Anyone tried upgrading their fan before?

Has anyone tried getting a higher rated/better quality fan for their internal heatsink before?

Its hard to get specs but are there any brands better than others?

 

i think the problem is there usually made to fit the case so not easy to find another that will fit and work better

 

May be able to custom the fins maybe take off and swap with copper. Or if there is room *add* more surface area to the heat sink.

 

Have been wondering why this hasnt caught on yet.

I believe there a market for custom heatsink/fans for certain popular laptops.

 

Considering fans are sold OEM in massive quantities, unlikely you would be able to find XX model to compared to YY or ZZ.

Your best bet would be finding a similar model and if it offers a higher end processor and using that fan. I'm assuming you are talking about your Acer project?

You could also try to modify the heatsink/heatpipes.

 

instead of changing the fan and/or trying to modify the heatsink or pipes, try increasing fans speed.

that can be done either with software (easy, if you find such), or with hardware mods (i.e. increase its base voltage). You can also play with the pulse control circuit for the fan, but that could be harder.

luckily for me, I can run mine almost twice as fast with software control only.

 

Not everyone has TPFanControl.

But that brings up a good point, might be able to get more airflow using Speedfan..

 

But that would be at the expense of increased noise, whereas replacing it with a higher quality fan could potentially give better temps while being quieter/same volume.

But if you don't care about noise, it is definitely a viable solution.

 

It comes with a 0.5A 5V fan, it certainly spins up to full when going for it.

Its a forcecon model, I could maybe replace it with a delta or sunon?

 

You can't exactly expect your laptop to be OK with whatever you do here...

There are probably specific settings in the EC for the voltage and sync of your fan. I tried to use a different fan once, and my laptop turned off after a light blinking for a while.

 

Well I know its quite happy to run without the fan attached at all...

 

there was guy way back when on nbr that sent off his fans to some company in germany? and they built fans same size/build but with better performance for his setup. ebm pabst was the company i believe. one of the fans he told me was $300+ plus dollars. i don't remember how much the other cost.

 

maybe it was connecticut. just looked up ebm pabst real quick. worth a shot. email and try calling them.

 

Try attaching a vacuum cleaner inlet to your fan exhaust. Your laptop will run much cooler.


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or put laptop in the fridge. Cut a hole on it so that you can put the cables for the external KBD, mouse, and monitor through there, then seal with gum

 

A custom or modded heatsink will help more than a different fan. Most laptop fans I've seen so far were 5V/0.5A or 0.3A... and as the OEM fan fit really good it will be difficult to get a better airflow with a different fan.
A faster fan will only add a lot of noise and you'll need to get the power from somewhere (though that should be possible).

I've seen a couple of GPU heatsinks, and some can really be improved by a little bit grinding... recently I noticed that there's a gap of about 2mm between the GDDR modules and the heatsink in the notebook of a colleague. This is something that can get fixed easily and will help more.

Just my 0.02.

 

5V .5A is the strongest fan I've seen so far. You can try overvolting it to 6V perhaps, it does spin considerably faster. If you use a 7805 and tap off your battery voltage for V+ and make a divider to get +1V GND you should be able to get a constant 6V output.

 

There are new 3W fans out there, but they are 4 pin.

As far as I can tell (from looking at the mem pads and impressions on removal) my heatsink makes good contact and pressure all round.

 

Link? 4-pin probably means PWM controlled fan, do you have a 2-pin in your system?

 

What does 3 pin mean if not PWM.
I haven't seen a 2 pin fan on a laptop newer than 5 years.

There are server blower fans that are 12v. Some very powerful deltas out there. If you make your own shroud then they aren't really bigger in diameter, however theyre about an inch thick.

 

Yup, 10K+ RPM fans are out there. However they literally generate jet engine noise. You need to wear earplugs all the time.


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AFAIK

2 pin = voltage + ground, control is variable voltage and guessing
3 pin = voltage + ground + monitoring, control is variable voltage and monitored.
4 pin = voltage + ground + monitoring + PWM, control is via PWM and monitored.

I have a 3 pin fan.

 

Setting aside the simple cold hard facts that you cant just drop in any fan you want for you laptop due to size, shape, and power restrictions.

You should know that the return on investment for a fan is not as good as you may think.

The limiting factor is really more the heatsink than the fan, followed by the air supply, then lastly the fan itself would come into play.

I have had many different fans and coolers in my desktops and when upgrading to a faster and stronger fan, cooling really did not get much better. Not nearly the effect of a larger/better heatsink had.

The high powered fans only really come into play when your forcing air through a restrictive heatsink, then it actually will increase airflow and thus increase cooling.

Next when I was talking about air supply. Just imagine your desktop computer again. Take the dinky stock fan off and replace it with a super high powered one, and plug up all the air intakes on the desktop but one.

Do you expect that fan to really help any?

It wont because if it blows more air, its just blowing hot air around, it needs the fresh air to really help cooling. So in a laptop you dont really have that much air intake its almost the same situation.

Again with desktops I found putting stronger fans on for the intake & exhaust gave better results than the cpu fan itself.

When I get a fan these days I get one that is just going to give me decent power and has a long life span. Max power is not a issue.

For the laptop the best thing to do is just keep the heatsink nice and clean and if you can do something like the "Vicious Mod" to increase air intake to the laptop that can help greatly depending on the layout of the laptop you use.

Scap the idea of getting a better internal fan, and if you actually need more cooling for some reason try a cooling pad.

 

But if that fan is feeding from the air and has had vent holes opened around it...

Imagine your closed desktop thought again, now imagine that its actually the one remaining intake fan we are changing and it brings in more fresh air, that is going to help.

Anyway this was more just to see if anyone else had and if they had an idea if one brand was better than the other.

Lots of people think my ideas are silly and then I turn around with a system such as the one in my signiture

 

That's right. And generally those pins (wires) are color coded too:

Voltage: Red
Ground: Black
Monitor: Yellow
PWM: Blue (this is not standard, could be something else)


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my housemate did a watercooling mod with a fan on his inspiron 8600, had use it without the keyboard (he had an external)

it lasted a year before a leak killed it