Improve 237x GPU cooling

This post may help others, but you will have to adapt to your installation.

The OEM installation of the heatsink can be improved. However you will have to manufacture at least one of the parts yourself. You will need:

• Arctic Silver 5 or better thermal paste
• cotton balls and/or cotton swabs
• pure isopropyl alchohol or acetone
• a 1" copper plumbing cap (make sure the end is flat)
• 1000 grit sandpaper
• copper metal polishing paste
• jewler's phillips screwdriver
• coping saw
• fine metal file
• wood toothpicks
• lint free cotton cloth
• a cardboard business card

You will cut a 1cm X 1cm square from the end of the plumbing cap with the coping saw (a clamp or at least vice grips will help hold the cap while cutting). This material is about as pure copper as you are going to readily get and the correct thickness. Sure you might find another source material, but around here this was the least expensive means.

Carefully remove the burrs around the edges with the file being careful to not remove any material from the flat sides. Use the sandpaper to remove the scratches near the edges and some of the oxides. Try to minimize scratches on the flat sides.

Polish the entire piece with metal polish (basically a fluid fine grit sandpaper) to remove oxides and fine scratches. Wash with the alcohol or acetone and set aside. (BE CAREFUL - both the alcohol and acetone are highly flammable and need good ventilation!)

Remove AC & battery from your notebook; then press and hold the power button for 15+ seconds to drain off any stored charge. Make sure you have fully discharged any static from your body before proceeding.

Open the notebook bottom hatch and remove the six screws securing the fan and the heatsink. Using a small magnet to keep the screws from falling into the notebook is a good idea.

Carefully remove the fan from the case (leave it plugged in), and carefully lift the heatsink free of the notebook and set it aside. Clean any accumulated dust from the fan blades and set the notebook aside.

On the heatsink, you will see an excess of thermal paste from the CPU, and a foam thermal pad for the GPU. Remove both using the alcohol or acetone as a solvent and broken ends of toothpicks as scrapers. Do not scratch the heatsink surface. Be careful not to bend the heatsink in any way. Clean out any accumlated dust from the radiator fins. Set aside when throughly clean.

Using only cotton balls or swabs dampened with alcohol or acetone, and broken toothpicks, clean the surfaces of the CPU & GPU chips inside your notebook - Do not get sloppy with fluids inside your notebook!

Your prep work is done. It is now time to reassemble.

Place a teeny dab of new thermal paste - about the size of a grain of rice, maybe smaller - on the CPU. Use an edge of a business card to just completely coat the top of the CPU. Any more that that is not only a waste, but may decrease the effectiveness in cooling the chip. The factory almost always uses way too much paste. The sole purpose of the paste is to fill microscopic scratches on the chip and heatsink and improve heat transfer. The copper is a much better heat transfer material than the paste.

Do the same with the top of the GPU.

Remember that thermal pad that used to be over the GPU? It had a depression in it. The thickness of the pad inside that depression has to be duplicated. This is what that little piece of copper you made does. Lay the copper shim centered on top of the freshly pasted GPU. It should be just a teeny bit bigger than the GPU. Press it down evenly into the thin layer of paste. I suggest using another broken toothpick to avoid transferring any finger oils to the copper.

Now, very delicately put another layer of thermal paste on top of this copper shim just like you did on top of the CPU & GPU.

Carefully reinstall the heatsink. Make sure you don't slide it around and dislodge the shim sitting on top of the GPU. Secure it with the 4 screws. Then reinstall the fan and secure it with the remaining two screws. Last reinstall the bottom plate on your notebook.

When you were cutting the shim out of the plumbing cap, did you notice how readily the heat from the cutting transferred throughout the entire cap? Copper is a very good heat conductor. Steel is a lousy heat conductor. Aluminum is slightly less good than copper. Another reason for not using aluminum is that over time whenever copper and aluminum are in contact with each other, they will start to corrode. As the heatsink is made of copper, a copper shim is the best approach.

My notebook GPU routinely operates 10-15C cooler than the OEM installation. I find my notebook's fan also runs less often. This will also violate any warranty you may have.

 

Hmmm, this looks familiar *points to signature*

 

LOL! yep, looks like I in part 'reinvented the wheel'. At least I know my techniques are about the same as yours.

Sorry to see you are stuck with an Nvidia 8400 equipped M1330's. Your modification will extend the life of the GPU, but from everything I've read it's still a matter of when rather than if this defective chip will fail. It isn't just the amount of heat, it is the changes in temp. Each thermal cycle breaks down the internal mounts just a little more. The mod, simply reduces the number of cycles while operating, can't eliminate the big ones (unless you never turn the notebook off).

My daughter just moved from an Averatec 3150p to the Dell XPS M1330 with the LED backlight and the Intel video option. She loves the weight, is still getting used to the larger size and widescreen. Really wanted the Asus U6E-X3, but they were sold out.

 

I know, I've posted in that topic dozens of times that this does not fix the problem, merely extend the life.

 

Thanks so much for figuring out this fix and posting the instructions! According to HWmonitor my gpu almost never ran below 100 degrees C, and it was usually at 109 and I've seen it as high as 119. I installed the copper shim as described above and now my gpu doesn't go about about 66 degrees C, and usually stays below 60. That stupid foam thing the manufacturers put in there must not have been doing anything to get the heat away from the gpu!
After a few years of those temps, my gpu had enough I guess and my display continually locked up b/c the gpu would overheat. Sometimes I'd get a scrambled display, sometimes it'd just plain freeze up and hard lock the whole laptop. I finally decided to do this fix and now I'm running cool with no problems whatsoever. Securityconsulting, you're the best! I highly recommend this fix to anyone who's having these problems.

One tip that made this job easier:

1. Use a dremel. I started out w/ a coping saw which was hard to use on such a small piece of copper. I then went to a sawzall, which still was tough work but I finally got a flat piece out of the copper end cap. After realizing how difficult that all was, I decided to borrow a dremel from my father-in-law, and boy, was I glad I did. Cutting through the copper was no problem for the metal-cutting dremel attachment and made it really easy to make precise cuts. Then using the polishing attachments, I was able to get a much smoother finish than I ever would have with just sandpaper. (I couldn't find the liquid copper polish stuff you mentioned.)