CF-29HTM50BM cooling mods ?

i have seen that it is possible to improve the cooling of the cpu with arctic silver Céramique.

Arctic Silver Incorporated - Céramique

I have read that the cpu and the heat sink needs shims because there will be a gap if shims are not used. Is this true, and how thick does it need to be ?
I can get hold of shims made of silver.

By the way, thermal compounds are better that thermal conductive pads.
The Heatsink Guide - Case Cooling

 

You need to throw a lot of info you may read about regular PCs out the window... As they don't always apply.

1. If you break apart your (imaginary) Toughbook.... A good thought is to make sure that if the pads are still in good shape to use A LITTLE Arctic silver paste to help make contact with the pads and CPU.

2. Pads are what Panasonic uses.... It is what YOU should use.

3. You CANNOT use Arctic paste alone on the Toughbook.... If you do you will have a gooey, hot, runny mess... And your Toughbook will eventually burn up.

4. Heartland USA sells these thermal pads specifically for use with their toughbooks. I carefully open my toughbook bottoms to try to reuse these pads but have others if they get really torn up when removing the bottom. But must just pop off cleanly. I usually use my fingernail to push the edges back toward the center in an effort to thicken the pad a little... All while making sure they stay adhered. I only push the edges in.5mm to 1mm.... NOT much. Then, if needed I usually add a little Arctic Silver Paste.

I would not play around with the cooling system as Panasonic as spent millions figuring this all out.

 

It is not "imaginary".. it is on it way in the mail.. Arrives in about a week.

I know that arctic silver Céramique must be used extremely sparingly,a extremely thin layer is enough. Céramique does not contain any metal or other electrically conductive materials. It is a pure electrical insulator, neither electrically conductive nor capacitive.

Here is some pictures of a slightly modded cpu cooling system on a CF-29

 

Dan your heat transfer mods are interesting. Do you have any data about CPU temperatures before & after, loaded & idle, etc?

As Toughbook said, Panasonic has decades of experience making these very rugged and reliable machines. Heat transfer is certainly an important consideration. So is ruggedness, resistance to vibrating loose or breaking free under physical stress, etc. But many of us here are modders at heart and some data from your experiments with CPU cooling would be very interesting.

Another fertile area is hard drive cooling. The passive heat transfer used in fully rugged models affects a number of components.

 

My point is that if you use Arctic silver paste ALONE (By itself) you will overheat your laptop... This has been discussed ad nauseam in the past... You can add arctic paste to the existing pads but there is too much space to fill to use arctic paste by itself with no thernal pad that are spec'd for the Toughbook you are soon to own. You live in Norway.... Are you moving to the Sahara?

 

Sorry, i dont have any data on that.
The pictures are from a old and now dead forum.

 

I did understand your point.

No, but the temperatures in a car left in the sun can get in the 40 Celsius region in summertime here.

the worst i have seen, was a outside air temperature of +35 Celsius.
god**mn hot to us Norwegians.
This winters worst was -35.6 Celsius.

 

A shim would have many areas of possible failure. Too thick may put undue pressure on the board and damage it. Too thin and there is not contact with both surfaces. Also its likely to be dislodged in an impact event.
The heatsink "rubber" has some give and flex, plus adheres in place.
In addition the pad does not only contact the raised part of the chip, but the surround area as well (see the pic).

 

Excellent Post! Rep to you!

 

I've been warning people on this forum about this forever; every other day someone posts thinking they're gonna make it better than Panny (who designed these laptops to work in flipping Iraq, for crying in the mud) originally did with some goop they read about on the internet.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic/471523-best-way-apply-thermal-compound-2.html#post6080827

I USE the ceramic thermal paste myself; it's better than the silver colloid stuff for non-encapsulated CPUs. But don't try to REPLACE the existing thermal pads with it, they NEED to be there.

mnem
PTTT!

 

Well I agree that Panasonic is the expert when it comes to the Toughbook, but let's not forget that their motivation is not to make the computer as well as possible, but to make a profit.

Once a model is no longer sold, it is no longer in their interest to see it improved. Also some mods as done by hobbyists, would not be cost effective for any manufacturer, or rely on technology not available during the development period, which is finite, for a particular model.

As the pig moonwalks backward off the stage...

 

Az -

Nice usage of PTTT there... :wink:

I agree in principle of course; but my point here is that Panny has made almost 10 generations of Toughbook using this basic design; they have to have a GOOD reason for doing it. Since the design is battle-tested in the harshest environments in the world and you can't upgrade the processor to a more powerful model that needs more cooling capacity, why WOULD you mess with it?

I mean, sure - you could hack the case apart and install a heatpipe/fan cooling soulution that might keep the CPU 20 degrees cooler... but then you lose the benefit of a sealed, fanless passive cooling design that Panasonic has spent millions of dollars and over a decade to develop, and it WORKS. In environments harsher than most of us would EVER want to wake up in, much less do a full day's work.

I really believe in this case, since the case is all about the case, it's best not to mess with the case, just in case.

mnem
*Snickers as the cast of Thriller converges on Azrial's location*

 

Well said... My point exactly!

 

Naw, I was making a statement to the wisdom of modifications in general, and not the merit, or lack thereof of this particular modification.

It is still in testing and the jury is still out. That said, I would also be leery of modifications to the proven Toughbook system, particularly if your intended usage is more than that of a hobbyist.