m17x r2 Watercooling Project

Okay, I know this has been attempted before, though I feel like I have some idea's that can definitely be pulled off to work a full loop water cooling system inside the m17x r2, though only using a single GPU setup. I do have a few different layouts in my head, one would require me to buy a m15x keyboard and see if it works to boot up the m17x. If I can eliminate the numpad, then I can run a full length factory made radiator down that side of the laptop internally. Otherwise I planned on just using the slave GPU area to build a copper radiator and run a blower fan in the dvd/br drive slot, to push air through the radiator and out the back.

I've already ordered another case so I don't have to chop up this one. I'm having issues finding a slim water block (the GPU-180 would work perfect if it was still around). Thinking I might order a Swiftech and use the copper base, and just make my own out of that.

Also will be gutting my old battery and just gluing the bottom half of the case into the bottom of the laptop body. Thinking I can make a small reservoir & pump area out of it. These laptops are totally useless on battery power anyways, so no loss there. And who uses an optical drive anymore anyways? I haven't used it since I got this laptop a few months ago. Just a waste of space now days.

I really feel like this will work, I'm not looking to do any insane overclocking or anything. Probably just run it at what I'm currently running it at, 26x across all four cores. I just think it would be a fun project, and be one of the few, if only people that are running a full internal water cooling loop inside a laptop, on regular basis and having it still just as portable as it was from the factory.

If anyone wants to chime in on more idea's, feel free! I plan on removing the black coating from the new case once it comes in the mail tomorrow. I'm not sure if they are anodized or powder coated from the factory?

 

I wouldn't take out the battery. I know that they aren't supposed to be used on battery while gaming, but... What if you need to use it for an emergency homework away from home? Or if there is a power outage and you are in the middle of a game?

 

Well, then it turns off. Lol, gaming without an AC adapter is like going 10 years back in time, performance wise. And the battery life is absolutely terrible to begin with, with a brand new battery. I could always plug into a UPS or something I suppose. I plan on getting a m18x r2 eventually so this definitely wont be my main laptop, and have plenty of other laptops too.

 

I thought about the UPS option as well. Guess that would be the best way to have it while home.

 

Cool Idea. If you can get this to work then you are a genius. Also, for space for tinkering does the R2 have 2HDD bays? and are they stacked? I think they were in my R1, if so you can loose both and move all storage to mSATA and have a nice brick of space.

 

Why don't you just make a water cooling system that is removable itself? Something you can simply plug into the system when in use. This would eliminate the hassle of trying to fit all of the stuff inside the system. All you would need is some doors/latches on the exterior that allow you to connect the system, and custom piping, and then boom - you've got water cooling. If you disconnect it, it goes back to the fans. For any portable application, you won't be needing water cooling anyway. So, having an internal water cooling system is somewhat unnecessary, right? I'm sure a couple skilled engineers could make something like this work. You could even go as far as having an external "water cooled overclocking dock/station" that your laptop snaps in to (removes the bottom cover and snaps in or something). Either way, good luck. I just think there are easier ways to get the same results without having to sacrifice features and endangering the laptop itself.

P.S. This is intellectual property. Don't steal me!

 

If you haven't seen it it before, Asetek had a design for a liquid cooled Alienware. I think Alienware even bought them out.

Liquid Cooled Laptops - Asetek, Inc.

 

is it even available for purchase?

 

I wouldn't be buying that until i'm 100% sure i won't be upgrading the laptop anymore

 

should totally work for piping could use automotive brass brake lines and get them precision bent to fit the way you want them to, as for pump - you can use some small-factor submergeable aquarium pumps or something like this: Micro Water Pump , and battery compartment would be perfect for custom built reservoir from acrylic boards etc about the radiator it could be the hard one but I'd imagine you can use something like this: and could use it on every vent and use stocck fan blowers to push air trough them giving you good breeze

dont necessarily need to destroy aesthetics of the machine while trying to make it run on water cooling and can still be fully portable (within the range of the DC cord )

for CPU/GPU you could use something like this: 1 PC CPU Water Cooling Block Waterblock Liquid Cooler Heatsink Black Metal | eBay

and this http://www.legitreviews.com/lepa-prepares-liquid-cpu-cooler-with-ultra-slim-water-block_13234 will take some of your attention, could have nice DIY out of few of these as it would include the pump which is in radiator, and only if you could get to resize radiator little bit, cut-n-weld DIY with special tools most likely at some pro-workshop, you could fit some low low profile fan on to the radiator, mount the radiator in to the battery bay or in to the ODD drive bay, and this rad would act alone as radiator and reservoir all in one considering vast benefit of using its own built in water-pump in it

 

i like the asetech idea of using the stock fins from the heatsink and the fans as a radiator and fan configuration. then just take the cd-drive off the r2 and put the pump and maybe a small reservoir where the cd-drive used to be. still gonna need to make a custom heatsink and heavy modification on the magnesium cover.

 

I don't think that the brake line cooler would do a lot to help, as its just a straight through design with not a TON of cooling fins. Most PC radiators have up to 10 fins per inch or more, very thin fins that transfer heat fast. That line cooler would be only 1/10th of what a small radiator would cool. I've been trying to come up with radiator designs in my head after a bunch of research. And have been thinking of efficient ways of transferring the heat in a small space. I might try using the sealed flat pump / water blocks from Corsair, that they used in their Hydro series. That way I can pump the coolant and mount it with some fins going into the air path of the radiator, to have even more cooling. Having fins coming off the bottom of the copper plate on the hydro pump / water block, I'm sure they'd soak up some of the heat in the lines. Also pretty sure I found the water block I'm going to use for the project.

Though now the snag I ran into, is my case I ordered off eBay (bottom case + lcd top case), both arrived very damaged. They didn't even ship it in a box. JUST a plastic bag, that got smashed up in shipping of course, honestly someone would have had to been an idiot to ship it like that. Steer clear of "discountedlaptopparts" on eBay. I sent them pictures of the damage a few days ago and still no reply.

I'm also still trying to find micro channel rectangular tubing to build a small radiator out of copper. Or even just some regular rectangular small copper tubing, would work great.

Also as far as Asetech's design goes, I don't really see it being very practical. Looks cool, but using the stock fins as the radiator? I imagine the temps will be about the same, and the noise will also be around the same, if those stock fans have to wind up to some high RPM's to cool down those fins. There just isn't a whole lot of cooling surface area on the stock fins. I'm going to concentrate on cooling the cpu first, and then come up with a way to turn the gpu cooler into a water block after, since that has less space to work with then the CPU. I might actually build some type of line cooler like the one shown above, out of pure copper with quite a bit more fins per inch, and use the CPU cooler fan to cool it, as even more added cooling. I realized there wont be anything in the original cpu cooling fin area, so that would definitely help.

 

you havent thought of idea of installing a very small lines of copper tubing in zig-zag pattern behind the original heatsinks? Just cut some of the fins at the end of the original heatsinks to accomodate new water cooling passage pipes, and then after laying the desired pattern, solder these bent pipes to the heatsink fins, then removing of primary copper pipes that lead to old heatsink block assy can be done maintaining very nicely built 100% perfect fit custom radiators.

Utilizing standard fans + CoolLabs liquidUltra thermal compound (38.4W/mK) and some blue automotive coolant with anti-corode properties will never ask your system to crank up this high RPM, but run cool, quiet and stable most of the time. Otherwise I didnt hear you complaining about absence of quietness. If you've never built liquid cooled setup before, you should know, that for higher cooling efficiency and lower stable temperatures to be quiet operation you will not only require more coolant(BIG reservoir) but also massive radiator and appropriate size(BIG) quiet fan, which neither of these could potentially fit in to the machine. So I'd now say easiest way to do is just build the radiator,reservoir, pump outside laptop box, and make attachable CPU block to go in to the laptop on demand, and when you need to move just slap original heatsink back in and reconnect cpu fan to the socket again

 

I did not read everything, just the topic to be honest, but i have a quick advice.

Water cooling will give almost ZERO improvement over traditional cooling in R2.

CPU heatsink is good enough to handle 26FID across all cores (3.5GHz) on 920XM, temps are rarely reaching 85+'C

I also have 2x 7970M and even when i overvolt them they stay cool under full load at about 83'C ( Overvolt to 1.1V and 1025/1450 Clocks with VSYNC ON at 60FPS )

Even if you would succeed in installing this it would give you almost no improvement, simply because components are capable of running overvolted and Max OCd even on standard cooling, if mounted properly.

Only thing i was thinking of is adding 1 more Heat pipe on each GPU heatsink, which i have done successfully on primary heatsink but have no time to test it...sadly.

Another mod that can be done is a Heatpipe sharing, connect both GPUs with CPU heatsink, this could remove a lot of strain off CPU.....i am also looking on how to do it, but how do i assemble/reassemble it after perma-gluing the pipes

More for fun than for performance those mods are

just my 5 cents

 

The more people that say it won't work, the more I want to do it. Come Monday morning I'll be ordering a ton of supplies to make this happen.

 

Exactly honestly who cares if it will or won't as long as your wanting to do it I think we would all be glad to see it in action !

 

Where do you intend to put more radiator space so you can dissipate more heat? Keeping the current amount would be the same or worse.

 

i would guess a great cooling-idea would be to run all three radiators and both GPU's and the CPU in series with a pump. Just to spread the heat between all radiators. Not using a reservoir.

You can make inlet and outlet in the side where you use a jumper/pipelatch from inlet to outlet with snap connections. (if there are anything like that)
Add a reservoir that can be plugged in if latch is removed that can be in the shape of a cooling tray.
Inlet to reservoir on top and into computer below to be sure air stays in reservoir. If wanted the reservoir could have an extra pump.

 

so what parts did you order and how are they gonna fit?