Compal Cooler tips

Hey everybody, I'm a 6 month proud owner of a Compal HEL80 from power notebooks. This is a fantastic machine, and it's really been the perfect laptop in every sense, but recently I've run into some cooling problems.

I live in a dorm on my college campus, and spring is obviously here and things are starting to warm up. We don't have air conditioning, and so I'm noticing a heat increase on the left palm rest. On top of that I just recently purchased Command and Conquer 3, so needless to say I'm pushing my Compal pretty hard. More than once during game time the computer has just shut down from overheating. I have it lifted up from the rear so air can go under with a cheap targus chill mat, but the fans are pretty weak and the plastic material its made out of does nothing to take heat away.

I was curious if you guys had any suggestions for some really nice cooling pads that you know for a fact will work. I keep the laptop mostly stationary on my desk, and don't do much gaming on the go, so I'm not too worried about how its going to feel on my lap or anything.

Any help you guys could give me would be fantastic. Thanks a ton!

(Copal HEL80: 2.16 Core Duo, 2GB RAM, 100GB 7200RPM HDD, Windows XP Professional)

 

You may want to use some compressed air and blow into the vents.

The built up dust causes quite a bit of overheating.

 

i would recommend opening up your machine (if you feel comfortable with it), taking out the heatsink and giving it a good shot with compressed air.

i try to do this to all of my machines (desktops and laptops) every few months. it makes a huge difference. you wouldn't believe how much dust gets in there and how much heat gets trapped because of it.

 

I wouldn't recommend taking off the heatsink..

First of all check your temps when your gaming when your left palm rest gets hot... the 7600 should really never go over 65 degrees Fahrenheit.. check midgame by going to your desktop, right clicking, properties, settings, advanced, clcik on the geforce 7600 tab, and find your temperature. As I said, anything above 65 (75 tops) is getting hot.

What you need to do it get a can of compressed air and something like a Q-tip. Turn your laptop off, take the battery out, get it off ac and press and hold the power button for a few seconds to drain the electricity. Ground yourself by touching something metal attached to the Earth. Flip your laptop over (preferably onto something soft), and on the left side you should see a panel that has an intake valve on it and 2 screws holding it in place. Get a small screwdriver and unscrew the screws, and put them in a safe place, lift up the tab (do it gently but forcefully at the same time) and you should see a fan.

You should see that there are two output valves, on on the back of the laptop and one on the left side near the TV thingy. You should be able to see a space between the fan and the vent itself. There should be a spongy material here. Between the fan and this spongy material should be a carpet of dust. Blow this out. Before you do so make sure to hold your compressed air can is working properly before doing this. Then blow into the fan itself and you may see some dust floating around in there that isn't coming out. Now use the Q-tip to carefully fetch this out of the fan. Close her back up and your laptop should be running a good 10+ degrees cooler!

 

When blowing out the cooling fan, use something (toothpick, etc) to keep the fan from spinning. Hitting it directly with a shot of compressed air and allowing it to spin can cause it to overspeed beyond the design speed of the bearings, damaging them in the process.

 

Definitely clean out your fans if you haven't been doing that regularly before. There are some cooling tips in the cooling guide if you haven't already seen it.

The Zalman laptop cooler seems to be a good choice. It's made of aluminum and sure looks good. Check out p_boucher's review of it in the News & Reviews forum.

 

I like my Zalman cooler.

 

i just got my HEL80 so i haven't opened it up yet, but i know on my toshiba A45, you pretty much had to take the heatsink off to get a good shot with compressed air. it sucked, but it helped.