Drilling Holes into Laptop

Mk i've been considering drilling holes into the bottom of my laptop in order to increase air flow and hopefully reduce temperatures. I have an ASUS G60JX. Has an Intel i5 430m, Nvidia GTS 360m 1gb GDDR5, 4gb ddr3 ram, 500GB 7200RPM HDD.

Anyway, the GPU temps reach 85C on load and processor cores reach 66C on load. Idle temps are fine though, 33-36C for processor, 43-44 for GPU. I realize the load temperatures are not crazy out of line. But I would really like to keep them as low as possible. That way i can enjoy my gaming laptop and increase longevity

The laptop is clean, and dusted out, vents are wide open (vents are marked in red rectangles on pictures). And i'm not too keen on replacing the thermal paste quite yet. Gotta work up the courage LOL.

And i have a laptop cooler that blows air up into the vents. It works alright. But the current back plate is keeping it from its full potential.

Out of warranty, so don't worry about that.

Here is a pic of the bottom of the laptop with components exposed. The bottom is without the back plate on. The top is with the back plate on, but its translucent so you can still see the parts. The exhaust vent is a big strip on the computers left side (right next to the right side of the fan on the pictures, you can't see it in the pictures)





I'm thinking about drilling holes in these spots (marked by yellow lines). I was considering putting holes directly above the fan, but i was told that could cause the thing to overheat since it would just be taking cold air from the outside and spitting it right out, instead of taking heat from the laptop. I figured by drilling holes in the spots next to the vents, the fan will still be ables to pull air from those spots while also getting increased air flow..




Part of the reason why the air flow is so bad is because on the opposite side of the vents, there is a metal mesh. It is to keep crap out of the laptop, the mesh does SUCH a great job that even air has trouble getting into it...*facepalm*. The mesh is stuck on there pretty good, so i figured drilling some holes would be a good alternative. The mesh is on every vent except for the 2 vents right next to the fan.



I understand that by drilling holes in the laptop, dust can build up. TBH I'm okay with that. Removing the back door is VERY easy, i wouldn't mine taking it off to clean it everyonce and a while. I took the back door off today and it was clean as a whistle, and i've had it for a year.


So...point of this thread.. What do you guys think? Tips, advice, warnings? The back plate comes right off. So i would take off the back plate then drill holes into the plate.

 

If you don't mind having some small holes on the backplate, by all means, do it. A lot of G50/51 users, including me, have done the backplate drilling mod and noticed a big drop in temp(about 10 C drop for GPU for me), and from the pics you posted above, the internal CPU/GPU layout in G60 is identical to G50/51. If you want to achieve the best results, use the laptop with modded backplate on top of a quality laptop cooler, you will see even better temp. And by the way, if you decide to do it, drill A LOT of small holes instead of say a few big holes, this way it will improve air ventilation better, especially when coupled with a cooler.

 

I would say give it a try, my husband drilled spare bottom plates for my MBP's both this gen and the last 2 to decrease temps by 5-15c. I am unsure on your specific model but it looks like worst case you would have to purchase another ABS bottom plate your your unit.

 

Where did you drill your holes? Next to your vents like i have set up, on top of the fan?

 

I placed some white crosses on where I would drill, basically you just want to have some holes underneath GPU, CPU and the fan. Drilling holes under the RAM isn't necessary, but more holes never hurt.

 

Alright. Yeah i just wasn't sure about putting holes right above the fan.

Wasn't sure if that was ill advised or what.

 

Are you going to use a hole saw, drill a bunch of holes, jigsaw? In any case use really sharp cutting tools, otherwise you could break that plastic quickly.

 

I took off the back cover decided to see if that mesh blocking the vents would easily come off. Sure enough it did. Peels right off. Now all my vents are open, instead of blocked

So now I'm going to try and see if it has any better airflow when gaming.

Wish me luck!

My idle GPU temp has already dropped from about 43-44C to 40-41C just by taking those off

 

imo, add small copper ram heatsinks along the notebook heatsinks. use this heatsinks
use sekisui thermal tape.
I mod my notebook like this. it's great to conserve the warranty since you can always remove.
con: it will be heavier.
drilling will help a lot too.
lapping the cpu can help too.

 

Upgrade to a SSD would also, in your case, help to drop your tempratures..

 

also add sodimm ram heatspreaders, an expresscard fan, and blowout fans on the notebook fan intakes.

 

Make sure undervolting is not an option.

 

I've looked at that alot.

RMclock is way outdated at the looks of it.

Do you know of any freeware programs that can undervolt an i5 430m?

And I don't know how to access my vbios either ...

Nvidia GTS 360m

 

If you don't mind leaving the bottom access panel off (which would require more cleaning than usual), I would leave it off and have the notebook on top of a decent notebook cooler. I would think that would be more effective at keeping temps down than drilling holes. Plus it's not permanent, in case you might decide to ever sell it.

 

But my components would be exposed

far more accident prone then....especially from scratches...

I think a big part of the problem is how the fans do not kick in to high until it reaches 85C...It cools down to 75C rather quickly once the fans kick in. But once it hits 75C the fan slows down until it reaches 85C again.