M17xr3/r4/Ranger - Plug and Play High RPM CPU fan mod

Hey all, for the last month or so I've been trying out a few different fan mods in my M17xr4. Initially I used a 9.8cfm m4800 gpu fan as this had a much higher Cfm than the original stock fan. I also had a 13 cfm fan that came from a m6700 but I accidentally broke it trying to mod it. It was a great improvement but I wanted to take it further. I tried a HP DV7 fan as it was a single fan that cooled both a cpu and gpu but the difference between the previous fan was negligible. After this I decided to get an m14xr2 fan but couldn't find any anywhere except for ridiculous prices, so I thought I would order another 13 cfm fan to try and put in again. I decided to order another stock fan for the connector as it was only 6 dollars and I could also compare the modded fans vs a stock one.
Link to stock fan
I noticed this fan was a different brand to the original fan but didnt think It would make much difference.

When I put the stock fan in today I noticed that it maxes out at 5700-5900 RPM compared to the OEM stock fan at 3100? rpm and is easily the best out of all the fan mods I tried.
When I put the 13 cfm fan in I noticed that it maxes at the same RPM which I believe is some sort of system limitation, but due to the fact that I had to mod the fan shroud I actually got worse temperatures than the stock fan.


TLDR
LINK - Plug and play cpu fan for m17xr3/r4/Ranger that is 5700 RPM
Gave better temps than 4 modded fans I tried which included a 13cfm fan, and 9.8 cfm fan
Should give better temps than m14x r2 fan and requires absolutely no modding at all

 

So this is a drop in replacement but has higher RPM?

I guess I didn't think that replacement fans might spin slower in other units. Seems like PWM commanded never reaches 100%

 

Pwm command doesn't.

Have to bypass via spliced switch (or just cut the wire)

 

I believe its more a limitation on the slot. I tried 4 different fans in here and none of them could hold over 5800 rpm. Sometimes the fan would say max rpm 9800 or something but couldnt hold. With this fan you literally just drop it in and it moves a little bit more air than the gpu side fan when it is at full. Im assuming this fan must be in the range of 10-14 cfm as the cooling performance is better than fans with a cfm that high

 

Not on the ranger, I upgraded GPU fan to 11.2CFM and cooled OCed 780m at 56c.

 

I dont know what you mean, I have the 11.2cfm GPU fan aswell and it maxes at about 4500-4600 RPM. The CPU fan which is what im talking about maxes well above this (5700-5800) rpm

 

I believe its something to do with air pressure, when I cover up the back vent and bottom hole, the fan RPM instantly goes higher.

 

I can max 7000rpm iirc on the CPU side, but as a result lose control of the GPU fan with the Compal EC.

 

Ok I'll bite and buy one =) ordered!

 

I have made this mod already, with a small switch...

If you want me to share the pictures, let me know.

 

There you have the video.

 

Very clean, where did you source the switch? ebay?

What type of wire did you use?

 

UTP Cat 6 Wire, I can take pictures, for a more detailed procedure.

I took the switch from a LED lamp, the Switch is very small and the RANGER has plenty space on that area (inside) so you can place it with no problem!

Give me this week to work on the tutorial and provide you the serial number or part number for the switch.

I use this webpage as reference for PWM:
https://www.ekwb.com/blog/what-is-pwm-and-how-does-it-work/

 

Yeah I'd love that.

Ive got my ranger in pieces in anticipation for its revival. Looks like you spliced both fans to the same switch?

 

Yes!

As you know, the Zotac EN1070 does not own a FAN Control, so I have to turn it on by using HWiNFO64.

So, I use 3 heatpipes to share the heat between the GPU and CPU and use only the PWM Wire from CPU to control both fans automatically, the switch just 'cut' the PWM wire and you have both fans on full, something that is not possible with software.

This works very good and Im looking for a custom heatsink that shares the heat just like the new alienwares...

Here is the link with the serial number of the swtich and the lamp where I get the switch:

https://imgur.com/a/KRbF4N9

 

I have been thinking of doing something similar but it's a bit more radical. If I ever get to that point I'll share then but until that time it's just hopeful dreams lol.

 

I'm working with CICICHEN to have it done, but he asked me for some time to finish the design.

 

In terms of joining the heatsinks, I've ordered a bunch of parts as Im doing the same thing. You can buy m2 ssd heatsinks which you can place on top of the cpu heatsink. There is also these 0.7mm heatpipes you can order off aliexpress https://www.aliexpress.com/snapshot...&orderId=94475458658887&productId=32580140119 that should be thin enough to mount from the gpu/gpu heatsink to the heatpipes where the fins are

 

Hes a good guy from what I gather. Wasnt able to finish making a 4 pipe uniform heatsink and I also lost the funds so I havent spoke with him in a while.

I plan to move the GPU fan back towards the ODD bay and extend the radiator along with a half inch shroud for more effective use of the fan. Im sure you might've noticed that the outer most side of the radiator doesnt get nearly the same amount of airflow as the inner side. Or vice versa its been a while now. I think moving the fan back a little with a shroud will allow it to fully utilize the heatsink.

 

You are totally right!!!

 

The same principle applies to desktop fans too so I think it may help here as well

 

Anyone able to create diagrams of these mods? Kind of hard to visualize and understand the benefits.

 

Quick question: in my M17x R4 when i set the fan-control in HwInfo to "5000", both fans spin at max alle the time and don't stop before i turn them off manually, does that not work in the ranger?

 

I don't see the point in doing that fan mod on the m17xr4/r3 as like the post above you can control the fans to max rpm with HWInfo anyway. It is only useful in the posters case where fan control cannot be used by the gpu.

 

The stock alienware fans that are 5cfm and 1.3cfm uses 5v and 0.5a so it consumes 2.5w, the m6700 fan uses 5v but only 0.3a and is 13cfm so it consumes about 1.5w. Im going to look and see what the mobo fan header is rated up to. seems weird to me that a higher powered, larger fan is able to use less power?

 

Ok that was what I was wondering about, so the overall fan-control seems to be different in the ranger.

 

I dont even think its that different, but the user with the switch mod doesn't have any stock gpu fan control unless hwinfo is used, so in that case a switch is handy because you can control the fanspeed outside of windows

 

Ok, understood now.

 

In the Ranger if you try fan control you lose GPU control altogether because the only method of control is through Compal EC

 

What I see, even with HWiNFO64, you did not get the full speed of the FAN that you can get if you cut the PWM Wire. You can try it on the M17XR4 if you remove the PWM (blue) wire just for testing, I'm not sure it you are able to unleash the full fan speed by software on that model, not in the ranger.

 

Ah ok, yes that may be possible.

I always set 5000 rpm, after 4100 or so you don't hear any changes in the spinning sound. I always thought that they are running at the max. then.

 

I dont notice any changes in fan speed after 5800 rpm for the cpu and 4500 for the gpu, but I think they are definitely maxing out because I don't think they could spin much faster

 

Did you remove the PWM wire for testing?, or by Software?

 

I didn't on my current fan, but when i was soldering the modded fan I did the pwm fan incorrectly one time but it didn't go any higher then the max speed when it was done correctly

 

That makes more sense to me since 100% PWM should just match missing PWM wire.

Now the SW might not command 100%, that is different.

 

Just purchased one, thank you for sharing this

 

If someone wants to try ordering the fan with the blue sticker on it instead of the green, it may be faster too. It's from a 3rd brand.

 

Hi, Where can I get that fan? I have seen the green label on ebay at 300 euros, it seems a real scam to put them at that price when its real value does not reach or 10 euros....
.

 

https://www.ebay.de/itm/Turbo-FAN-f...718780?hash=item3b227d78fc:g:80UAAOSw0d1b7PtA

 

Thank you. I had been trying to get one like that for some time. Currently I have the one of the m14x r2 which I had to adapt it. This one that has linqueado seems to be plug and play. A greeting

 

Wait
Do I understand this right?
I have a ranger with stock fans at 1.66 cpu/ 1,74 gpu/ cfm, 5v 0,5A
This thing has 9*more cfm and its plug and play?
It says 1A - any concern?

 

None

 

You fix your ranger yet?

 

It's currently running. The 4930mx also died in the motherboard socket but my backup 4700mq still works.

It's a bare minimum ranger currently. But I'll be modding the storage shortly so I can be rid of the precision. Total of 8 drives in the ranger.

 

Well, I have it in.
Seems better than the stock one.
Is there one like this for GPU?
Or can this one be transplanted to the gpu housing?

 

For the gpu we use the M17x r3 fan which has 11.2 cfm iirc

You won't be able to max it without cutting the pwm wire. Some of us made a physical switch so we can go back to being silent when we want to.

 

yes, Ive seen that.
I was just wandering, shouldnt the higher cfm give the better cooling result at the same, non maxedout speeds?

 

No it tends to give higher Temps avg because the EC was designed with one fan in mind.

At least this was was happened when I did the same mod to my old y510p before it kicked the bucket.

That being said, max fan yielded much better results. I was cooling the 780m during gaming it never breached 56c. This was while playing siege, one of the only games I play on the daily that's relevant. Everything else is older for the most part (mass effect trilogy)

 

GPU Fan of the r4 has 11.4 cfm, model THPDJ.

 

Been trying to get my hands on THPDJ but its impossible.
The listings are fake.
So I got one of our good friend Cici since he eventualy listed GPU turbofan.
I got one for the CPU before and although I dont use HWinfo fan control and did not (yet) cut PWM wire it works better than the stock one.
Originally, stock ones went to 3900/3300 rpm (CPU/GPU) max.
Ive seen this turbo go at 4700 but just for a very short time, but its new, better max.
So when I got the GPU turbofan (It looked weird he listed spec table and it was the exact same one as for the CPU fan) I noticed that one of the wires on the small fan board was lose, like it was poorly soldered so it fell out. I went on resoldering it and put it in. Then I noticed that when you insert the conector, those wire ends that stick into the conector tend to pull out since they are not glued like the stock one. Well, that would probably short those wires so I made an effort to push them back in.
All well.
But no, the temps were worse then with the stock one.
So I contacted our good friend and he said, yes, he "cut" the pwm wire!?
Then I too desoldered the same wire but nothing happened, no fullthrotle max speed as I was expecting to see.
Anyhow, I am all for making that switch and have it done with, Im waiting on some Ram so I dont have to pull the thing apart more than needed.
I was looking for some really, really small switches though. As I can see, they could fit the kensington lock and need just a small cut to fit the wire trough. My idea is to make the minimum of dremmeling as possible.
Oh, and heres my U3 mod done yesterday=)
Modding My Cooler Master NotePal U3 PLUS