C90 Modders Club!

This thread is dedicated to the works of those daring enough to take a knife, soldering iron, dremel, paint, ect to C90 and modify it in some way.

Mostly those who have modded the bottom panel to improve cooling for the unit. This is the place to share how you did it, was it worth it, and all the pictures.

Please try to give before and after stats on temps, and passive numbers meaning without a cooling pad helping.

I will be working on mine soon, just figuring out what I want to do with it.

edit: see page 7 I did my mod and it came out great.

 

Too Fast Too Furious - "In the world of c90s these guys push theirs too the limit..."

 

id love to see some cooling mods

 

I just went and got a tripod so I can take better pictures than I usually do with my shaky hands. Now I am just trying to figure out exactly what I want to do with the unit. If we can find somebody willing to sell us just the bottom panel for a cheap price, then I would have to put less worry in moding it .


Edit: for the record this is the fan I am looking at currently: http://www.radioshack.com/product/i...yId=2032061&kwCatId=2032061&parentPage=search

Still doing more looking around and later I have to get the c90 out and analyse the space between the door and the computer and work out if it will fit.

 

The 12v might be a bit harder to find than a 5v point (usb) but perhaps the unit will spool at a lower rate at 5v. Zalman makes a nice slimline fan that I've been looking at plus its a 5v unit.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118212


Ken at Gentech said he'd notify me of the floor plate once its available.], then it can get real interesting.

 

Mmm both fan are pretty thick o.o if we are gonna intergrate it inside the back plate, the notebook's height would be pretty bsed ? ... im thinking about having to stick on some more heat sinks onto the ram and transfer it to the side of the laptop mmm

 

If you were able to modify the back plate, could you pop a MXM III video card in there?

 

I agree on the fan thickness, most I'm finding are around 15mm thick, might be a bit much on the underside. There's the possibility of going the route of a heatsink mounted fan on the Gpu itself.

 

Hm a vga fan, thats not a bad idea I should have thought of that since I bought one about a month ago to replace the chipset cooler on my desktop motherboard.

I am thinking of using that empty space where the tv tuner card would go, it should give enough space to fit a fan in there easy, possibly a bigger fan.

My theory is that just inducing some airflow into the system with a fan will lower temps greatly. For the record most 12v fans work off 5 or 7v just fine. Thats all the fan controllers do on a computer to control the speed is lower the voltage.

 

it sure would help

my overheating GPU is making a my CPU idles at 60 and my HDD at 55

 

Are your gpus downclocking when your not using them? My gpu is ideling at 65.

 

Vista's power saving put it down to 275/200

275/200 with fans running normally= 80C
275/200 with fans quiet= 83C
475/400 with fans normally is 85C
475/400 with fans quiet is 86-88C

 

My idle, web browing is showing 168/100.

 

Since you mentioned vga fans I may as well point out the one I used to mod my motherbord on my desktop:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835119080

only 10mm tall, however its got a heatsink on it, you would have to mod the fan to use it as a "fan"

 

Yeah I was digging through my HSF drawer and found a few like that. I used one on a south bus cooler fabrication a while back, would just need to create a decent 2 point mount for it and a ring to channel better air flow. Could be very workable.

 

I ran a 12v 60mm low profile fan w/laptop elevated thru usb port.
The temps dropped significantly. I don't think the design needs more holes.
Best mod would be to have an intake fan in the front.
Most of my cooling "issues" (no bsods) are when doing basic stuff, not gaming
The performance is great, and forums are more informative than support ppl I've dealt with before. Hopefully replacement bottom panels come in.

Now if someone could put all relevent c90 mod links in one post...
too busy!

 

Thats pretty much exactly what I was saying, its not that we need more ventilation, we just need airflow.

Geting intake somewhere near the front and forcing cool air thru the system and out the back will drop temps by a large margin because it will give all the notebook cool air to internally cool by instead of the floating hot air and it will force it out the back thru the cooling vents, and that will increade the cooling ability of the heatsinks for the gpu and cpu. Its a win/win.

Its just a matter of getting it to work, and not be totally ghetto.

 

And maybe mine will stop idling at 85C >-<

I sent an email to Asus about, dunno what they will awnser

 

Low Profile Fans:

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835104007
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835185039
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835191001
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835104004

Vicious, agreed on the airflow and not doing a ghetto rig.
Fan should definately be inside the case for portability.

 

Do they make this kind of fans with a 3pin connector? Because there is one free near the (south?) bridge. Maybe change that heatsink for a fan?

 

heres what id like to do. i have this fan right.......


(sorry for the quality, i didnt feel like pulling out the DSLR, so i used my phone)

well, id like to buy some sort of dock station cooler thing and mod it to fit that bad boy in it, although i do realize that its freaking huge and sucks alot of power, so id probly have to run some sort of cheap psu to run it. as you can tell im thinking about when im at the house gaming, cuz i certainly dont use this laptop for gaming when im not at the house or dont have it plugged in. so therefore i dont care about bulkiness or noise. this thing spits out 220cfm, i dont remember what the dB is tho. anyone know of a laptop cooler that could accommodate it? would it even be possible at all for the laptop to supply it with enough power, or would i have to use an external source like i mentioned?

edit: heres the info on it:
Delta TFB1212GHE 120x38mm
Specifications: 220.01 CFM @ 4600 RPM, 65.0 dBA, 29.40 watts, 2.45 amps, Maximum Air Pressure 26.44 mm H²O, 12v DC, 3 or 3+4 pin Molex header connector(s).

 

If you want a big fan thats external may as well get a cooling pad. I think most of us are trying to make it so that it stays moble and requires no external parts.

 

id love to do both, but those cooling pads dont look to be all that great. unless, you can recommend me one?

 

65dba and 30W is a bit too much i guess

 

You know there was that c90 photo floating around with the internal fan down near the Ram, that would have been really great for drawing some air in from the lower grill. I wonder it that is what the pin header was for.

 

I'm just curious how you can control a new fan? Even if you pickup a usb fan and install it, how will you be able to control it?

 

A micro potentiometer would do the trick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentiometer

 

Yep, I still have not taken the time to look at the inside of the machine and plan my mod yet. But my idea right now is to fit the biggest fan possible near the open spot for the tv tuner card, cut a square or circle out to fit that fan to the spot and put my modders mesh or a fan grill there to close the opening. From there if I cant find a good spot to power it from the motherboard it will come directly from the battery wich is 12v. It will be wired with a adjustable resistor and a kill switch. Since the fan will be attached directly to the bottom panel to ensure maximum air pressure, to make it so that the fan and wireing can be seperated I plan to use Ace Spades like you use to connect speakers to the wires inside of the cabinet. I hope to find a fan with some on there, but I will probably have to solder some on.

I want to try this with NO additional vents, I think it will work best this way forcing the air thru the machine and out the back or the other vents.

Then I may try to tape off the vents to force it out the back only, if it helps great, if it makes it worse, then I may try to add additional vent holes at that point. I am just waiting for funds and a good time to do it.

 

Hi guys, i would say im an extreme watercooler. My desktop includes a 2 loop setup in a Mountain mod horizon case.
Anyway i was wondering if you could add watercooling to a c90s.
You would of course have to have an extra box below the c90 and leave the back plate open but i think it would be a cool project.
You could also just use 2 block, one to cool the cpu and the other for the gpu.
For the blocks they would have to be moded of course.
I was thinking for the gpu i would use an moded swiftech north bridge waterblock and for the cpu a server apogee block since there barbs come out the side and its low profile.
The blocks would be detachable of course so that if you had to move your c90 all you would do is take off the waterblocks and put the standard ones on.

Just a thought, what do you all think?

 

I run a modded h20 desktop as well. Sure a h20 system is totally doable but would be a big cramp the mobility factor. It's be like the portable xbox 36O.

http://benheck.com/Games/Xbox360/x360_page_1.htm

 

Yeah easy, a system like exos is all external, you would just have to adapt water blocks to fit, however I dont see the point.

This thing cant overclock enough to make use of any kind of water cooling and it would be a major pain in the butt with no mobility and no real advantages over air cooling.

 

Totally concur on this point, not a desktop, why be futile and try to make it


So here's what mine finished out to be, basically opened it up a bit more and added some stiff fine mesh. Now it's time to play some games and take it out for a walk.

one.


IMO definitely worth it, great cooling reductions esp. with my cooling pad.

 

Desktops are modded all the time (mostly by gamers), so I see nothing strange about it...the c90 was built to be built

 

Exactly, Modular notebook screams "make me your own"!!!

 

Yes Valex...an intake fan at the front! Ha! I'm sure glad I saw this post...I had been working all afternoon and forgot to turn on my Lapcool2! I turned it on with GPU monitor on top and it went from 81C to 76C in 5 minutes as I read this thread (Lapcool2 at 2600 rpm)...it's dropping to 75C as I type this.

 

@hollywood: What were the GPU temps before and after? (without the cooling pad)

@Zoid: Does your get to 100C+ while gaming?

 

I haven't really pushed it yet....I'll be checking here shortly

 

The c90 should not have holes between the memory and the back. It was designed that way so that air is pulled in from the ram compartment. ram gets very hot in the c90. hotter then most other asus notebook. a few degrees increase can mean alot while a few degrees decrease in the cpu can mean very very little. Do your ram a favor and do not cut holes in the access panel. Stating the obvious here but your warranty and what remains of it would be completely void if you sent it back with such a mod.

 

and is there a way to decrease on the gpu???

 

I took off all the stock thermal paste that came with the c90 and put shin-etsu x23 on everything.
Its got my temps down 5C on my cpu and about 8C on my gpu on idle temps.
Not bad i must say.

 

woah.

The thermal paste i have ath ome is some vantec (came with my Iceberq 5 aftermark cooler for my old gf6600). I'll it tomorrow.

 

Ummm well then ASUS needs to rebuild the c90 with the GDDR3 then, because I cannot, I repeat cannot, complete a 3Dmark bench without the holes without a cooler and or the combination of the two. GPU temps were soaring through the 124 threshold limit in seconds, now the system is very manageable. Not to mention, by having side venting also reduces the airflow over the Ram a great deal by creating a lesser distance for vacuum. My CPU temps were fine the GPU not at all.. I'll IR temp the RAM and see if it falls within the expected limits, I expect it will. Mind you the RAM is also being under-clocked on this system. Warranty be damned, I need a system to function!!


BUT MOD AT YOUR OWN RISK...

Hey, why'd they remove the sb/ram fan?

 

Any of you guys able to take a shot of the back with all the componets on like the motherboard with everything on, other then the back plate at an angle~, at an angle too, I do a lot of modeling *gundams, ships etc*, I might just have a few fans that might fit XD , since my c-90 havent arrived yet , hopefully with in a week or two, im just kinda designing on my drawing board, where should the fan be put and how should air flow be directed ... Mmmm might just mod it as well XD

 

I agree. If it was DESIGNED that way, it sure is not working at all cause we frequently have lockups due to the GPU overheating. This was bourne out of necessity....

 

I have to disagree on this to some extent. Ram is designed to run very very very hot will no ill effects. Most custom pc builders dont even bother with ram cooling (except the "noobs" that waist there money trying to cool it with gimmicks like water blocks) but the cpu the tempatures are the difference between a stable overclock or not. The only reason I dont totally disagree with you is because its the c90 we are talking about and I dont feel the temps in the c90 are hot enough to be the factor in overclocking the cpu to 2.93ghz. Although my first cpu the e6700 did crash due to heat, puting air on it kept it from crashing, replacing the cpu with one that ran cooler also fixed it.

 

Yeah, but I guess there is problems on some units, like ours. Forerunner says his DDR2 idles at 65 and load at 75. Mine idles at 80 and will hit 100 easily after 10 minutes.

Asus damn needs to give us the control over the fans in the next bios.

 

I have some pics of the Stock GPU assembly for reference:


More Pics:
http://s15.photobucket.com/albums/a396/alexvand/Pure Pwnage/

Need to get measurements of space between NB heatsink & bottom panel.
Someone posted about an internal fan power connection?

 

my stock thermal paste was grey...

For internal connection, I don't know but there is a 3pin connector near the RAM.

Hmm, I wonder if I could actually find my Iceberq5 in it... (with taking the fan ou of the heatsink of course)

 

If I take apart my old nokia phone, take the vibration engine out, and change it into a fan, should make a good one... hmmm

 

To install a fan inside the case, total depth of a new heatsink + fan can only be 12.7mm.
I put 2 ID cards on top of the NB heatsink. Any more thickness than that (.06 inches)
the panel would not slide over top.

The lowest profile hs/f combo on newegg is 24mm thick.
Unless they make a 12.7mm one, its going to be an external thing...

MapleShilc, I guess vibration is a mod as well...lol