cutting out the fan grills to reduce temps?

Has anyone done this and what the temp difference was?

 

IMHO such drastic mods should be discouraged. If the grill is on the intake it could be preventing larger debris from clogging up the heatsink. Also a grill here introduces intake resistance making he system want to draw air from else where cooling off other components.

Now a grill in the outlet may be helpful but increasing air volume may also increase noise etc..

 

Are you referring to the fins on the heat pipe that are an essential part for transferring the heat in the pipe to the air that is blown through them? If so, their removal would worsen (perhaps catastropically) the overall thermal performance.

John

 

Actually, removing the exhaust grill will reduce noise since there's less air turbulence.

 

yes I'm referring to the plastic grills on my x61t. I have a few of them and love the sxga+ screen but at 7 setting on thinkpad fan control it's about 4500 rpm which makes it more audible than I care for. I've got one in each room so I'm more interested in trying to make it the coolest temp and quietest. Plus the plastic trim bezel is maybe $20 if I don't like the mod.

 

I've done it. See if you can mock something up with cardboard first though and see if it even helps.

Something like this:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...first-look-review.660753/page-68#post-8584819

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...first-look-review.660753/page-74#post-8609784

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...r-machined-coolers.692562/page-2#post-8901792

 

These systems tend to run at the warmer side of the spectrum no matter what one does. Try Throttle Stop and see whether it will make the noise - by undervolting the system, as little as can be done with these CPUs - more bearable.

There's also an updated version of the heatsink - can't recall the FRU off the top of my head but will look into it when I get a chance - which is supposed to minimize the heat. Stay tuned.

Good luck.

 

I'd have no idea which is louder;



Seriously consider undervolting, it will most likely yield the best results overall.

 

Thanks, yes they do run warm but the keyboard and sxga+ keep me coming back. I do have throttlestop but it only goes down to .85mv (.875mv stable at 8x and .937mv at ida 9x). The palmrest gets warm also, people think it's the wifi card but in my experience it really gets warm when you transfer stuff via usb drive so I think it's the usb controller? I do have a few so I'd like to try and make one that's the best it could possible become.

 

If during transfer over USB it gets warm then grill elimination will only suffice to further limit air flow there while increasing it at the CPU or GPU. Maybe active laptop cooling pads will help?

 

Undervolt it before doing something this drastic.

 

how hot is "hot" to you? My T420 has been chugging along great with a 35w i7 upgrade, running 24 hours a day, 6-16 hours of regular use a day, hitting 90-95c at load lol
Not hat I'd recommend that, just sayin