Laptop Aluminum Foil Cooling Mod

Greetings Notebook Review Community :hi2: . I'm a newbie here (registered just now) and this is my first thread.

Ok I'll get straight to the point. Has anyone of you also tried putting aluminum foil or other heat dissipating material under your laptop to reduce heat by faster heat disipation?

I have actually done this before but wasn't satisfied with the coverage so I remade it a week later. I used aluminum foil and elmers glue (I know it sounds dumb). I haven't covered the whole back yet just the essentials (CPU, RAM, HDD). If any of you would say it wouldn't work because it would only store up heat overtime then think again because I also have an aluminum notebook cooler under it. My plan was to actually make an interface between the cooler and the laptop because the cooler stays cool while the laptop is hot, but the aluminum foil isn't thick enough to touch it so I'm planning on buying aluminum tape to add more layers to the existing foil. why not just use tape directly you ask? than it's because I don't wan't it to leave the tapes adhesives and elmer's glue is washable (by water) that's how I got the first one of in the first place.

Here's a pic of the laptop bottom, It's an Acer Aspire 4741 (i3-350M version, some have 330Ms):



I noticed ~2C lower temps as reported by speed fan on Idle and while surfing, almost never reach max CPU temps while gaming compared with when the foil wasn't there. :thumbsup:

So what are your thought's on this? Is this as dumb as it sounds, or would this actually work? Please don't get harsh on me as this is my first ever post.

 

well the only thing i can think of is the air that is being pulled into the laptop is moving across the foil and cool it as it does so..

 

Doesn't alu-foil reflect heat? It wouldn't be good if the heat trying to escape trough the plastic got blocked

 

I was thinking the same thing. I think the foil would only help with areas you don't want heat to get to.

 

Whoa dude, ease up on the signature.

1 image per line.

 

Wouldn't it interfere with Wifi?

 

No, WiFi antenna located at the back of the screen not on laptop itself

 

So hows the mod holding up for you?

 

It does, but it conducts as well. Nevertheless, what the OP has discovered is spurious correlation. Has the laptop been otherwise returned to the pre-mod condition?

That might be a good idea had he chose to use copper--a more suitable conductor of heat.

 

Usually, only one side of the foil is made to reflect heat by radiation, the mirror like side obviously, the other side doesn't do much for reflecting heat.

Also, adding another layer on top of something regardless of how conductive it is, is increasing the resistance to heat transfer. The increase will be smaller the more heat conductive the material is though. A passive heatsink does this, but it also dramatically increases the surface area which offsets the small increase in resistance to heat transfer. Now this mod doesn't really increase the surface area and given that it's aluminium, it shouldn't have any noticeable effect, the temperature change could be attributed to a small change in the environment where the notebook was. Finally, for the reflecting heat part, at low temperatures, heat transfer by radiation is usually negligible.

 

what kind of aluminium tape? from contruction feald? I so aluminium tape that is used on air condition equipment for thermal use? that kind? the one that is soft and manevrable or the one that is hard?

 

Would it work better if you folded the aluminum foil in a way that it made a series of ridges or vanes? I know a lot of electric motor casings have corrugation to increase surface area.