Acer Aspire 8730 and compatible model AIRFLOW discussion.

This thread is designed to hopefully give users a heads-up on the airflow paths of their 8730's and any Acer laptop with general bottom access panel design's vents (limited number of them on the bottom... so its inflow or outflow). You can boost the airflow to help cooling (and possibly add more =| dust) to the inner compents of your laptop if you know where to place external cooling pads and/or external cooling fans.

(I've tried nearly every fan control program around and none of them work in a healthy manner for the Acer 8730. Maybe yours is better)

Obvious tips:
- Don't block the vents. Give them as much space as possible.(leave any thin plastic coverings you find. These are to reduce dust yet allow some heat transfer)
- Operate them in a cooler environment. The lower the ambient temp the cooler your laptop is in general.(Can you spare a few degrees on your thermostat for you laptop? It doesn't pee all over your floor or claw your furniture!)
- Blow on your vents from time to time or get some compressed air or a professional to clean your laptop for you. (Dislodge the dust so that it catches fire!)
- Consider a cooling pad. They supply the bottom of your laptop with more air to work with.


Now lets get nitty gritty.

I have an Aspire 8730-6095. I found a netbook cooling pad lying around so I put it to good use... since i can't keep the fan on max cool whenever I want like a nice Toshiba (seriously... someone needs to get working on a fan control method for this model that doesn't push the CPU usage up) 1 of the 2 larger fans from the cooling pad are positioned directly underneath the vent of the cooling fan (with some ample space in between of course). I've noticed a significant graph change on speedfan.exe for the cores. I'll post images of the actual cooling difference soon.

The GPU in this laptop (9600M GT) is also connected to the same heat-sink as the CPU. Its further away from the fins on the heat-sink than the CPU (connected in series remember) and as a result the temperatures here climbs to and idles around 50 degrees Celsius when not under heavy load.

The more cooling ideas I implement on this heat-sink/fan (whether its an icebox/cooler pack external fan mod I used a while back) the cooler I get the GPU and CPU. Its a centrifugal spiral fan inside this and many laptop models that runs on its own automated temp trigger based system (annoying). I've been able to keep the temperature from climbing to the trigger on the CPU thats at... 43 or so (unless its a combination of both cores for total of 85 [43 and 42 most often) The flow for this vent is obviously inflow.

There's a small GPU vent near this vent. And here's where the guess work begins.



(8)
CPU Vent - Inflow - Obvious.

(directly below 8)
GPU vent - Inflow - because you'd be supplying the machine with ambient cooler air from the external surrounding.

(7)
Ram vents - Inflow - Same reason as above IF the following is TRUE. (wait aren't these blocked anyway so its just surface cooling?)

(6)
HDD #0 Vent - Idle/Outflow - If you're blowing in air in other places, it has to come out somewhere. And there's TRULY only 1 more vent in general.

(4)
HDD #1 Vent - Idle - Same reason as above.


Have a better idea? Let me know. Want me to take a look at your laptop and give some suggestions? Comment away.

peace

[did I just... is that why the temperatures read at twice as high in Acer Fan Control? Because its dual core?... Anyway i'm sure this is the program that forces the CPU to run really high but I'm going to give it one more try]

 

Haha

Repaste the GPU and CPU anyone?

 

Last time I checked temperatures they were 26/28 for the cores after 20 minutes of idling. GPU was 41.

Once I start running my myriad of functional programs from chat networks to IDE, browser+tabs it goes up to an idling of 33. GPU heavy? Pushes the machine much higher.

I could re-paste them both I guess. But that would mean taking apart my laptop... I think you have too much time on your hands. Hell if I had the time to do that, I'd be a desktop enthusiast. Speaking of that, I think you might be lost niffcreature. This is forum.notebookreview.com. We have suspend... and portability for quick usage wherever we want. We're on the fly. Might I suggest PC Forums - Desktop Computer Forums and Discussions - Powered by vBulletin ?

Why don't you post your current laptop and see if I can help you get your temperatures even lower with a cooling pad fan placement. Or a little stand ice pak modification. Really helps for gaming and over-clocking.