SXPS 1640 cooling mod

Ok, so I posted this in the dell xps forum but didn't get much feedback, so I thought here might be a better place. Here goes...

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Ok, so ever since I got this laptop I've been ticked off about the placement of the southbridge and how it makes the area in front of the touchpad hot enough to hurt. A few days ago I decided that I'd do something about it.

Basically, what I noticed was that the mobile wifi card slot was right next to it and there was a small amount of space unerneath where I could put some copper. There was also the screw to hold the card in place which would be useful to hold the thing in place a little firmer. Since I don't have a mobile wifi card then this doesn't present any problems.

As for the pictures, sorry guys but I forgot to take some while I was making the heatsink but I'll outline how I made it (I'll use numbered steps since it's easier to make a concise documentation that way).

1. I took apart the whole machine and looked at the bit of metal that covers the southbridge. Noticed that there were two ridges in it which would constrict the placement so I got rid of them with my trusty chisel (it's only magnesium so it didn't mind too much).
2. I measured the dimensions of the card slot and other things to get an idea what to cut out.
3. Scored the outline into a 0.6mm copper sheet twice (I originally planned on using only one layer due to the ridges in the metal above the SB restricting width).
4. Slowly cut out the shapes with a hacksaw and then filed down the edges to get a nice finish. Trying to keep it from bending is such a pain.
5. Beat flat any bends I put in by accident with a soft mallet.
6. Fluxed the sides I was going to join.
7. Using a folded lump of tin foil to insulate the soft grips on the vice, I tinned both pieces with solder and then scraped off the excess.
8. Laid one pice down and put three little snippings of solder around the surface since I'd scraped off most of the solder I'd tinned on. Then I put the other half down on top, joined them together and clamped them down to squeze out any excess.
9. Sanded off the heavy oxide layer from the blowtorch and finished up the edges so they were equal (cutting out two totally identical pieces with basic tools is pretty hard).
10. Marked and cut the cooling fins, then removed any burrs.
11. Drilled and coutersunk the screw hole.
12. Finished sanding everything and rounding the corners.
13. Bent the fins into position.
14. Gave it all a nice wash to get rid of the stuff that makes your fingers go black (if you work with metal then you'll know what I'm talking about).
15. Put paste on the SB and mounted the heatsink.
16. Put comoputer back together making sure the metal bit of the chasis that goes over the SB pressed on the heatsink
17. Wondered how the screws that hold the laptop together seem to have grown legs (I was already 1 short, now I'm 3 short).

In list form this all looks quite quick but it took about 4-5 hours in total, if you plan on doing the same.

All sizes are in mm

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A few pictures of the finished product

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About to mount

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With screw in place

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Note the electrical tape over the fan to try and do a better job at preventing air from escaping. If you were wondering, yes it is coloured in with permanent marker.

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Finally all back together

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Booting up again to make sure everything was ok (hibernation file screwed over and made windows only use 1 core but that has fixed its self and was almost certainly unrelated).

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As for results, the palm rest feels a little cooler but since it's only a passive heatsink it's only really going to be able to dump heat elsewhere. I'm thinking of putting one of those tiny fans in to try and get some air flow.

As for the rest of the system, my heatsink seems to be knackered, the pads are dying etc. I'm thinking of getting a new heatsink at some point. I'll probably shim the NB soon since its pad is pretty screwed over, dunno about the VRAM since it probably doesn't need it and could cause problems getting a good contact with the Vcore. I'll probably just replace the pads on the VRAM.

I've recently been thinking about a possible water cooling solution for it. The plan is to solder some copper tubing along the heat pipes of both the GPU and CPU and have it going both in and out where the TV input would be (I didn't choose the TV tuner so I just have a blank space). This way I would still have 100% functionality from the air cooling so I wouldn't be tied to one place but I could hook up to a cooling unit should I go to a lan party or something like that. I was thinking something along the lines of what this person did Case Mod Project: Watercooled Laptop - Campus Party WINNER!!!!! - bit-tech.net Forums although without the large tubes coming out the back, I'd have a seperate arrangement to drain it when I'm done. I'm not sure about the temp monitor he built in though, it's kinda cool but it would mean I'd have to cut a hole somewhere visible which I'd be hesitant about. If anyone can think of a reasonable layout which preserves the function of the air cooling then I might be willing to have a go, so far I only really know of 2 water cooled laptop attempts, with the one I posted seeming to be the only truely successful one (the alienware one got canceled mid project iirc). I wouldn't mind being the third to have a watercooled laptop.

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As for the other mods I've done so far, a while ago I put some film under the WASD keys so the glowed orange instead of white like everything else. That was kinda cool. I also built a custom cooler with a blue LED fan which I could post pictures of if you want, it felt pretty good when a friend asked where I bought it from at a lan party (just quickly, does anyone know if you can get 5 to 12 DC DC step up converters? I could get my cooler fan running properly then, and add some PWM control).

I was talking about putting in a little fan on the new heatsink, I've found a 15x15x4 5V fan which should fit in there nicely. A centrifugal blower type fan would have been preferable since it would blow the air out to the side over the heatsink vanes and elsewhere in the laptop but they started at 30x30 ish and were taller so that's a no go. I think I'll just try and raise the small one up a little bit so it has a chance to blast a whole 0.3ishCFM of air down on the heatsink. I know, 0.3CFM is totally immense . I don't know whether or not I should put in some sort of switching arrangement though, possibly some PWM. If I did I don't know whether to put it inside the case or to make it externally accessable.

 

Nice modification. I don't think I'd ever be able to do something that extreme with my laptop, mostly just because I'd be afraid of breaking it though!

 

If you're going to try watercooling then you could do something like this: ‪Dell XPS M1330 Notebook watercooling MOD, the little How to‬‏ - YouTube

 

Yeah, I saw that video a while ago. That's pretty much exactly what I'd want to do except with it coming out the side instead of the bottom. That way it's a lot easier to manage when you're using it as you don't have to keep it raised.

As for the cooling mod. As of the moment, I think it's made the temperatures go down a little. Since it's only a passive heatsink it can only really move the heat around rather than get rid of it so I might end up putting a tiny fan in there.