*PICS* Cooling Mods Done! TX-4 and Clip Mod!

man i did some playing around and see the benchmark threads but i am having to crank up the tdp/tdc too high to get 24x all across and not worth it. I have not done the mod just swap cpu and slap mx3 and i am getting in the 85-95 range and sometimes touching 98 so not what i like to see. I have lots of faith in the mods but until i get a unit that i will be keeping (warranty replacement) i am not wanting to do anything extreme. On my unit for good i will go all out and play around a little and see how much i can learn. The m15x to me felt like it had awesome cooling with just replacing paste and pads and i had to use much less power to hit as high as 27x all across. I am still learning this beast so it will take time on my part. I am running 150mw bios and 5% along with 1.7v when i start getting extreme like trying to hit high clock rates but daily usage i think the 75mw is fine but each chip is different so enjoy that.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/6803455-post5688.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/6803914-post5693.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/6757408-post3.html

 

yea im happy and good at +75v
am i ok to run these settings in Throttlestop 24/7?
im not into benchmarking really so im not looking to max anything out. I just want a decent OC i can keep and just play BC2 and never look back

im runing wPrime 1024M now
91-87-88-89 Celcius
FID is only at 20.52
multi 24
TDP/TDC 85/75
I think im maxed out
Damn heat!!!!

 

those temps are good if you are staying below 95 at all times that it safe 100 is where it will start thermal throttling. what are your temps when you are running at your old setting of 90/75 and in game temps for BFBC2 should be lower since wprime is hitting your processor at 100% on all cores and that will not be happening with BFBC2 or not at all times. Benching is always going to be the worst case scenarios and real life is much better. Sometimes one just needs to get away from the benching stress and just play a match or two and enjoy the setup.

Here are some pics of the horrible paste job from dell outlet in my opinion

 

Yea that paste job isn't very good
I replaced that white Dell pad for a 1.0mm Fujipoly pad from FrozenCpu.com.
Do you think 1.0mm is to big?
At 90/75 with 24 Multi
The MAX temps in 1024M were
95-92-91-91
I'd say that I'm good!!
256.083 seconds
Vantage 18134

I guess theres no point in using a higher multiplier since it will never go that high right?

 

Damn you rob, now i have to get off my butt and order Shin Etsu and good thermal pads... those GPU temps are way too good, if i can avoid the fans kicking in when under full load at stock speeds, i will be a happy camper. same with the CPU

can you remember what the default TDP/TPD settings are for the 920XM? I forgot to write them down. good guide and good stats btw

 

Stock TDP/TDC is 62/62 I believe either that or 64/64
Use TX-4. My temps are low man. I'm playing Bad Company 2 now maxxed out settings with Crossfire off and the only fan blowing right now is my CPU fan. I'm very happy with my GPU temps. Keep I mind I'm overclocked to 880/1100 @ 1.12v. I did a log the other day with GPUz and my GPU temps never went over 68-72C
For some reason BC2 does not run with crossfire on.
I get weird color flicker and lag. I really hope that's a driver issue.
Anybody else having problems with XFire in BC2???

 

what is TX-4? thermal pads or paste?

shopping list
> 1mm good thermal pad shee
> a few packs of shin etsu 571!..
> new screwdriver..
> some alcohol pads

 

Tuniq TX-4 is thermal paste chiefs oles!!!

Tuniq TX-4 High Performance Thermal Grease - 3.0g - FrozenCPU.com

My order just arrived today. Oles!!!

Cheers.

 

ok so TX-4 instead of Shin Etsu paste?
i havent ordered anything yet so will get all this correct before ordering.

GPU + CPU thermal paste = TX-4
Thermal Pads 1mm = good ones?

and thats it yeh?

 

For your GPU pads you need the 0.5mm thermal pads.

For the CPU mmoffset you will need the 1.0mm or you can just double up the pads.

Cheers.

 

cool, let us know how the temps drop after the TX-4 goes on...

 

Ok if anybody has an extra CPU Heatsink for a M17X R2 please let me know. I will buy it off of you.
I am going to have a new one made. I'm going to spend my own money and see if I can make it better and out of pure copper!!!

 

Pure copper is not the solution.....you need better contact with the cpu die and more surface area on the fins at the other end of the heatpipe

I would try a copper mod first...cost about $2

 

I used 1.0mm for the GPU pads. I looked at the original pads and at the Fuji stuff I got at FrozenCPU and they looked the same thickness.

I have no issues with my GPU temps (or, at least, they did not go higher after using 1.0mm pads).

I thought I had read somewhere that 1.0mm was the right stuff for the GPU's.

I don't get how you say your multiplier is set to 24??? It shows 16 in throttlestop. Where are you setting it to 24? And, isn't the FID column the same as your multiplier (21.43 in your case)???

I'm also trying to understand and figure out Throttlestop!

 

for the 4870s 1mm works fine

it is different for the 5870s

 

I see. Thanks for clearing that up!

 

Yeh the 4870s need 1.0mm pads and the 5870s need 0.5mm pads.

Nice temps btw.

Cheers.

 

Hey buddy
To set the multiplier to 24 or whatever you want all you do is right click the throttlestop window and it gives you TDP/TDC and Multiplier settings.
I honestly don't know what that 16 multiplier does. It won't go any higher than 16. Everyone tells me to tick the first 3 options so I did

 

Quick question, will changing thermal paste and pads void the Dell warranty?

 

to put it simply no unless you cause damage and dell can prove you caused it.

 

the cpu moffset requires 2.0mm worth of pads. The stock 1.0mm dell pads do not make contact. All 3 of my R2's have used 1.0mm pads and none of them touch the moffsets.

 

I tried 2.0 and it seemed to be to much. When I originally tried 2.0mm my CPU temps climbed to about 98-100C. Probably because the thick pads kept the heatsink from sitting tight on the CPU core. I repasted with a single 1.0mm pad and my temps dropped 10C from when I had 2.0mm pads.

 

I manage low 40's idle and mid 70s with TS on my 740. 2.0mm is what is needed, I've tried 1 and 1.5mm. There is 0 contact on those moffsets unless you're using 2.0mm. You don't even have to remove the HS to see it's not making contact, you can eye-ball the cavity by looking at it from the side of the laptop, or even at the heatsink itself, the die is much taller than the moffsets are, but the recession for the pad is deeper than the one for cpu core. 1.0mm makes the pad flush with the copper core contact.. but the moffsets are lower than the core is, it doesn't take rocket science to figure out there's not going to be any contact there. I'm not sure why Dell hasen't caught it yet, probally because it manages just fine without it being covered, but they obvisully tried to cool it in the first place anyway.

 

ok, there is something obviously not right about alienware. i mean, they put the thermal pad there and it's not making contact at all with the mosfets (yes, i can confirm this too from past experience opening M17x). so what's the point then? could this be a design error miscalculation, or could this be done on purpose? from first impression, the thermal pads are there to conduct heat from the power mosfets to the heatsink, but we all know it's not making any contact, so it's basically useless.

however, if we were to make proper contact the mosfets and the heatsink using 2mm pads as suggested by Lozz, will it bring any harm to the power mosfets? think about it, our cpus can easily hit 80-90C when it's on full load, so the heatsink has got to be close to that temperature. when the entire heatsink, thermal pads reach thermal equilibrium, so will the mosfets.

so the real question is, what is the MAX temperature of those power mosfets under load?

1. if it's equal/higher than the cpu/heatsink temperature at load, then a proper contact is vital to ensure its longevity and stability over time.

2. if it's lower than the cpu/heatsink temperature at load, then a proper contact can actually cause damage and shorten life of the mosfets as they are operating at a higher than normal temperature.

if someone could measure the real temperatures of those mosfets, then we can make a proper conclusion whether to use 2mm pads or not to use any pads at all.

 

yummy. By the way people help me!
umm
Handsomerob has an Alienware theme. I want one on my 17x as well. Help me, I feel soo noob. Where and how do I get one?
Can anyone give me a link please?

Thnx

 

Drivers and Downloads

The Themes download from Dell... It was just released in Aug 2010 Link is above

 

traditionally, in high performance mainboards they do not run as hot as a cpu would(although they're always cooled), however in this case, I'm thinking we can trust flextronics wanted them to be cooled in the M17x considering they designed the heatsink in a way that would cool them. Plus, there's 240+W going through these 3 moffsets, that's asking a lot.

 

So if i understand this right. Let say im only gona use As5 on the GPU nothing else.. Everything goes well. This stil gona void my warrenty???

 

No

10 char

 

Your warranty will be viod if YOU damage anything. Anything you damage is not going to be covered by the warranty.

 

Oki doki... Then its better not to damage anything then By the way, having some problems here in Sweden to find thermalpads in the right size. Im only gona do the gpus. The place were im buying As5 and cleaner have thermalpads that is 1.0 mm and they say that it can be compressed to its half size...Should i go with this or do someone here know a good place to buy this here in Sweden.

 

I just order my thermal pads and IC Diamond off frozencpu.com They may ship international if you check them out.

 

Oles chiefs,

Sorry I'm not sure where you can buy thermal pads in Sweden. I couldn't find any down under either so I bought from DR's favourite place Forzen CPU.

For the 5870 GPUs you will need 0.5mm thinkness thermal pads.
For the 4870 GPUs you will need 1.0mm thickness thermal pads.

Good Luck with finding the pads chiefs.

Cheers.

 

Hmm. I've done a bit of research into the cooling mods and am unsure how to go about this. Results from mods here seem good even though they are contrary to the specs. Here's what I'm considering for thermal paste,

1. Masscool Shin-Etsu G751 ( > 4.5 W/mK)
2. Tuniq TX-4 (6.53 W/mK)
3. Artic Cooling MX-4 (8.5 W/mK)

As you can see the AC MX-4 compound has a much better thermal conductivity and should provide better results in similar setups. But as I've said initially, results from some of you proved otherwise.

I'm going to order 2 sets of each, with the 1mm pads and see if I can run some experiments without damaging my laptop. Hoping to get around to do this next weekend if the parts come in (from Frozencpu.com btw - good pricing).

Edit:

wow, costed me $100 total for everything hahaha. Guess they're not "that" cheap Order some .5mm and 1mm pads as well.

 

Wow $100. U crazy
Just get the TX-4 and do what I did in the OP
My temps are as good as can be
Thermalpads are not needed on the GPU

 

i've had excellent results with both MX3 and now MX4, no retention mod, no added cooler, and the temperatures im getting are on par with most users here who did retention mod and with added notebook cooler. the most remarkable temperature i've seen so far comes from joker and i believe he is using MX3/4 as well.

 

Oles koolos chiefs. You might have just inspired me to order some MX-4 LOL.

What temps were Jokers? + your current temps chiefs?

My furmark temps are on this thread here. Just for comparison if you ran the same tests what temps do you get. Also idle and max load gaming temps?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...internal-cooling-mod-huge-improvement-49.html
My temps and stuff are listed from page 49 - 51

I too only use thermal paste and new thermal pads. I don't do any of the other cooling mods and I don't use a notebook cooler.
The paste I'm using atm is Tuniq TX-4 for the R2 and Shin Etsu for the R1.

High 5 for our Awesome TEMPS chiefs eheheh oles!!!

Cheers.

 

here's my idle temp after 2 hours from cold boot and regular use. cpu is overclocked to 27X @ 3.6GHz TDP/TDC 72/62 and GPUs overclocked to 900/1100. will do a full load when i've got more time. but i can tell u now that my full load at those settings,

wprime after 2 runs
CPU highest is about 86C

furmark after 15min
GPU highest is about 83C

bear in mind if im on all stock, my temps will be much much lower. they seem high because of heavy overclock. and i did no retention mod, no new fancy thermal pads and definately no active laptop cooler, not even raising the back. but im thinking of getting a laptop cooler as soon as UK starts to stock notepal u3 because i realised that if i raise the back by an inch, my temps drop almost 10C across the board. cheers.

 

Ah awesome cool cool chiefs. Thats brilliants.

Yeh I own a heap of notebook coolers from past notebooks and just impluse purchases lol However I find I don't really need to use one for this Alien. Its awesome at cooling itself. Even with the CPU OC.

Nice temps with heavy OC chiefs. I think I will get around to trying out the MX-4 sometime soon. It will be interesting to see what sort of temps I can get with that one.
However I'm also lazy and tentative to touch my temps again as I already have very nice stock and max load temps. So we shall see. ehehehe

Man Awesome CPU max load temps your rocking there. Especially with a 940XM as well. Wholly Smokes Phenonminal!!! WOWSers!!!

Cheers.

 

I'm thinking about doing tests in the order of what I've listed but I'm leaning heavily towards just using the MX-4 specifically because of its thermal conductivity. Can't go wrong with it is what I'm thinking. I'll see if I have the motivation to run some tests next weekend.

Nice temps there Alex, especially on the 940. My goal is to bring down the idle temps to acceptable levels instead of near the 60sC. If I don't, summer will be brutal.

 

So i did a AS5 paste on my GPU,s for the first time and was very, very gently to my system . Everything went well, no cracking sounds or anythng.. My question is, how long time does it take for the AS5 to reach its fully.. Ive heard 200 hours, but are you just allowed to surfe the internet then and not do any gaming?? Because ive just tested Moh Tier 1 for 5 minutes, only to see if cf and everything works ok.. And it does. But the temps on the gpu 0 memIO seems a bit high? Gpu 1 seems to run low and stable temps.. I did not change the thermal pads because i got 1mm that they said that they was easy to compesse to 0.5mm.. But i just thought that ile whait with those.. The laptop have been running for about 12 hours and then i tested Tier 1 and the max temps looks like this.. Will these temps become lower or do i need to repaste gpu 0?

 

90C on GPU 1? even uncured AS5 is not that bad. without any OC, u should be looking at around 75C MAX for both. and with MOH, which only uses around 50% gpu power on average, 65C is just about right

 

I Saw that it was gpu 0 that was high.. Its been high even before i did the paste job.. Around 80 before now 90.. So do you think i need to do this card again or wait to see if it lowers the temps by time.. Its strange, i did exactly the same on booth with AS5.. And memIO is that memory and were the pads are??

Edit: I did a quick run of furmark and saw that MemIO was high on booth cards. This is max temps on furmark 1min.. Did not dare to run it longer because of the new paste

 

It looks like you didn't put enough paste on GPU 0. If you're still using the original thermal pad you need to put more than the recommended amount of AS5 as it's very thin. GPU 1 looks normal.

 

Thanx mate.. As i said this is my first time so im in a learning process .. Nothings broken and thats good.. So should i try to compresse my 1mm pads as the factory that make them said you can do or..... I havnt put the on/off plate back completely so its pretty easy and quick to clean up the gpu and repaste..

 

I'm kinda confused on what to do here and what computer this works on. So here are the questions I have:

Will this mod work on the m17x r1? What would void my warranty? If I get new thermal pads i can just save the default in a bag like in the OP.

What's better AS5 or TX-4?
AS5 has curing time, but I heard TX-4 works off the bat, and performs the same as AS5 but cooler temps when there is a load

What chips do i apply the TX-4 on, is it just the CPU and GPU or are there more?

What thermal pads do I apply on what chips, also please tell me what sizes to get for each specific chip, and where can I buy these?

Sorry for the amount of questions but I just want to do this right =D

 

So i still have problem with my temps. Ive now tried 4 times but it seems that i cant get the gpu and heatsink tight. The heatsink almost looks like it points up just a litle bit. I have the original pads and they almost looks to thick. Everything works ok in games and benches but i also have spikes sometimes in gpu-z. It says over 1000 degrees but in hwmonitor there arnt any. Mayby just a glitch.. I saw a movie here somewere that someone had recorded their pasting job but cant remember where? Does anybody now what to do with my heat problem. After work today im going to take it apart again and see why i cant get the gpu and heatsink tight..

Edit: Ive now bent the retention clip up a bit.. Could of done a bit further but didnt want to break anything this time. But ive noticed a 5 degrees drop, so now im at 92 degrees 7 minutes in furmark.. So ile try bending them just a tad more and hopefully my temp will drop more.. I just dont understand you guys that get 70-80 degrees.. Im using AS5 and you something else.. This time the gpu die and heatsink looked pretty tight so can it be something wrong with my AS5 or what?? Because the curing cant do more than 2-5 degrees??

 

could someone answer my question please =D

could you tell me what thermal pads you use, and show where each pad goes please.

I would really like to apply this mod

 

Ok Judas, here is what I know:

It will work with the R1, but, your pad layout on the RAM and other areas of the cards may be different. You have to pay attention to these pads to see if they are also different thicknesses. And above all else make sure that they have strong contact to the heatsink when you put the heatsink back on. You do this by pressing the heatsink to the card, pull back the pad and see if there is any indentation.

The thickness of the pads you are looking for is 0.5mm. This seems to be the most standard thickness across the cards, but testing on 260s is still new. I used thes pads here ( link)

TX-4 does work very well. It is thicker than AS5, so you have to warm it next to a lightbulb, and work with it quickly again before it cools.

Because it is so thick, some people have used it for the RAM chips as well. They claim no issues, but this method is only a few months old so there is no long term proof. It may dry faster on the RAM chips, or not. It also can make a heck of a mess

alexnvidia, did you do any other physical alterations to your heat sink, like cut the corner to make it fit better? I'm really impressed that you are able to overclock so well with such good temps using stock pads and just a new repaste MX-4 right?

 

So far so good with TX-4 on my Ram chips.
Temps are better than ever and should stay that way for a long time. With the clip mod my heatsink was a very very tight fit on the Ram.
If your not doing the clip mid I would use 0.5mm pads. Like rSGeiger says: I would check the clearance of the pad. Remember! You can stack pads too. So if 0.5 is too little you can stack two 0.5 pads together to =1.0mm

Hey RSGeiger
My GPU clocks are 880/[email protected] and 20 minutes in Xtreme Burning mode with 8XAA in Furmark never gets over 80C
Honestly overclocking doesn't really raise my temps that much.