Scuffing heatpipes helps with cooling?

So, does scuffing heatpipes help much with cooling off the cpu/gpu? Woud love to hear from anyone with experience on this, maybe some numbers of temps drops would be great too^^.

 

In short: do not mess with the heatpipes. Thay are among the things that are better left alone, you don't want to bend them or damage them in any way as it could reduce the pipe's performance.

 

i understand that, but i mean you could scuff them without doing damage to them. ive done a good amount of modding to my laptop, in all ive taken it apart 5 or more times even...but just wondering if anyone has experience with scuffing the heatpipes...all it would really take is some really rough sandpaper. probably one of the easier mods to do, but im wondering if it does anything, and if it does if its much of a change at all.

to my understanding and it seams logical, the more surface area, the better the cooling. i think though it would not be good to have stagnant heat inside a laptop, as in gaming without having a cooler push air into the laptop, directly cooling the heatpipes/heatsinks that are installed.

 

The problem is that while you're (barely) increasing the overall surface area by removing metal that way, you are quite possibly compromising in some fashion the ability of the heatsink/pipe to conduct heat in the first place (you're removing metal needed for this process), which will create a larger problem.

In any event, you can't really increase the SA enough by serration with a cutting instrument to make an obvious difference in thermal exchange rates. In addition, the function of the heatpipe is to carry heat to the thermal exchange heatsink with the fins and fan for elimination, and is never intended to a direct source for heat exchange itself. Any added heat emanating from the pipe would be trapped along the pipe path inside the chassis and not have proper access to the outside air or internal airflow patterns to escape, thus compounding the problem of more heat being trapped inside the chassis with the expected poor outcome.

tijo is quite correct - this really should be left alone

 

As the people above said, I would not mess with it. You do want the heatpipes to be generally smooth but scuffing it would maybe give you about 1-2 degrees cooler, assuming you did it right. If you mange to mess it up you may go too far and break the heatpipes, and then you have a real problem. If you need better temps, replace your TIM or buy a notebook cooler. Newegg has a few for sale.

 

I've already did it with my Asus U36SD heatpipe and it turns out that one of the pipe is having a minor bend, and what happens next... I guess you all ready know, the idle temp for my i3 2330M won't go down past 50C. While before I'm doing this crazy scuffing mod, the idle temp sat happily at 43C. And it cost me USD50 to replace the heatsink... Man it was a mess, already find the answer don't you... lol

 

Only way you can bent the heat pipe is only if you can get it to a round shape and then using a bender bend it and then flatten it again. If you bend it as it is yes you will make it worse as it is. The shape is allready as optimal as it can be. If you want to remove more heat its more effective to just add some copper heatsinks on the heatpipe.

 

aren't the heat pipes usually phase change designed, so the fluid vaporizes at the heated end, and re-liquefies on the radiator attached end? in such a case wouldn't venting heat along the pipe reduce phase change effectiveness?