XPS M1330 - The cooling sucks, and I'm looking for some input.

kreeeee - Yes, that is a good point. Maybe I will look into a setup to force the fans to power on higher when in a game or something, not sure yet. I haven't looked at the software side at all, and even so, this might not be necessary.

cherlet and kreeeee - I am in an experimental stage. Writing up a tutorial, especially with pictures, can be a lot of work. I wouldn't wanna write a tut on how to hack apart old water cooling for this mod when there are much better ways to do this . Once I get it working at a point I am happy with, dimensions, pictures, and a walk through WILL be posted... assuming I don't fry something in the process.

flipfire - as Kreee said, this whole setup is limited by the thermal pads. I could just undervolt... but I don't think it would be as effective... plus, cmon, what's the fun in that?!

ACHILLES - Yeah, exactly. I've been daydreaming all day about what I want to do. I am thinking I will use some 12g (I think that's what it is, it's the wire used in homes) single strand copper wire, and I will build an extra heatpipe from 3 or so strands. These will come directly off the GPU, bypass the CPU and Chipset, and go into the heatsink by the fan. I've already looked it over, I've got the space.

Today I picked up some single sheet aluminum, it's .04in thick, just over 1mm. might be a bit too much, but I am going to give it a shot, solely for thickness determination. Once I get the thickness down good, I will be ordering some cooper sheet online, and building the final project with the heatpipes. That will have a walkthrough.

 

Okay, looking inside again with the wire actually in front of me. It's probably going to be 2x12G strands of copper wire, just as a small auxiliary heatpipe.

As for my aluminum, I can already see it's too thick. Shame. The lazy part of me wants to leave it as is it, the thickness is perfect. The perfectionist part of me is continuing though, because that's the part that made me care to begin with.

 

Get some wet and dry and wear it down. Aluminium is soft.

 

Yes, I also finally pulled out the calipers. My stack of copper is so close to the size of the aluminum, it the difference is immeasurable (though slight because it slides over the aluminum easier than the copper, heh, I guess I have bad eyes the aluminum is actually slightly THINNER XD)

So folks, if you wanna get ahead of me, .04in is currently the size I am using.
Can someone help me find copper sheeting online, either 0.04in or 1mm? I think 1mm should be safe, .04in = 1.016mm, so that with a little thermal grease should actually be perfect for expansion and everything. I need help because all I am finding are rolls of it, and I really want a sheet so I know it's perfectly flat.

Unless, do you think rolls are okay? And if so, I can go to the arts and crafts store now.

I mean, I could always cut from a roll, flatten it with pressure (between some socks in a vice maybe?) or temper it with some heat.

Yeah actually, BRB, running to the art store with my ruler and caliper, going to pick up some copper if it's cheap enough.

Sidenote, if anyone wants to donate to me some AS5, I've used up almost all of mine with all the reapplications, it's going to be empty tonight @_@

 

ebay uk has load of copper sheets.

They only seem to be 3,2 or 0.9mm though.

In fact 0.9mm copper sheets are really common. Do you reckon this will be too small?

 

I think .9mm would be fine. My measurements aren't perfect, so it's mostly going to be trial and error. I couldn't find calipers with the measurements built it, you have to clamp then compare to a ruler, which leaves some room for error.

http://www.craftcellar.co.uk/index1.html
Can anyone find me what the thickness of the "lightweight" is? I am under the impression it is 3mm, which is way too thick, but I am not sure of it's actual size.

If it turns out to be ~1mm, I can get some of it tonight.


EDIT: And there it is...
"ArtEmboss light has a thickness of 3mil (.003) and medium is 5mil (.005)."

I think I might order some gold sheeting instead of copper, the prices are really similar!

 

I only worry because once I remove the thermal pad then if I got the wrong size I can't use my laptop.

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/Copper-Foil-She...ryZ41369QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

What's the deal with this...? It says "1 mil / .001" thick"
Ummmm....
According to my handy dandy internet:
1 millimeter = 0.0393700787 in
.001 in = 0.0254 millimeters

Something is not matching up on their spec sheet, and it's something important.


EDIT: Well, according to this
http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/scales/sheetmetal.html
I am going to shoot for 20G thickness = 0.0359 in = 0.91186 millimeters.
That, plus thermal paste, plus heat expansion, I think it should be perfect.
So now, the task of finding 20G sheet aluminum, preferably not rolled up.

 

0.9mm copper is quite common.

copper sheet is 99% copper and you have to be careful to make sure the gold sheet is pure enough.

 

I am having trouble finding it on ebay for less than 30 dollars for 12"x12" :\

 

Why do you need so much?

You need 30*30*0.9mm which costs £4

 

I don't need so much, but that's the only size I can find. I can't find any on ebay.com, and what else is annoying is I don't know if .9mm is really 20GA, I don't know if 1/32" is really 20GA. .9mm isn't exactly 20GA, and 1/32" isn't either.

Like here some is, but again - 20 bucks, and way more than I need. Not to mention, the other stuff is shiny and this stuff would require polishing :<
http://cgi.ebay.com/Four-Copper-She...ryZ88433QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Much less copper for a few bucks less:
http://cgi.ebay.com/COPPER-SHEET-PL...VQQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1638Q2em118Q2el1247

probably a better choice.

 

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Prime-Quality...Q2em118Q2el1247QQ_trksidZp1638Q2em118Q2el1247

That's what I'm looking to purchase.

 

That's what I really want to find, but I'm having trouble.

I'm thinking about soldering my additional heat pipes to the current one. According to Wikipedia, solder's melting temperature varies from 90C to 450C, depending on what type of solder you have, most being around 180C. I figure solder is rated so I will check out my solder's specific rating. What does everyone think of that? Would people suggest welding over soldering? Welding might be overkill but I think I could probably get it done.

Or should I just use AS5 and then top it with a bit of epoxy? Hmm.

 

I don't think copper wire will help much with thermal transfer.

 

Why not? If I use 2 strands of it, I've got 1/3 of the original heatpipe size. Adding on would distribute the heat better, and maybe pull that extra heat off the CPU.
I think you are underestimating the thickness of this wire.

 

1- the wire won't improve the heat dissipation that the fan + fins can do

2- solder won't conduct the heat all that well

3- the surface area of the wire is tiny

4- even if it worked, the whole copper component of the heatsink should in theory be roughly the same temperature throughout regardless, under a constant load.

 

1 - But it might be able to transport more heat to the fan
2 - Yeah kinda figured.
3 - Also true, I was going to flatten it a bit to give it some more
4 - Yeah good point, this one is the killer. I haven't been sleeping much lately, maybe that's why this seemed like a good idea. Gonna totally skip the extra heatpipes, they were causing a bit of a headache anyway since the bottom of the cooling assembly that goes on the GPU isn't perfectly flat. Maybe I will look into additional cooling later, but for now I will just focus on this bridge.

 

I just was thinking about it. It seems lots of... ill informed people... think that 1mm = 1/100 of an inch. Why people think this, god knows. But I realized that was the case based on lots of descriptions of metals I was reading, and I realized that that metal the craft store sells comes in supposed 3mm and 5mm sheets. 5mm is half a cm think, and this is rolled copper. No way is it really half a cm, so I am about to go check it out.

Yep, just got back from the craft store, and I was right. Instead of being way too thick, it's way too thin.

 

You know what, as cheap as this sounds on my part, I can't afford 15 bucks on a copper sheet. I hardly even freaking eat, I'm just using this aluminum. I looked up the thermal conductivity of aluminum and copper, and copper only transfers heat about 3% better.

I figure solid aluminum will still beat layered copper.

 

Probably. If aluminum didn't work, they wouldn't make heat sinks out of it.

 

This is pretty much a ridiculous effort for 3-4 FPS..........

 

Bowlerguy, maybe you don't understand. That's 3-4FPS in 3dmark06, which runs high res, high aa, high hdr, textures, high everything. Those few FPS will translate to a lot more in games. Especially those rendered unplayable by the heat (for example, I can play GTA: San Andreas, max settings, for about 20 minutes before my GPU starts to overheat. At that point, I drop to like 4-5 FPS, and the game is unplayable. In theory, this will prevent that.

 

Then maybe the computer isn't for you. I don't know why you would be trying to game on an M1330 anyway, although it has a moderately capable graphics card, the M1530 isn't that much larger and doesn't have heat issues.

 

This isn't just about few fps. It's about the cooling solution since the system comes w/ crappy heat pads.

 

Then why buy it? If your going to have to pretty much rip it apart and fix the heating issues then it doesn't sound terribly worth it to me.....

 

He's not ripping the system apart. Fan assembly is very simple to remove - (3 screws/open panel/take out fan).

If the mod works, it will simply prolong the life of the system, with a simple modification.

You mentioned about why gaming on the M1330, but other's would also say why not? It's still pretty powerful laptop if you ask me.

Do your thing Hep!, I'm interested in where this is headed.

Idle temp going down by about 10-15C alone is worth it, but like I said the biggest problem would be 3 chips (especially the GPU now w/ copper instead of heat pad) putting more stress on the single pipe.

I would love to try it myself, but I just don't have the skill/knowledge to do so.

 

Ok........

 

Bowlerguy, I don't have a lot of money but I needed an ultraportable for work. I was planning on buying an eeePC, but my friend offered me his somewhat quirky XPS M1330 for 250 dollars. I knew going into it that it had some known issues (LCD problem, a wire is loose some occasionally part of the screen goes out, which is not yet resolved, etc) but I figure I can't go wrong - worst comes worst I can sell the parts in it on ebay and recoop my 250. Then I'm back where I started, and I buy an eeePC.

I like the idea of mobile gaming. I don't think I should have to justify myself to you; if you don't want to game AT ALL on your XPS M1330, then why bother with an 8400M GS? That was what sold me totally on this notebook, because I was confident I could fix it and I for the most part, have. You might as well stick with the cheaper and cooler X3100.

I ENJOY doing this. Sometimes I find broken electronics, fix them... and give them away. I just like to do this stuff. If I can increase the life of a system, increase the performance, or have a good time, it's worth it. In this case, I can do all three!



I can't believe I typed so much there....

To everyone else who is interested, here's a tiny update. My next update is going to be the how-to because I'm currently working on it (with pics!) I've cut my aluminum, give me another 30 mins or so (I hope >_>)

 

Gonna warn you guys now, these pics are really really bad. I took like 20 of each shot in hopes to get some clear pictures.

Also I can't find my $#@$# AS5!

 

EDIT: I created a new topic about this: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3357081

Whole writeup is there.

 

Thanks for taking the time to post the writeup and the pictures.
I'll check the other thread.

 

I'm not doing this for fps, I'm doing this so that my GPU won't run at 100C during full load and die an early death!

 

I'll give this a try when I get my new MoBo in as I don't want to see another burnt video card.