Custom laptop cooler project-THE ULTIMATE COOLER!!

I always like to undertake a little project during the holidays to make good use of all the spare time i have.

Having just finished college, and in preparation for my I.D & Technology degree course, I've decided to have a go at making my own laptop cooler/cooling pad.

I've been looking for a decent cooling pad for my W3J for a couple of weeks now, and all of the examples I've found run off USB (weedy airflow) and look cheap and nasty IMO. A guy in the year above me at college built his own cooler from aluminium sheet. It incorporated a fan controller, 3x 60mm fans and a 1u atx power supply.

My design will hopefully use similar components to his, and I'm adament that it will run off of AC power rather than bloody USB!!

I'm looking to use the Vantec NEXUS NXP-305: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813999902

But because of size limitations I don't really want to include an ATX psu in the coolers construction. My main question is, does anyone know if it would be possible to run this fan controller using a regulated AC adaptor (wall wart)?

The one I'm thinking if using puts out 1.2A at 12V, but I'm unsure as to the kind of current the fan controller will draw at full capacity, i.e (3x80mm fans at full and the 2 cold cathodes on)? I know the maximum current output from the controller is 1.5A so is this wall-wart gonna be meaty enough?

Also the other problem I'll have with this type of psu, is actually connecting it to the controller which uses a 4-pin molex. Does anyone have any idea as to how I could connect this to 2-core (+/-)wire from the wall-wart?

Any help is greatly appreciated, as well as useful suggestions/ideas.

Cheers guys

 

Why not USB ?

AC power is redundent since it won't work without a socket and if there is one then there is no problem with using the notebook power .

If anything why won't you design a sleek quieter coolpad ? fanless design ? passive cooler ? etc ...

 

plus the cost to build one like that you could buy the most expsensive cooler a couple times over. I would say shop around more, there are some good pads out there.

But if your dead set then go for it.

 

Why not USB?

Well unfortunately USB only puts out a measly 5v @100mA which will not drive 3x 80mm fans that well.

I have looked at passive cooling, and heatsinks can be reasonably effective, yet their location (underneath the laptop) is always going to limit their effectiveness. Because hot air rises, any kind of heatsink would need to be biggger than the footprint of the laptop in order to dissipate heat effectively, and I feel such a design would get in the way (think about accessing optical drives, cables from peripherals etc).

And I really don't like the idea of water cooling. (Pictures a leaking joint, and a pool of water running towards the laptop or transformer )

So with this in mind, can anyone answer my questions, or point me in the direction of a decent, preferably ac powered, laptop cooler available in the U.K.

 

Just found this, has everything I want bar variable fan speed: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1561076&CatId=0

Look at the price though, and I doubt it's available in the U.K

 

um you really want a custom cooling rig? check this one out that i had cooked up.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=61772&highlight=cooling

Its on the asus forum, maybe a moderator can move it?

Um look at around page 4 and 5, i posted some pics and stuff. Enjoy, if you use my idea elsewhere please give me credit for original design.

 

No offence mate but that looks a bit of a bodge! I mean looking at your diagrams it looks like by the time its 'finished', the laptop itself is gonna be at least 4 inches above any work surface, hardly ergonomic.

I like your idea of using peltiers, but like you've already mentioned, they are gonna need a fair bit of current which means one hefty mains adaptor, and unfortunately they create heat as well which you have to deal with.

I reckon if you had the peltiers sandwiched between a flat sheet of aluminium(in contact with the laptop and the cold side of the peltier) and a heatsink like the one you're using on the bottom (in contact with the hot side of the peltier and work surface) then the heat from the laptop would be dissipated much more effectiely though the whole constuction.

Anyways, that's just my two cents or rather two pence.

Good on you for actually trying something new and not settling for the shoddy coolers already in existance.

 

Er, cast a huge block of Al and use it as a passive cooler.

Actually, water has a huge specific heat, so water cooling makes a lot of sense from the physics perspective. If it's a passively circulated water cooler with somewhere for water to expand when it gets hot (ie an air resevoir) that would be really awesome. I'm not sure how exactly to get the water to circulate using convection... anyone?

Picture a really narrow aluminum slab with an embedded tube for water to flow through connected to a vertical aluminum radiator behind the laptop's screen. That would be sweet! Matter of fact, I think I'm going to have to try to make one. Getting the embedded tube will probably be easier than you might think. You could cast the Al around a copper tube, or salt, etc.

But if you just want a cooler, then sure, buy one.

edit- I also want to get a notebook lock of some sort for keeping my Asus safe in college, and a notebook cooler that was integrated with a notebook lock would be awesome- I'll see if I can draw up plans of what I mean.

Cyrus

 

Sorry if this seems a bit stupid, but how exactly will an air reservoir give water somewhere to expand. Surely if the water enters it it will just fill up, unless the whole system is sealed like a radiator. Then you would just have air bubbles travelling around the system in the water.

I can see where you're coming from, it's basically using the same physical principles as a fridge.

Laptop cooler with an integrated lock, hmmm. Surely if the laptop is locked to the cooler then someone will just be able to nick both. Unless the lock can be threaded through a permanent fixed object like a desk leg. In which case why not just use a normal laptop lock?

You could have a lock which wraps around the laptop meaning that it can't be opened. But then if someone wants to steal it they can can just take it with the cooler, find somewhere quiet and either cut through the lock or just break the cooler apart and remove the chain.

I think I'm just gonna stick with active cooling for now via case fans, but has anyone got any ideas on a psu for the fans and controller that is smaller than a standard ATX one. I've already looked at 1u ATX psu's but they're just that little bit too pricey here in the U.K.

The cheapest one I've found is 180watts and retails at £30

 

I don't know why you need that much power. Those little case fans draw run on like 12v most and only .280 amps at most. Look up charge pump converters, they let you jump up the voltage using a an IC and a couple of capacitors. You could buy like a 6v wall wart and jump the voltage up to 12v, any heat those two components should be easily taken care of by an aluminum case and your fans. As far as a fan speed, just get a variable resistor.

 

You could drill a hole in ur table.. just joking, anyway, that's extreme cooling for laptops. Excepting u throw ur laptop into the fridge.

 

How about a notebook cooling pad that uses water in a gel form. That way if there were a leak it wouldn't run it would just ooze towards your laptop giving you time to move it. You could also put this gell in tubes that allow the convection of heat ... and insulate the gell from breakage or leaks

The gel could have a chemical reaction with heat that gets it moving, that movement could allow for new cool gel to replace the warm gel, which as it moves cools down.

From a chemistry standpoint this might not be too difficult as they already have gels that react this way to heat... it would require no power and would be self sufficient. As an added feature you could make the gel non-toxic and the whole contraption could be biodegradable to appeal to the green freaks out there.