cicichen upgraded multi-pipe heatsinks

I am a member at alienowners.com and have been directed here to discuss concerns with the cicichen multi-pipe heatsinks. After much research, I found that cicichen's heat sinks offer better cooling performance, and help to control GPU and CPU temps to something more reasonable (I would be happy with 75c under load).

I am running an Alienware 17 R1 (Ranger), with a GPU upgrade to a 780M and a CPU upgrade to a 4900MQ, stock was an 860m and a 4510mq(?)

I ordered the four pipe heat sink for the GPU, and the 5 pipe heat sink for the CPU. The GPU one did drop my 780m load temperatures from 98c to 85c, no complaints there. But the CPU temps are not any better than before, and the 4900mq is still reaching 92-93c under load with the fans ramping up.

Note that I also installed the 11CFM R4 fans, also purchased from cicichen.

The concerns with the CPU cooler performance are pretty obvious when it comes to heat sink inspection. The die contact surface is wavy, and what looks to be a couple "pits". I don't see how this can effectively transfer heat away from the die to the fins.

I contacted cicichen, but it seems like he is very adamant that the heatsink is perfectly fine, and just to use silicon grease to install it, challenging me that the temperatures are normal. Is this true? From what I have heard and read, his heat sinks perform much better than the stock ones (in this case the CPU heat sink performs the same, regardless of copper and increased pipe designs, and I fail to see how such an imperfect contact surface can be passed off as acceptable.

 

They offer better thermal capacity and have better handling of sudden heatspikes.

That being said the fan has to be ramped as well, with a max fan speed I was seeing 54-56c on my 780m and also the 1070.

CPU is more difficult to cool though, I had to modify the entire chassis with a bigger fan and double the radiator to handle 4.4Ghz on the 4930mx with liquid metal. Though it made 4.2Ghz daily quite cool as the voltage requirements were much less.

 

I apologize, I hit post before I was finished writing. I am working on getting pictures of the die contact area.

I did install a PWM bypass switch, to ramp the fans up to max RPM, and it does help, but I feel like I got cheated on the heat sink with it's horrible contact area.

Running your finger over the copper plate, you can clearly feel how uneven the surface is.

 

I got both GPU and CPU heatsinks from the same guy and some people say it helped them, from my personal experience these are garbage quality. They are sitting in the storage, I tried to fit both of them and they didn't even screw down, damn thing was not even upto the HS measurements also same BS of uneven surface, when I tried to reach him out, same type of reply that it is fine and did I check my machine and etc. At that time I was like at-least someone is helping to make this AW 17R1 work efficiently and didn't give him a bad rep but I did mention it here too. It's been quite sometime (2 years) maybe that guy improved them as I see some positive reports but not willing to try again.

Then we have this same PWM bypass, if we do not use that technique the high density Copper block that comes with that is utter useless as the heat will be retained in that and spread to other parts of the chassis. Personally I do not want to hard mod this machine for other reasons and here running a 980M fine with the stock HS (Phobya thermal pads, GC Extreme) and HWInfo fan control with M17x R3 CPU fan and M17x R4 GPU fan, both are better than Ranger's low CFM garbage stock fans by Dell cost cutting. I think stock HS is really a good one and if we can manage to add a few pipes like the German modder that's the best solution IMHO, and the extra lapping of Copper Shim for the 1070 upgrade since the new Pascal die on 1070 HP Black PCB chipset (natural upgrade path for 17R1 for Pascal without any hard mods) is thinner than Maxwell GPUs.

I wish there is one positive note on the DPTF Tables working with Unlocked sBIOS, so far none for AW 17R1 ( here on AW18), dunno why... and unfortunately that crap needs the drivers + an MX chip to make it work.

I forgot to mention, a 980M with 3 Pipe Stock HS works perfectly fine (unless that 980M is blackscreening due to the missing mosfets) but you need to use a cooling pad (here are the mods using Notepal U3 thread 1, thread 2, post 1, post 2) and HWInfo manual maxout control, so for the 780M it should be even much better.

 

Yeah the CPU heatsink from him seems to be hit and miss, the GPU heatsinks I've had were all great but it is anecdotal.

I ended up making my own heatsink but its not something other users would be interested in.

 

can you post your pwm modification

 

The heatsink looks completely unusable from the pictures you posted. The most important part on the heatsink looks bent and dented, where is has to be absolutely flat. The whole point of the heatsink is to be flat as the metal to metal heat transfer is way better than the best thermal paste can offer (399wmk for copper vs 72wmk for thermal grizzly conductornaut). If the heatsink is bent, the thermal paste will have to fill in the gaps with the inferior thermal conductivity. There is no way that heatsink is fit for purpose at all. The suggestion to use thermal paste to fill in the gaps makes no sense.

 

I don't think for the cpu side of cooling won't make any difference. I have a 4940MX in it right now , and after starting a game, you can actually cook an egg on contact on the side of the laptop where the HS and Fan reside.

Improvements can only be done on the GPU side.

PS: I even have a custom laptop cooler with (3) 120MM and (1) 80MM fans , still didn't help lol

 

You have to create your own heatsink to get better temperatures, but thats more than most are willing to put up with.

 

So, I received a message from cicichen after reiterating my concerns of a flat surface for CPU die contact, and he said there is a another heat sink being shipped out to me. Hoping this one will be of better quality

 

Here is a compilation of the photos and the short video showing my PWM mod in action.



I went with a durable double pole double throw slide switch, using the existing cable lock hole to put the lever through. The cable lock hole needed a bit of enlarging, maybe by .5mm, but it's unnoticeable that it's there unless you know what you are looking for.

 

where did you get the switch

 

Oh wow, now I'm really interested in this fan mod. I've actually been wanting to do something like that for a while, but all the fan mods I've seen so far other than this one have required more than minimal chassis modding. This is perfect. Do you mind sharing how exactly you went about this and the parts you used?

 

I get my components from a local electronics parts supplier, but I know that the switch is fairly common.

Digi- key carries it in a few variants:

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/e-switch/500SDP1S1M7QEA/EG5424-ND/4027905

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/c-k/1201M2S3AV2BE2/CKN5055-ND/483728

 

Clamibot:

you do have to remove some of the chassis around the inside of where the cable lock sits, but it is easily done with a pair of pliers to break off the large sections, then use a dremel to remove the rest of the material.

I didn't remove the main board or anything from the chassis, I covered everything with an ESD bag, taped around the corners, then blew off everything with compressed air before removing the bag, to keep metal shavings/dust from shorting anything out.

The entire mod only took about an hour and a half, from start to finish.

Be sure to tap into the correct fan wire, basically cutting it, then two wires go to the switch to break or connect it again. I used 20g jumper wire. I could have gotten away with 24g, but all that I had on hand was the 20g.

 

I received a replacement heatsink from cicichen, with a contact surface more along the lines of a professional product. Smooth and flat!

CPU temps are now maxing out at the 83c mark with the PWM Alienware fan curves, and staying around 70c with PWM bypassed. Cicichen did good with making things right, and I would recommend!

 

83c at which frequency and with which thermal paste ?

 

It is hitting 83c running all cores at 3.6GHz, Thermal Grizzley Kryonaut paste, ambient temperature at 77 Fahrenheit .

This is maximum temperature after 30 minutes of aida64

 

Hi there all!

Must say that after few months with both allcopper heatinks I can conclude as it was here noticed.
Gpu heatsink is great, I remember stock Ranger some years ago when it was new going up in the 90s c.
I can get it to work now under load at 45!
Some other things are there also but quite significant improvement.

Cpu one is not making good contact and thats the bottom line.
I went with conductonaut and it was kind of fine at first and then it deteriorated. Opend it up and lm was dry. There was much difference in core temps too, some 6-7c.
Back to stock one with lm and its cool now.

The idea is good, make it all copper and double the mass of the stock heatsinks but the cpu one such as it is is a waste of money.

 

Not sure I would say the mass is doubled, the heatsink essentially just handles power spikes a little better only because of the material involved.

I actually doubled the mass on mine as an experiment and was able to hold 4.4Ghz with the stock contact plate but even there the contact was uneven so I had a hot core and eventually lost interest in the project as a whole, particularly after not being able to OC the 1070.

 

Well, I actually weighed them

Stock CPU/GPU 61g/134g
All Copper 147g/250g

 

It may be parlance that is used here more than other mediums of discussion but generally it refers to the mass of the fin stack (heat exchanger/exhaust etc) but the pipes and contact plate would need to be removed from both comparisons for direct comparisons like that.

I had actually doubled the mass (of the fin stack) on my Ranger before retiring the project.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-log-aw17-ranger.827275/page-16#post-10979303

 

I'd say the 4 heatpipe CPU heatsink is definitely significantly better than the stock one, but it has a lot of room for improvement. I'm able to sustain a power draw of 67 watts with the full copper heatsink with max fans (using Phobya Nanogrease as my TIM). With the stock heatsink, I can only sustain a 50 watt power draw before thermal throttling (under the same conditions).

The full copper heatsink does need a better contact plate as thermal paste pumps out easily with it. It would've been great if the CPU heatspreader and fan was as big as on the GPU side. The space exists for that to happen.