I am an idiot... but.

Ok, so im normally a desktop user and this is my first laptop. The DV6119us I got from CC was running warm so so first thing I thought of was Artic silver on the heatsink fan setup ... So I yanked out the service manual and started tearing things apart... half way in I thought crap.. I dont want to do this but.. if I stop now I did it all for nothing . I got it all down and finally got the heatsink off.. the video gpu and some other part used pads.. nothing I could do there to really help those.. the pads were thick and if I removed them for just paste they would not make contact. The CPU portion however was able to have some artic silver 5 applied. I removed some sort of thermal pad that was paper thin and metallic in color. I cleaned it all off with finger nail polish remover and applied the artic silver 5 and getting it back together was a chore but I accomplished it. The only problem I had was the keyboard sticks up a hair higher on the left side then the right side. No matter what I tried I could not get it as low as the right side. Could someone look at thier laptop and let me know if the left side is a hair higher? After all was said and done I got about a 5C drop in temps on the CPU and about 8C drop in temp on the GPU... I did apply a small amount of artic silver on the GPU which seemed to help in the end go figure even with the thermal pad being used. Was it worth it???? Not sure yet .. I know when the fan runs the CPU cools down much faster then before. Also when running a burn in I managed to hit 60C max.. i was able to get over 64c before just doing a windows install!!! When it hit 60 the fan came on and cooled it down to 50C while still running the burn in program. I should remind you the temp im giving is the hottest core between the two. Dunno if this will help anyone but its seemed to help mine a bit. Again, would someone check thier keyboard to see if its a hair higher on the left side vs the right?

 

Nice! Some people have made copper shims to fill in the gap left by those awful GPU thermal pads, at least in another brand notebook that was having serious GPU overheating problems. I think Arctic Silver's adhesive was used to glue the shim into place, then Arctic Silver 5 between the shim and GPU.

All of this will void your warranty though, if HP notices at least, so I can't recommend copying Copyright, but... nice all the same.

 

For mine the level is about the same. I think you're just splitting hairs, pardon the pun. It could very well have been that way before the teardown. Trust me, if you keep on thinking about it, you'll have a foot and half difference between the 2 sides in less than a week.

Instead of beating yourself up, you should be congratulating yourself for a job well done.

 

Yeah I can see how this could void the warranty if they yanked it apart and saw the AS5. I guess thats whats HP's Part surfer is for.. ill just fix it my self. I now know it inside and out. I think im getting paranoid.. my 7200rpm Hitachi sounds kinda like a fan running in the laptop.. and for the life of me I dont remember if it sounded that way before???

 

Scary pic...

 

hahahahaha!!! a laptop as only a true professional would have...hahahaha...makes me remember the days of pluging components together w/o really removing them from their boxes and just having cables running everywhere...gawd that is FUNNY...thanks!!

BTW, cool trick with the post-it's...I never ever thought of that solution to the screw problem!!

 

Ive been building Custom PC's for 8 years including watercooled systems... I got half way into this thing and I was like.. oh ****..how am I gonna remember what goes where lol... thank god for Post-its!!!!

Something I wanted to mention that I thought was very kewl... the part where the a/c power plugs in is the small piece you see hanging off by the wire on the main board... so if you ever screw that part up which is pretty common.. you just have to replace that small piece not the whole board.. I thought this was a great idea on HP's part and I wonder how many other laptops are done this way.

 

Yes, I always love the modular design of HP's components. However, HP doesn't sell the lcd lid or plastic frame for its new laptops. Instead, they come as one piece together with the screen. According to a tech, it makes repairs much easier as they only have to detach the top half and re-attach the new one, instead of removing the plastic bits to get to the screen.

 

I saw their plastic parts for the LCD listed on thier HP parts surfer site... maybe they are doing this on the newer ones? I still think my g/fs E1505 feels more solid to me and more comfortable to use because it doesn't get as hot. Plus her C2D smokes my Turion... not fair

 

That is a great fix to the DC power jack problem. I just had my i8500 croak because the DC jack was busted and must have killed the power controller or something. I replaced the jack but the problem was the same...

so time for a new toy and that i8500 was the biggest lemon I ever bought. And I have used dells forever. It was this place that got me thinking about the HP's...

BTW, I too have been building systems for a long time, going on 15 years. But, I don't do it for anything other then fun anymore because the hardware biz is, well ROUGH on the best of days. Never did a watercooled setup before. I love to see them though, just amazing how they work...

 

I do it for fun as well.. I make very little when building them but it keeps me fresh on the latest hardware. Sorry to hear that about your i8500.. if you go wtih HP id personally stay away from the consumer line.. I dont think they are built as solid. I work for HP so I get to see and play with some laptops at work the buy for us that seem so much better built then my DV6000z.

 

Thanks for the tip about the business systems. I settled on the NX9420 and am just waiting to see if there are any changes to the list of pre-config systems after the 1st. Would love to find one w/o Brightview and has a lightscribe optical drive. Wish we could order a CTO model but for some reason it's not an option.

I am certain about not being able to use the BV displays because I picked up a display model dv9033cl yesterday from costco. And the display is just too reflective for the lighting I work around. I can't sit in one place very long so I am moving around pretty often during the day and also work outside or at Starbucks so the reflections will be an issue. I also am not a fan of the keyboard on this series nor the location of the speaker & mic jacks...fine system just not for me so back to costco she goes tomorrow...

I can also support you on the buid quality on the consumer systems. While it's not horrible they certainly do not seem intened to actually be moved around & stuffed into cramed strange places. The back for the display is really weak.

As for hardware it's still fun to tinker. I only do things for friends and occasionally hack together something strange to see what I can force from the hardware. And you are right system building is a good way to stay current for sure. It really helps a person to stay on top of the various weirdisms of Windows. At least we don't need to do the IRQ/DMA dances anymore...

These days I just stick to contract development...I'll too old and cranky for corporate america anymore...

 

What is the speed of the C2D your g/fs E1505 has and what Turion X2 do you have? Because if your g/fs C2D have a higher speed it obvious it is going to be faster that your Turion X2. Plus every one knows that the C2D is a little better than the Turion X2, I can't say that personally since i have not used a laptop with a C2D yet, but that i what every one say.

 

It wouldn't be fair if it wasn't a clock for clock comparison... my girls is a 1.66 and mine is a 1.6... but hers has more cache and just plain puts mine to shame in terms of performance. Her benchmarks were about 35% higher then mine and I dont think .06 ghz is gonna make up that much difference but im sure the extar cache is helping. Plus hers runs cooler which I like. I still got her in HD performance tho.. my 7200 puts it on her 5400 drive pretty good but I do have to deal with some extra noise and heat.

 

Right before I was moving groups inside HP we were getting the NX laptops. I missed out on those

 

Synthetic benchmarks react very well to the massive L2 caches in Intel chips, giving a distorted view of real-world performance. The 512KBx2 L2 cache in most Turion X2's combined with the Turion's integrated memory controller is about right and provides lower latency. The 256KBx2 L2 in the Turion ML50 is less than I'd like (that's what I have) but it's certainly cheap. Then there's the benchmarks compiled with Intel's compiler that conveniently ignore SSE/etc on non-Intel CPUs, very dirty trick, Intel's stopped doing that but figuring out which benchmark is compiled with what is annoying. Anyhow, C2D has a small clock-to-clock edge but it doesn't "smoke" anything. Intel spends hundreds of $millions annually to convince you otherwise though. I say buy AMD and skip the Intel marketing tax.

 

I agree.. I cant complain about the price or performance with my chip.. just the heat... there is a huge thread with everyone having the same issues. I was using Sisoft Sandra for the CPU benchmark comparison which I thought should be a non-biased benchmark... I could be wrong. Either way id still rather have had the C2D if I could do it again. I was up at Comp USA the other day and they had about 6 HP notebooks all DV's.. 2 had Turion chips in them.. both of them were much warmer then the other C2D notebooks that were right beside them. This kinda explains why I tore mine apart to put some AS5 in the hopes it would make a difference... the 4-5C difference I got is nice but not helping the palm rest heat which im sure is more to do with the HD. The 7200 really doesnt seem any hotter then the 5400 I had... both were pretty dang warm.

 

Intel chipsets run very cool while nVidia chipsets run a bit hot, though the price is that Intel's integrated GPU is awful while nVidia's is very good. I have high hopes for ATI's next chipset now that AMD has bought them, getting rid of the distraction of building Intel chipsets will be good for ATI. See the huge amount of copper they put on nVidia desktop motherboards vs. ATI and you'll see what I mean. In the past I've trusted nVidia more than ATI and put up with the extra heat, in large part because nVidia has been an excellent supporter of Linux, but ATI is catching up.

 

Those pads are quite the hedge. Nothing like something that compresses to give the designers a fudge factor on thickness. Too bad they aren't as thermally conductive as AS5 is.

If one could figure out the exact thickness required on both the CPU and GPU parts of the heatsink, then you could use AS Epoxy to shim up the heatsink and enjoy the improved thermal performance.

I HIGHLY suspect that the so so conductivity of the pads impacts memory performance in the Turion x2 laptops. If the CPU runs too hot for too long AND you're running a memory intensive app...well let's just say it isn't pretty.