C90 Modders Club!

Yeah now that I look close I can tell its not perfectly straight and has small misperfections but its no big deal, not like you look under the laptop often.

I dont like working with hobby knifes because they never cut good enough for me, or they cut me . As for heat... I am supprised that worked too actually without deforming the plastic some.

Dremel is by far the best mod tool to get since it can do just about anything with some time/skill and its affordable. The highest model one was like 60$ and it came with a ton of attachments.

My next best recommendation is like a 3$ hot glue gun, i use that alot too.

With those two things in your arsenal you just get what ever else you need on a per project basis. Sandpaper, paint, soldering stuff, ect.

 

@ViciousXUSMC: Can you please tell me where I can find your pictures you made of the "Mod" from page 7, because they are all offline...

thx

 

Photohost is down.... It will probably be back up in awhile so just check back later or the next day. I do not know if I have the original files saved somewhere still or not. I work on so many small projects like photoshop and now just started dabbing in video editing that I clear all files that I am not using for the most part.

 

Photohost is still offline ...
Has someone else pics of their modded C90 or does know links to them !?

 

where can i buy a german keyboard layout for my c90s ?

KEYBOARD Z98 german layout ...

thx for some tipps

 

Hey so I bought a few red led lights from radio shack and I was wondering if there was a way I could splice the wires in the fans for the turbo engine to power them to give a red glow coming out of the back of my C90. I think it should be fairly simple where I just cut the wire, connect the led up to the wire, re solder the connections and I'm good to go.

 

About it, although wouldn't you loose some power on the fans? It would be better to put them in parallel no?

 

Well the LEDs are rated at 60mW power dissipation, I didn't think it'd be a whole lot but I'm going to a frat house tomorrow that's full of electrical engineers and computer science and computer engineering majors so I'll get them to help me on this. I actually probably should talk to them but I just got the LEDs so I was excited and had to ask now.

 

Oh, you'll be okay then (not with the computer science bu wit the engineers) =D

2 years and 3 months left before I get into engineering >_>

 

I have wired LED's before, thing is they have a range of power they operate from, put too much and they will die, so I always had to wire a resistor in, wire the resistor in series with the fans and your going to have issues with fan power. I think parallel with a resistr is the way to go. I have a whole book of information on LEDs at home that I will bring to work tomorrow and fill you in on how to calculate LED resistors and stuff like that if you think you need the info.

I got it off google but to find what I wanted it took abit of looking around.

 

Yeah we decided to skip installing the LEDs yesterday when we met. Most of us had just moved up to campus that weekend so yeah we were tired and were fumbling around with the tools...not cool. But On tuesday we should be meeitng in the professional electrical engineering labs to do this. Oh they also have LED arrays with some pretty crazy features apparently. I'll pass on the tip on wiring in parallel. I'm pretty sure these guys know about led resistors since I saw a few computers in their frat house with led lights including a laptop.

 

Man, all this talk is making me looking forward even more to get at the unversity >_>

 

I would like to know what they say to do as well. Red fans would be amazing.

 

Yeah, but now i need to change my sticker from a blue heavy one to a red-heavy one.

Original design is first post of this thread - http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=199323

My latest post there has the deisgns I'm considering.

You know at first I was content to leave my C90 alone because having a giant fan house was unique enough. But now I just want to see how crazy I can make this thing. The scary part is I don't think I'm finished yet. I want to repaint the silver casing around the keyboard to a glossy black and I still want to look into a manual switch for the turbo engine. But instead of a simple on/off slider switch I want like a big red button. But that's all in the future. For now, just the LEDs and new sticker. I kinda gave up on making my own stand mostly because I think I can just buy something better for what I need for less than the cost of materials.

 

Eventually, I am going to end up putting a sticker on mine, but it will be a relatively simple, unobtrusive one. I also am experimenting with using notched fiber-wire to light up the area around the keys. The red fans should be easy enough to do.

 

I have the brightest red leds you can get in a common store on my desktop, I cut the side of the case into the punisher logo and the red led's are for his eyes, kinda terminator style. I wired them to a swich so they are on or off. A pent is a good idea tho to control them more. If you wire them with the fans whats neat is that they will get brighter/dimmer with the fan speed. However this may be a undesired effect so going to a constant power source is probably a better idea.

 

Well actually the LEDs scaling with the fan speed would be pretty nice so when I run in battery mode I don't have giant red lights beaming that could be turned off.

 

Damn I hate you guys >_>

 

Yeah college is fun until s*** hits the fan. Basically I got screwed with some homework online with very bad directions. I had class from 8am until 12:30 and lunch after that. I wanted to get my physics hw done real quick then rush over and get the LEDs put in then dinner then calc homework then workout/shower then radio club meeting then enjoying my new LEDs with some quality game time.

My day actually went: class, eat, fight with physics program, eat dinner, fight some more, do a little calc, workout/shower, finish calc, radio meeting and now I'm just going to relax the rest of the night...

Tomorrow, hopefully, maybe....

 

So much for the back door coming back in stock.

-Towels

 

I have german keyboard on my C90, and I'd like to change it to the english one. No idea where and how to do it though.

 

Your in electrical eng right? My cousin said 15 hour C++/week in the first semester >_>

 

I threw some LEDs into the fan and i must say i enjoy the awesomeness.
I'll try to get some better pictures at night and probably add some LEDs elsewhere.

 

Where did you wire them in? Directly from the fan? Nice job btw.

 

I wired them to one of the usb ports.

 

Hmm nice.

Each time I see this it makes me hasty to get into comp engineering >_>

 

Hmm, well, I cannot wait until I start to major in Comp. hardware engineering. Lol, I think my first "mod" ever was adding a light to some pen drive.

 

As promised night pictures. Oh, and I redid the mod. Found a much better place to put LEDs; right behind the fans.





Yeah, I may be majoring in computer science, but a little part of me still wants to be an electrical engineer.

 

Haha, very sexi.

 

Much better now, it looked really bad before and I was being nice and not saying anything

Now get some red and have it fade from blue to red

I use mine in a professional environment alot so I dont think the led's will work for me, but i am interested in painting all the inside grey area on the case to glossy black one of these days.

 

Hmm, now the fading lights would be a work of art, but it would be hard to find a place to put everything.

Is there anyway to get to the speakers? It feels like I have to break the case in order to take apart the computer. As soon as I get home for summer break, I'll do the Vicious Mod, and maybe even paint it.

Until then, I am going to randomly play with the hundreds of LEDs I recently purchased.

 

What did you do buy a box of them wholesale?

 

yip. mine's a little faded as well. interested in painting the grey area also. ( just cant find a disassembly guide. ) Anyone know where we could get them ?

 

My paint job is not faded, just the grey looks ugly if it was all black it would look much much better. Esp high gloss black to match the lid.

I dont think it would be too hard to take it apart, I am only worried about the LCD, do people take the screens out or just tape off LCD's to paint them?

 

@bmounx9: Very nice. I really like the mk 2 version.

@Vicious: I have been wanting to do something with mine too. The left palmrest looks terrible and I just scratched it the other day. If anyone would put up a how-to for taking the case apart, we would be grateful.

If your going to paint the frame around the lcd, definitely take the lcd off, but if you are just going to paint the bottom, its your call. It looks like the interior frame might come off without much trouble... Just watch the cam.

 

to protect the palm rest areas, I suggest those PDA stick on/peel off screen protectors.

 

LCD disassembly is not that difficult... if you have the manual.

For my M6 it went like this: remove hinges cover and all the screws that secure hinges onto main body. Remove keyboard, and unplug all the inverter/coax/speaker cables. Remove entire LCD.

Remove pads off LCD bezel, and remove screws. Then remove LCD bezel (with care, there are tabs that can be broken -- I did actually break one or two). The rest should be obvious, screws that hold the LCD in place are visible.

Careful about glossy finish on the palmrest though... fingerprint galore.

 

Just pick up a replacement english keyboard from the Asus store and swap it out. It's pretty simple to do, but I'm not sure how an European purchase would make a difference.


http://estore.asus.com/shop/item.asp?itemid=3948&catid=568

 

Can't buy from the eStore from Europe. See the ASUS_FAQ (on the Info Booth) for European alternatives.

 

Im working on a water cooling mod for my c90s. Im doing blue prints for it tonight. Ill let you guys know how far I get. Im doing everything from scratch buying a aquarium pump for 5 dollars, some thin thin thin copper tubes etc. Youre going to be able to remove it without a drop. Bassicly its going to be more of a watercooling dock station ill let you guys know how it goes!

 

w00t. Let me know of how it goes. I'd freaking want one. See that coming at school hehe

 

alrighty.

here it is a rough sketch.

I have two water cooling heat sinks in mind.

Bassicly there is space between the ace door and vga and processor... enough to put on a thin heatsinks on top of the existing one.

here are two versions of the heatsinks im working on.

the first is a typical water cooling heatsink is a thin hollow space that can pass coolant through. This sink is attached to the orignial vga and processor. in between is artic 5 and it is soldered on. This passes heat to the coolant which is then carried away.

the second one is easier to make and requires no skill. One huge piece of coper plate is solder on with artic five in between. Sperate small copper tubes are solderd on with artic 5 in between. These copper tubes carry the coolant and transfer heat.

There is going to be vavles right at the outside of the case that will close the pipes. You will be able to detach the other pipes away from the valves and your laptop will be portable. Give me a week and I will have this mod up and running. Its kind of hard to imagine what im trying to convey via this text. But it will all become clear as this mod is coming together.

 

mm, sexi

 

Ok

I just finished a mod which I call the copper sandwich.
I made two thin heat sinks out of pure copper.

This mod requires no modication to the ace door, no drilling, its cheap and effective.

How I got the idea: Im in the plans to make a protable water cooling mod for the asus c90. I Made two heatsinks... one for the cpu and one for the gpu. When I put them into the laptop the actualy heat sinks made a drastic temperature difference... So I came on here to tell you how easy it is to make it and how big off diffrence it made.

Like I said this mode will not require anything special... You will need very good glue that can withstand high temps. I used Elemers Stix-All Non-Flamable. When it dries it makes a gummy substance... which you can rip off if something goes wrong. I went down to ace hardware got one thin large copper sheet for 8 dollars, a couple of think copper tubes, some sheers that can cut through copper, glue and then went to the nearest computer store for some artic silver.

I got home and took some meassurements for the gpu , cpu and to see how big I wanted it. Ill tell you right now if you are going to do this, make sure not to make the same mistake as me... I should of made the heat sink for gpu bigger. Anyways ill get to that point later.

I cut out two sheets of the same size. I took the long cupper wires and cut the same length and witdh of the copper sheets.

See this drawing.




Make sure to put arctic silver in the middle of the plates and the glue on the out side... It should look like this



then just take the other copper plate apply glue and arctic silver and glue it on top. The main heat sink is now is done.

The Original heat sink that came with the c90 completly neglets to cover a chip on the gpu.




So what I did was meassure out exactly where the chip falls underneath the gpu heat sink and attached two small pipes that touch the chip and are attached to the heat sink. Make sure you put arctic silver on top of the chip.

The end result of the entire heat sink will look like this.







Now that you are done... do you glue it to the heat sink on top of the old heat sink? NO!

There is limited space in the ace door for the heat sink to fit. This makes it near perfect fit which pushes down on the heatsink to lock it in on top of the existing one. Make sure you put arctic silver on top of the original heatsink so the heat spreads better to the your new heat sink. This way you dont have to put any glue or solder to the existing design. Incase you need to send your laptop for repairs you can take it out with ease.

Like I said I wish I would of known it was going to work so great and i would of made the heatsink bigger. Maybe one of you who decides to make this mod can use the mistakes I made to imporve your design.

This is what I now want it to look like.



Extend the heat sink towards the main 3 fans that kick in for the processor so all the heat is sucked out instantly. Extendend it towards the ram and cd drive for more heat absorbtion.


So is it worth the effort?
Yes, Yes it is.

My computer under full load in gaming mode playing for one hour will reach temps. up to 102 Celcius maximum.

My computer with the copper sandwich mod will reach maximum temps. of 79 to 82 celcius in full gaming mode.

But here is the catch. My video card is a ddr3 8600m gt that has been overclocked to get 5800 points in 3dmark and 634 core/1550 shaders/ 890 memory which causes it to get really hot. It is unbelivable I am reaching temperatures that low with clocks set high.

The best part... there is really no modifications done to the case. No holes. You didnt even have to glue the heat sink to the to the original heat sink. Everything is protable.

I hope some one with the Vicious mod tries this out to see what we get with the extra fan cooling.

hope this helps, cheers

Edit:
Sorry if I gave bad directions and for spelling and grammer

 

Hell of a job. + Rep. Though I think a have an easier software method of keeping my c90 cooled, just testing it some more. ddr2 overclocked to 600/500 doesnt reach of 82-83.

 

Nice, nice, +Rep for sure! I'm going to have to do this one day...

 

It does the job well. Im waiting for this software method...

Anyways thank you!

 

Since it touches the ace door, how hot does the door become? I'm thinking of making something like that now, but also include a copper, hopefully solid copper, pipe to the copper thingies leading to the fans. My only problem is, is that I'm still in high school and parents will be iffy about letting me do something to my laptop...haha. I have to make this thing last for a while so, we'll see.

 

Ahaha that rocks. +1 too.

I'm gonna try that this summer

PS: Are a comp/elect (future) engineer?
Can you find that copper at places like home depot?

 

Well, the ace door is going to remain the same temperature as it was without the heatsink. If your card is out-putting 100 celcius there is a chance that part of that might heat your ace door 65 celcius. But with the heatsink its putting out 65 celcius while touching the ace door.

Pablomancan: Its hard to convience your parents to let you do that. But! like I said its not like you will be soldering the heat sink onto the original design... you are just putting on top of it. And if it makes your parents mad you can just take it off. But if you do it secretly, place it in, close the the ace door they will never know!

JCMS: You should be able to find all the materials at home depot. The way i tested the perfect thickness was by placing random crap into the laptop and sealing with the ace door. I found out that pencils work good but it wasent the perfect fit. Then i tired the small remote to my logitech sound system. I sealed the door and it was perfect. Just keep trying to put random thin stuff in there untill you find the right size. Entire filled copper tubes might work really good.

By all means i encourage everyone to learn from my mistakes. If i could go back i would make the heatsink bigger. Just makes sure not to over lap to the part where the actual heat sink screws in.