The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Could these be used for copper modding?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by bobuy00, Aug 22, 2012.

  1. bobuy00

    bobuy00 Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    80
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    bobuy00, Aug 22, 2012
    #1
  2. wild05kid05

    wild05kid05 Cook Free or Die

    Reputations:
    410
    Messages:
    1,183
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    get some double sided adhesive tapes and stick it on the coppers.
     
    wild05kid05, Aug 22, 2012
    #2
  3. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

    Reputations:
    21,580
    Messages:
    35,370
    Likes Received:
    9,877
    Trophy Points:
    931
    Image isn't loading but what most people use are RAM heatsinks and already have a peel and stick adhesive on them.
     
    HTWingNut, Aug 22, 2012
    #3
  4. ParamountComputers

    ParamountComputers Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    13
    Messages:
    30
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Hello,

    Check this link of a post here, so you can understand the basics of what copper and thermal paste does.

    http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/674538-applying-icy-diamond-gpu.html

    Thermal paste has to be spread sparingly, spread meaning by the weight of the heatsink being screwed together that is it. As far as copper shims are concerned be careful there are items that are copper coated and not copper, and don't dissipate heat the way copper does. Now with that said, important to read the post I replied to on thermal paste to get an understanding of what your doing and why. The more layers you add, the less heat will dissipate from the GPU.

    Think about it when its cold outside you bundle up to keep warm before going out think of the GPU being you and thermal paste or a copper shim being the clothing your wearing to bundle up. Obviously if you dissipated heat than clothing would defeat the purpose of trying to stay warm. So think about this logically, we do copper shim mods but we actually weld the copper to the heasink, and we modify the size of copper added based on the size of GPU and how much heat we want to dissipate. Hope this helps...

    Regards,

    Don
     
    ParamountComputers, Aug 23, 2012
    #4
  5. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

    Reputations:
    21,580
    Messages:
    35,370
    Likes Received:
    9,877
    Trophy Points:
    931
    It's all about heat dissipation. If you threw a big solid copper block on a CPU heatsink it wouldn't do any good, only make things worse, but by minimizing copper cross section and increasing surface area and even a little bit of airflow past the copper can greatly improve the thermal cooling. But that's the problem when people just go and throw heatsinks on without figuring a way to add airflow across the copper. If there's no airflow then they just become hot blocks of copper and the cooling system has to draw that heat through the heatpipe too in order to cool it, so it becomes much less efficient at cooling the CPU.
     
    HTWingNut, Aug 23, 2012
    #5
  6. imglidinhere

    imglidinhere Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    387
    Messages:
    1,077
    Likes Received:
    59
    Trophy Points:
    66
    Yet... that's where the cooling pad comes into effect. :p
     
    imglidinhere, Aug 23, 2012
    #6
  7. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

    Reputations:
    21,580
    Messages:
    35,370
    Likes Received:
    9,877
    Trophy Points:
    931
    If the bottom of your laptop isn't properly ventillated then a laptop cooler won't help much.
     
    HTWingNut, Aug 23, 2012
    #7
  8. niffcreature

    niffcreature ex computer dyke

    Reputations:
    1,748
    Messages:
    4,094
    Likes Received:
    28
    Trophy Points:
    116
    Unless your laptop chassis works as a heatsink, which would really burn up your laptop without a cooler.

    The thing about sticking pieces of copper together with tape is, both parts must be flat to use thermal tape!!
    Thermal tape is VERY thin.

    Especially important to remember is, thermal tape is NOT made for sticking copper directly to components! Save for some of the really big VRMs. If you try to go around taping copper foil to your vRAM or other random parts of your graphics card for example, you WILL want to shoot yourself when the tape wears through and you short something.

    Soldering copper directly to your heatsink can work, and the end result is usually much better than tape or thermal adhesive compound. However, if you go this route its important to have a friend who is a plumber or a welder to help you. It wont work easily if you just try it with a blowtorch.

    Consider soldering another heatpipe to your heatsink as well.
     
    niffcreature, Aug 23, 2012
    #8
  9. bobuy00

    bobuy00 Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    80
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Thanks for all the replies.

    I was planning on attaching those to the heatsink somehow but, given that it requires a completely flat surface I guess that's out of the question. The cooling system itself has a separate heatpipe for the CPU and GPU, and I take adding RAM cooler above the heatpipe directly above the CPU/GPU wouldn't help?

    The fan itself is one of those centrifugal types, and I'm wondering if adding some tape in there to close the gap between the blades and the fan case would improve it's efficiency.
     
    bobuy00, Aug 24, 2012
    #9
  10. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

    Reputations:
    21,580
    Messages:
    35,370
    Likes Received:
    9,877
    Trophy Points:
    931
    HTWingNut, Aug 24, 2012
    #10