M4400 Cool Slice?

Hello,

I'm looking for the part number or a place to buy a cool slice for the Dell precision M4400. I've found one: Dell Magnesium Notebook Cooling Slice C116D
at Dell Notebook Cooling Slice Magnesium C116D NEW - eBay (item 290526019951 end time Feb-21-11 13:25:32 PST) but it's for the dell latitude 6400.

Was one for the precision m4400 ever made?

I've had this laptop for about 2 years and I'm sick and tired of the obnoxiously hot palm rest (right side near the touch pad). I don't need a faster laptop and I love my RGB LED display so I can't justify spending 1.5k-2k on a Dell m4500 or lenovo w510.

My plan is to purchase the cool slice and mod fans similar to those found in usb laptop cooler pads inside of the shell. I'll post a how-to-guide once I'm done.

Anyone have any leads?

Much appreciated!

 

I think this slice will work on E6400 and E6500 in the same way that the E6400 slice battery is the same as the E6500 slice battery. Not a hundred percent sure on that, though... buy it and try it out

Or you could always downgrade to an E6500 motherboard, especially an Intel one if you don't need the graphical power.

 

I just got a pm from Percomp. There was only one type of cool slice released for 14" and 15.4" latitude and precision laptop.

I've been thinking about different ways to get the +5V and ground lines from a usb port to the fans. I could always have a wire come from the bottom the computer and plug into one of the external usb ports however that's rather ugly. I'm a little concerned about simply taking +5V from anywhere due to the inductance of the motors :/

The last resort would be to use a few AA batteries and a voltage regulator and wire the fans system separate from the laptop

 

Pic of the sticker that's on mine below.

Am interested in what fans your going to use and how your going to mount them, it is only 6mm thick, maybe 8 or 9 including the air gap caused by the rubber feet between the coolslice and notebook.

do you want a side on picture with it fitted?

 

Yeah, picture of the slice on the laptop would be great. I'm interested in that "air gap" as I was unaware of its existence. I ordered the cool slice new from ebay so in the mean time I've been working on the fan logistics.

The most straight forward method would be to gut an existing notebook cooler and use off the shelf components. I have a Zalman NC-1000 which is one of THE best coolers for 15.4" or less notebooks. The fan's in the Zalman are brushed DC blowers rated at 5v, .28A. The fan controller on the Zalman can handle two of them. If the Zalman fans don't fit in the cool slice, I'll order thinner blower fans from Sunon or Adda, both of whom offer super low profile blower style fans down to 3mm thickness.

The only downside to using this method is that I'll need to use a usb cable to connect the fan controller to the laptop. About 6 years ago, I modded LED's inside of my dell insperion 6000d, taking power from the inside of the USB port. The process of soldering wires to +5V and Ground was an absolute nightmare and I almost did some serious damage to the motherboard. I've gotten a lot better a soldering since than however I still don't feel comfortable soldering to the USB ports on the M4400 motherboard. I'll have to give it some thought.


EDIT: The fans in the Zalman cooler are about 20mm thick so there is no way they'll fit

EDIT EDIT: These fans should work assuming I have 9mm of vertical space http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=259-1446-ND

 

the coolslice actually heats up the laptop when the laptop is under stress under normal circumstances (on a table), however it allows the laptop to remain cooler if you use it on a bed/sofa/lap.

i clean out my air intake every 2 months or so. this ensures my laptop runs cool, why dont you try doing that? its shocking how quickly it gets blocked up

 

I've cleaned out the heatsinks and changed the thermal paste on both the CPU and GPU to Arctic Silver 5. I've also replaced the thermal pads on the GPU memory and Northbridge with aluminum shims. None of those modifications solved the heat problem near the touch pad.

I've also undervolted the CPU to 1.0275 at 10x multiplier

The only thing I haven't done is yell at dell to replace my notebook with perhaps a newer revision....I doubt things will go very well for me....

The CPU and GPU overall run pretty cool. At idle, the cpu is at around 28C to 32C and under load (orthos) it's at around 54C. Temps were read using HWmonitor. The problem is that dell put some hot component on the right side of the touch pad. At first I thought it was the RFID reader so I disconnected the cable to that but nothing happened.

The only to workaround this high temperature spot is to use a cooler pad. What I'm basically doing is turning the cool slice into a cooler pad by adding fans. I have a laser IR thermometer that I'll use in prove my results.

 

Can any one verify the depth between the inside of the cool slice and the bottom of the laptop?

Thanks

 

7mm.

A side on picture with it fitted

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r290/gerryjoson/IMAGE_105.jpg

 

Thanks Weegie!

WOW that's really thin....The photos of the cool slice on ebay make it seem much deeper. Given that there's only 7mm to work with, I'll mod a thin axial fan into a centrifugal fan by cutting one side of the plastic housing off with a rotary tool.