New and improved M15x CPU cooling mod! Guide and pictures!

Hello everyone. Today I have had far too much time on my hands

Recently I decided that I am going to try my utmost to achieve overvolting in the M15x. This is a crucial step to shore up it's future as it becomes more aged. I immediately realised however the cooling is woefully inadequate dealing with extra voltage.

Enter extreme cooling mod

1,) Firstly I combined two cooling pad chassis designs I had lying around the house. One is the Cyro LX and the other I forgot. The forgotten one is much smaller so I was able to overlap them but leave space on one side to allow for the third CPU cooling fan to fit underneath the laptop without obstruction.



2.) Second I realised the the 9 cell battery juts out of either side with plastic wings. I proceeded to chop one wing off completely and cleanly using small wire cutters. I then also cut the plastic access panel to reveal almost the entire cpu heatsink in all it's glory around the fan intake.

3.) Third I rearranged the small ram heatsinks and also placed new ones as seen below. There is still room for more however I am a bit low on money for this hobby this month (bought a 2TB drive lol) so this will have to wait a bit. Quite pretty I think



4.) Next up was figure out how to attach the thermaltake fan to the chassis. I decided to use two wire twist ties. I looped them in two places around the metal fan guard and then under torsion taped the ends of one to the battery and other to the side of the laptop. This is not pretty and only temporary. I intend to stick Velcro to the side of the laptop and the bottom of the battery and then superglue to opposite side of the velcro to wire twist ties. If successful this should allow clean separation of fan from laptop whenever I want with no more tape. I also hope to find a fitting wire mesh fan guard (smaller than the other two) to cover the new hole I have made when I travel.
I have circled in red the wire twist ties.




5.) I fired up Prime 95 small ffts and 24 x (3,2ghz) and tested for over 5 mins to see load temps. 3 cores reached 72 and one core reached 73C. Before this additional mod the temps reached 80C at least after the same amount of time. Considering I still have space to add more heatsinks and could grind down those bumps on the heatsink to provide yet more surface area to cover with heatsinks too I believe I can lower temps down into the sixties degrees C. Ambient temp during the test was 19C.



Here are a couple of other pics I snapped. You can see the seagate backup plus 2TB that will be installed next More to come. This mod will be improved upon and then when finished I will attempt once more to bump up to +200mv and see if the cooling holds.

Then Haswell watch out!

 

You sir are a madman and I take my hat off to you. Fantastic job extending the cooling mod. I was also thinking it was necessary to reveal more of the cpu heatsink and pipe assembly by cutting away the bottom plastic cover.
I'm also thinking of modding my laptop cooler but instead of loads of little fans I'm thinking more along the lines of one big 200mm fan, possibly powered from the mains.

Again fantastic and genius job! Where did you get the blue and purple heatsinks from? I only have those ultra low-profile ones from ModDIY.

 

From the local store and thank you

I will install the 2tb drive and update the mod tonight. Say goodbye to tape. I need to sneak to the store and get more sinks but it is 1000 yen for a pack of 8. Not cheap.

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Ok good news. I found a suitable fan mesh grill (although it only came in silver) and also bought new sinks. Set for another night of modding and upgrading! Happy times! Been too long.

Of course my wife finds my tinkering at best amusing at worst a waste of money. We all need hobbies right


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My girlfriend is patiently waiting for the day my laptop explodes. But she won't let me buy a desktop because she likes all the lighting FX things.
Honestly...

 

Ok here goes. This hours of deliberation and tonnes of superglue! I still have room for more heatsinks. I will get another pack soon.

I dare not attach the fan properly yet as the glue is still drying. But this gives some idea.
A bit better than cable tie idea I hope you can agree.

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Wow I totally forgot the silly disassembly process to get to the ODD. Took a bit of time despite working quickly Anyways drive now installed. Works perfectly and mod is complete too. Just got to add some more heatsinks.

 

Are you able to say how much of a difference it makes compared to cooling mod v1.0? Prime 95 under 70 degrees?

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It won't be as I removed the blue heatsinks in favour of the new better ones from the local store. I have room for at least 8-9 more and won't test until tomorrow when I have them.

Also I don't want to attach the fan tonight as the superglue will hold stronger if left longer with no weight yanking on it. 24 hours should suffice nicely. Don't worry I will get to testing.

Hmm 1.34am. Perhaps time for bed

 

Hmm I thought the thread would generate a bit more excitement anyways I looked at the chassis next to the CPU heatpipes it really has gr8 potential for secondary heatsink conversion. There is room and nothing in the way at all except the lock thingy that can be unscrewed and removed from inside.


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Mod is finished. Gonna boot and do some tests


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Ok I am a little disappointed. The temps are exactly the same (+ 2 degrees C because ambient is 2C warmer)

I think I will repaste a little better next time when I do the voltmod tomorrow.

 

The conclusion then is the limitation of cooling capacity comes from the heatpipes?

 

Could be. Or I didn't do a good paste job last time I opened the CPU. Not sure how to improve it further.

 

Get some Gelid GC extreme and be done with it.

I think Watch dogs might be the first game for awhile that will benefit from 3.3ghz+ overclock. Maybe not initially as it my run horribly on AMD hardware.

Still a good opportunity to push our cooling mods to the limit in gaming.

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With my modifications I can keep temp under 80C even in ambient 26C (the temp I set air con to during summer)

I was hoping to unlock cooling potential to allow volt modding.

Perhaps I should get heatspring and then use thermal compound with each mini sink for ultimate heat absorption!! I spent 3000+ yen already through on this mod. It will have to wait awhile.

This is not the end though. There is promise with the secondary heatsink idea. I hope we can make ground with that in the meantime. Soon we will be able to run 3.7ghz+ across 4 cores. At that speed the 920xm is comparable to even the 4700MQ.

 

Well I did some encoding last night. Ambient temps were 22C. Higher than ever before.

However I found that by running all fans at medium speed the cooling seems more effective. The temps levelled off at 80-81C across all cores at 3.3ghz 25x, 100% load.

An interesting thing to point out is I had it running at 2,6ghz (20x) all evening as I didn't want things to be noisy. The temps were actually running 81-83C. I then decided to up the multi slowly and see how much the temp changed without touching the fans. It actually went DOWN to 77-78C before again climbing back to 80C or so at 23x-25x.

So it seems it isn't all about having tonnes of airflow. One needs to give the sinks a chance to absorb heat. I guess if there is too much airflow the extra heatsinks won't get round to playing any role in the cooling. I will test this theory out further but it is interesting nevetheless.

 

Try to remove the fans so you can have access to the heatsinks while testing, then touch the heatsinks to check if they are hot. If not, it means heat doesn't transfer properly to them.

 

Easily done

 

Right I have decided to put the CPU back on steroids tomorrow. Gonna see how the cooling holds up doing encoding and gaming. Prime 95 be damned


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I am all for mods and so on, but jesus that looks ridiculous, no offence intended honestly. but wow I don't know what else to say.
Not really what you call a laptop anymore.
So much more I was going to say but wow I am just gobsmacked.

wouldn't it be easier/better to replace the panels you have ised and simply sell it and buy a newer laptop ?
or is this laptop (and I am using that term lightly considering what you have done) a spare that you no longer care about.

 

What have I done ? Lol it is a 5 year old laptop that I cherish dearly but I am not someone that cares about the way it looks. It is about functionality.

If you read the mod fully you can see the fans are easily removable and the holes coverable using mesh fan covers. This conversion takes 10 secs to do and allows me to still use the machine as a portable laptop.

Anyways don't misunderstand what I say above I look after it very well just not the superficials. What is wrong with my endeavours? Everything works perfectly with it. The cooling second to none




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Well guys I have almost cracked it! Temps are leveling off a little over 95C at 28x video encoding 100% at +200mv.

I am going to elevate laptop a little more at the back as it is currently level on the stand and do some other small improvements. Then I should be able to run all day at 3.8ghz+ stable across all cores doing almost anything but prime 95. I want to get the temps to 95C and under.

 

Good job! Finally beat my 940xm for max multipler. Please would you run Passmark CPUmark? Interesting to see what score you get at 3.8ghz.

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It can do much more I believe I haven't let it stretch it's legs fully yet! I am in communication with SVL7 on TI to see what he thinks about what the 920xm can tolerate and indeed the M15x at 1.27V sustained load with temps running in the mid 90sC.

I would like to encode at this voltage but worry something will give way as the board wasn't designed to handle the cpu at this voltage. The CPU too for that matter although it operates still within it's specs (voltage wise at least)

Hopefully I will hear from him soon. I won't do much beyond testing briefly until this point.

 

Just tried 29x and the chip first throttled and then on second test BSOD. Also setting multi to 30x on 1 and 2 cores BSOD.

I did have TDC only at 80W though so perhaps this is what caused the throttle and BSOD. I will try further tomorrow.

At least 28x works though for 3.73ghz and I have managed to get temps down to around 95-96C in ambient 20C. Not bad at all. Going beyond this speed demands a higher tdp than the required 87W at 28x which causes temp to approach TJmax. I think 28x will be limit for encoding work (at least during summer).

Anyways I will try to also get round to update the OP as the photos of the initial mod look atrocious as batfinks found! The mod doesn't look anywhere near as bad now!

 

Ok some updates. At 28x it is super stable running at 1.28V. 29x it isn't across 4 cores. Perhaps I can set 1 or 2 cores higher but that is it.
I did some video encoding for 5 minutes to see load temps. First time it only reached 95C and leveled off but I made a mistake making the screenshot lol so I did it again and that time it heated up more to 97C. The ambient temperature is 21C.

I also ran passmark CPU mark and achieved 7500 at 28x.

I am not quite satisfied with the temperatures. I believe I can cut down a little more after further improving the mod.
At the wall doing the encoding the M15x was pulled a max of 204W! I am not sure where this leaves us in terms of power left for the GPU. I do intend however to run 3dmark11 tonight to see what happens.




edit: ran 3d mark 11. Unfortunately because it is not the latest version no score but in the combined test the voltage peaked at 230W. This with the 7970M only at stock clocks and undervolted at 0.975V. Downloading 3D mark 11 now and will update this post with score. 7970M at 1.05V is going to have to wait for another day though.

Hmm no luck. 3dmark11 can't connect to server. Anyone know a working 3dmark11 version? Without buying it that is?

 

This is insane! Good work KoI, do you think one day you could push this beast to 30x across all cores?

 

Very unlikely. 30x across all cores running stable will require sustained voltage somewhere above 1.3V. I am not a bench marker so I would never take this risk for a quick bench.

With my current voltmod I am already pushing hard. At full load the chip runs at 1.28V however when idling it sometimes fluctuates up to 1.38V. The absolute max set by intel I believe is 1.45V. Any additional voltage would likely push the chip past this limit. Also power draw is an issue until we get a Maxwell or tonga based gpu inside we can only run the 7970M undervolted. There probably isn't enough power (mainboard limit) to provide 100W to the GPU as the CPU can eat over 200W at the voltage I am running

What I am after is a stable OC. I want to be able to use up to 28x for example to do encoding in temps up to 21C ambient. Something that I am close to achieving. Even in summer I should be able to run 26/27x no problem. 30x I would like on 1 or 2 cores though.

At 28x it is already plenty fast. Apparently I already edge out the 2960xm (stock) sandy bridge chip in pass mark(7450vs7500). Approaching 4700mq levels!

 

Watching dogs working very nicely running x23 on four cores. Only 50-60% usage across all cores. As I suspected, more threads is a bonus here!
This is with everything set to high and FXAA.

You thinking of getting this game King? I'd definitely recommend it so far.
You might be able to crank some of those graphics settings up if you OC more than me.

 

I heard watch dogs was very CPU intensive! Perhaps the 7970M is holding it back. I bet with a 880M for example the cpu would be pushed harder right

Right now I can't do anything for about 2 weeks my folks are visiting.

 

I realised that GPU usage was only 70% also because I had v-sync on and getting a constant 30 fps. Turning off v-sync increased GPU and CPU usage dramatically, getting around 45 fps but gpu temps also went up to 75 degrees! Even with cooling mod at full whack! This game is extremely taxing.

What are you plans for the GPU side King?

 

I hoping for a high mid range to low high end card to replace the 7970M. Should be adequate to power through 1080p now that hardware to moving to power 1440p.

 

I read somewhere that Maxwell would not be on mxm in the near future. Maybe AMD will Tonga us all!

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Gah I tried to run a 3.6Ghz Passmark benchmark again and got a bluescreen. That previous run might have been a fluke.
I need dem voltz!

 

Yeah not surprised I probably can't do more than 29x for pass mark and it won't be stable that at plus 200mv. Soon I can resume testing. Thinking to do a permanent volt where I can alter voltage on the fly. It does require some soldering however!!


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I have been running 30x on 1 and 2 cores for the last few days and all runs well. System seems to enjoy the boost too over 28x across all cores!

Also passmark cpu score is up by nearly 100 points. I am contemplating ways to improve the mod further. Double layer of heatsinks anyone

 

I have found significantly lower CPU temperatures running fans on the side of laptop (see PIC). This side of the case gets very hot so by having air blowing on it constantly I wonder if it helps cool down internal temps and makes heat pipes more efficient.

If I don't run these fans (as well as normal KoI mod) then CPU temps Max out at 80-85 degrees after N hour of watch dogs at x25 multi. With the fans on Max temp after an hour is 70-75 degrees at same ambient temp. Also keyboard and whole of laptop feels cooler during extending gaming sessions, avoiding sweaty hand syndrome.





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Get cold fingers though

You should voltmod your 940xm and see what it can do. You might be able to push 29x or even the magical 30x across all cores! Stable!

I am currently playing Planetary Annihilation. I am a fan of the original TA and SC games so this is quite fun. It doesn't tax the system much though(at least the cpu laughs at the load the single player mode demands). Give it a try. I kickstarted the game 2 years ago so I didn't have to pay for it now.

Running 30/29/28/28 for now. I might bump back up to 31/30/29/28 soon though.

 

What kind of wire did you use in the end? Which VIDs did you connect? Have any errors been thrown up in prime95? I'm tempted to voltmod but right now longevity is more important to me than a few more hundred Mhz clock speed.

 

Fair enough. I used the same wire I used before. Only VID 4 works it seems. +200mv. Although it is actually only about +160mv at load.

I don't run Prime 95 but it seems stable for encoding which is good enough for me. Just need to keep temps down which is kind of hard for such work during Japanese Summer.

500mhz could be worth it. I think we have a year until overvolting might be necessary to not bottleneck some games lol

I may reverse the mod soon though. Until winter comes there isn't much point for now. Besides it is still good enough at 3.2ghz. Also when I do eventually need it at least I know what to do and the kind of cooling required!

You tried PA yet?

 

Not tried PA, I'm still on Watch Dogs. I'm currently idling with chrome open (bout 5 tabs) and check out my idle CPU temps running my keyboard cooling solution

 

Hey King, Where did you get the mesh squares that you put on the laptop cover?

 

Good to see that this machine is still well and kicking!

 

My local electronics store here in Japan

Sure is widezu. Even with an OV this thing keeps on going.

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So I played FC3 and found the cpu plays very nice at 27x/28/29/30x from 4 to 1 cores.

Higher multi configs are only partially stable. BSOD seem to occur at times. Still a very nice boost and the temps with moderate (not max fan speed) and without using HWinfo64 to control system fans hit only 72-74C on cpu and 69C on GPU.

I have since stripping away all ram sinks from the GPU and don't run a usb fan to cool it either so this 69C is impressive in itself considering my flat is a good 25C at the moment. Add decent ramsinks plus a third fan to cool it and I would be running along at 60C lol I might try this as I still have my old thin usb fans from the original fan mod. Buying more sinks is not in my budget at the moment though!

I might have to try boosting voltage a little more. Perhaps see if VID 2 can work to deliver another +50mv then I can run 28-31x and finally break the 4ghz barrier! Stably!!

 

That's great news! I want to try to make an opening on the case so I can let more air in my M15x. I found the mesh covers and the heatsinks online via amazon and will try something similar without the fans attached to the laptop. I am just jerry rigging a cheap notebook cooler with bigger fans. I will post pics as progress unfolds! Thanks for the inspiration!

 

Ultimate cooling mod mkIII.
With fans in place:


With fans removed for travel and normal use:


Time to remove: 30 secs - 1 minute.

Now Iam ready to oc the gpu once again
There is still room to mod. I could still greatly improve the gpu heatsink and slightly improve the CPU heatsink but there is currently no need to do so!


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Ok just tried 875/1250 and after 5 mins FC3 I got bluescreen.

Then as usual these days (I remember now why I stopped OCing lol) when I boot back up at startup blue screen the screen just flashes at me.
I have to boot up in safe mode and initiate a system restore to get back into windows. What a pain.

I am back to stock clocks. I will remain here until Tonga comes along....

 

Why don't you guys swap the internal fans? M17x-R4's GPU fan is more than a nice candidate, a LOUD one, but 11.4CFM! I'm running one and it's monster

 

Does it fit OK? Can you post a PIC of it in situ?

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