C higher on my storage Hitachi 7k500.

It had moar hoels.

 

Before doing all that, you're going to need to clean your fans. If you've never done it before, there's going to be a lot of dust that will clump together. With no battery or plug power, stick a pin to stop your fan from moving, and squirt it will high pressure air, if you have access to something like tire pressure pump. You don't want the fans to be spinning above it's rated speed.

The may not be enough because dust can clump up, and then it's just going to be stuck somewhere around that fan area (blades etc). You may end up needing to open it and clean it.

Drilling holes, around the intake or exit holes, shouldn't affect air flow, that's just my guess. So long as the plastic doesn't crack, I say drill away.

 

The Vicious Mod - It was one of the greatest mods the C90S ever saw.

https://picasaweb.google.com/masakakoi/AsusC90SViciousMod?feat=directlink

Dropped temps w/ cooler very significantly as well as all other system temps like hdd's.