MR9600 heat mod

I finally took the plunge today and threw out the heat pad garbage Dell uses for their notebooks. Living in Malaysia, material such as thermal paste and the copper plate aren't too easily available. But I managed to get the paste from a hardware shop, and found some left-over aluminium in my room. Unfortunately it's very thin - slightly less than 1 milimetre.

So this is what I did:


I put a tiny piece of aluminium on top of the GPU's die to act as some sort of "heat spreader". (I thought somebody said the 9600 has one, but apparently mine doesn't). Anyways, on the heatsink itself, I dumped a couple of layers of aluminium on it:



Of course, I smeared thermal paste between them and also paste between the die and heat spreader, and between heat spreader and aluminium pieces.

The end result is a 10-12 C decrease in temperature when idling - it used to idle at around 58-61 C at full power (yeah Malaysia is hot!). Gaming used to take it through the roof to over 100 C, but now running UT2K4 brings it to around 71-73 C. Not tried to OC it yet; still scared to push it to the absolute limits. Still, I'm glad it isn't boiling hot when I'm gaming.

 

What was the total cost of the mod?
How much time did it take?

P.S. Nice work.

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Fujitsu S6210: 1.6Ghz PM ~ 768MB RAM ~ 60GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
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Um, the aluminium was "free", paste costs around $2.50USD. Time? haha, it took quite a while 'cos I went very slow - didn't want to mess up my precious About an hour I think. Removing the thermal pad was a pain, since it disintegrated as soon as I pried it off. The double-sided tape was also difficult to remove.

Of course, cutting the thin aluminium also meant curving it at the sides, so make sure it's (almost) completely flat when before you attach it to the heatsink. If it curves downwards towards the GPU, you may short one of those darned resistors they cleverly put on the surface of the chip.

 

Well I decided to test out my mod so I overclocked it and ran some extensive 3dMark 03 tests. With a GPU speed of 378MHz and RAM speed at 283.50 MHz, I got a score of 3300. Maximum temperature throughout testing was 76 C. I haven't gone any further because I don't see a need to - my score is almost the same as a MR9700 would get.

 

Nice job, It cost me about 20 dollars, but i got the real stuff, like AS, copper, cyanacrylat, etc. I had to sandwich two pieces together to get the right thickness, looks like you did OK. I couldn't do pictures of mine, since all I have is a webcam, and I don't want to work inside my book with it on[ ]

GPU cooling (100°C->75°C)* Inspiron 8600 * 1.8ghz Pentium M * 128 MB Radeon 9600 Pro Turbo (337/242 -> 400/300) * 2x256 MB DDR2700 SDRAM * Aquamark 3: 24058 * 3DMark'03: 3404 * 3DMark'01 SE: 13120

 

"I couldn't do pictures of mine, since all I have is a webcam, and I don't want to work inside my book with it on"

LOL...

A little OT, but I don't see why the MR9800 cannot be made to fit our chasis. I saw the module for the i9100/XPS "notebooks" and it looked pretty small.

 

I'm sure it could, but it has to be in the best interest of Dell. Seeing as i just spent $190 on the GPU upgade for my laptop, I am not ready to buy a new one. I've been wanting a new hard drive, too. I just worry that this GPU will not be available in a year.

GPU cooling (100°C->75°C)* Inspiron 8600 * 1.8ghz Pentium M * 128 MB Radeon 9600 Pro Turbo (337/242 -> 400/300) * 2x256 MB DDR2700 SDRAM * Aquamark 3: 24058 * 3DMark'03: 3404 * 3DMark'01 SE: 13120

 

I'm guessing doing this type of mod, voids your warranty, right?

-rokov

 

No, but you wont get support on the gpu if you screw it up.

GPU cooling (100°C->75°C)* Inspiron 8600 * 1.8ghz Pentium M * 128 MB Radeon 9600 Pro Turbo (337/242 -> 400/300) * 2x256 MB DDR2700 SDRAM * Aquamark 3: 24058 * 3DMark'03: 3404 * 3DMark'01 SE: 13120