*IDEA* Improve performance/cooling/sound for the W230ST

Hello, guys. Thanks for coming here for my first post. Remember, this is my first post, and I might not write or explain at my very best, so any question an suggestion, just post here.

So here is what I noticed: The W230ST from many reviews had many complaints of being too loud, because all the heat sink is crammed and stressed to one fan, and at the same time, the removal of heat might not be so efficient, as more heat is produced more than the heat lost by the fan and heatsink. So here is the idea: Why not have two fans instead of one?

I know that the laptop is already good with one fan, but why not add another, and make one fan dedicated for the CPU, and the other one for the GPU? It would make the amount of heat stress lesser, instead of just one for both parts. And because the GPU has it’s own Heat sink, you could make it even more powerful, because the heat would be transfered more efficiently. Who knows you could even put a GTX 870 in it? This could make an even greater breakthrough in the gaming industry, with the power of a big gaming laptop, in the size of a compact one. But thinking about it, it could make sounds just as loud as the normal W230ST because of how much heat it makes on it’s own, but it doesn’t matter much, right?

But if you’d like, you could stick to the good old GTX 860, and simply overclock it, or keep it the same way, and because of the lesser work, it would be very quiet compared to one fan, as there is greater heat transfer.
But with this, there are disadvantages too. The second fan might take too much space, and that might need the removal of some ports, and internal parts, like the second mSATA (But I don’t really care that much about that). But to slightly fix this, I have another idea!

According to what I read, the CPU does not creat as much hear as a GPU (I heard there is around 30°C/86°F temprature difference between the two), and with that, the one of the fans could be smaller. Or probably even both, due to the seperation of the heatpipe/fan. So you could move some ports to the other side, or keep it in its place. So the bigger fan should be for the GPU (Left side), and the smaller one (Right side) for the CPU. Also, the heat pipe could be less complex, and that could promote to a little more space, probably for upgrades too. Or you could make it thinner, as the fans are not as thick.

So that is what I think. If you can think of an improvement, please tell me about it below. Hopefully Clevo could consider this!

Also, if you are saying that I should just get a 15” laptop instead, I don’t want to. I would like to stick to small size and portability. I know there are laptops just as light and powerful, like the 17” MSI GS60 Stealth Pro, but something like that is a little too big and heavy (Due to the screen size), and something small and practical would be enough for me.

Now here is a rough, more complete picture of my idea in paint. Note some ideas were added while I did it:



Want a simpler version? Tell me. I will rewrite this.

 

Weight, power, cost. It's all a trade off.

 

Well, the weight may increase abit, but not much. Probably by a few grams. Around 50g, because of just a fan. The heat sink is split to two, so there would be little change.

In price, it would be different a little bit (about $50-100) because of the fact that you only have to get the other end of the Heatsink and a new fan, and some more plastic for the width extention. And besides, this is basically the premium version. You could buy the old one if you have to.

Also, as mentioned, the increaced width of the laptop could be extra space for the battery.

 

If you want improved cooling you would need extra fin width otherwise you have two fans at roughly the same speed now and it's noisier so you can double the weight of the heatsink.

A premium version with a different design increases stock complexity and design validation costs.

You may not be able to put the msata slot over there due to routing issues.

 

Personally I'd love to see an aftermarket upgrade which would replace the 2.5" bay with a dedicated graphics cooler. The only problem I see is it would exhaust hot air towards the user or out to the right side. I doubt it would be any quieter than it is now except when the dGPU is sleeping. You'd lose the SD card reader too. The best option would be for intel to get off their duff and stop with the aGPU stuff and make a more heat/power efficient processor.

 

Well, you seem to know a lot about the internals. I know only a little about them so, What do you think? I am open for suggestions.

But what i think is to put the fans a little deeper for more space for the heatsink. Remember, the scale of the laptop in the pic is not exact. Or you could increase the length by a few cm.

And as I said, the mSATA could be removed all together. And that could reduce the weight as well. But in terms of gaming, the mSATA won't really affect it but the loading times, and for the price, it would be too expensive for gaming anyways. If you want faster loading times, just upgrade the CPU and buy a big hard drive. It would be cheaper, and benefit the whole system.

And about the design, it doesn't have to be so different from the original. Probably the looks are the same, but the dimensions are different. And about the stock, this is still a concept. We could think about that later.

 

Well, when the 5 gen comes in the near future, hopefully their processors will be more efficient and powerful as well. And when that time comes, who knows this concept might come too?

 

If you want to tune it for performance remove the 2.5" bay and run with 2xm.2 slots and then shift all components along to the right allowing for a bigger fan and more fin area. Add a third shared heatpipe.

 

I think you just turned the sager into the razer lol.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

 

Intel hasn't made (or attempted to make) any real progress since Sandy Bridge, and Haswell is a step back in terms of thermals/efficiency. I don't have high hopes for Broadwell.

 

Well, only patience is by our side.
Also, Nvidia has succeeded making the Tegra K1, a mobile processor that is nearly as fast as laptops, yet has power and thermal efficiency.
They only have to increase the scale, and who knows?

 

Well, why not move the bay and shift it horizontally, then move some components between the fan and hard drive? Space and price is something we also need to think of. Not everyone can afford an SSD that costs 3 times as much as a HDD that has only 1/10 of the memory inside.

And about the dual fan, I could consider some of your ideas of moving the components to one side, but the heatsink fin can be longer and have two fans in it. Because putting one fan will be to inefficient and too big.

And probably two/three of the heatpipes should be inserted from both sides, so each fan will have equal use.

 

I see a few issues with this. Our friends over at Apple think shared heatpipes are a great idea and they are not. Heat pipes are not designed to be shared and only move heat in ONE direction. So someone who suggested that, it wont be helping much. I like the original design better. As far as the fan goes, both will have to be connected to the same plug so the EC can control them still. Moving an mSATA slot just won't work; That is way too much time and effort. I really think you are better off finding a fan that is more pressure optimized so you can get some increased airflow over that heatsink. Also think about putting some liquid metal thermal paste on it as well, this helped a great deal with my W110ER.

 

Yes. I know heatpipes move in one direction. And because of that, you could, i don't know, rotate it?
And as I said, one of the mSATA slot has to be removed if space is taken up or if it is too much of a hassle

And about the EC, just have a long piece of cable clipped around the inner chassis to combine with the first fan's plug (In the first idea of fans on both sides) or you can just have two fans in the left side with combined cables, and two separate/longer heatsinks.

 

A single fan out performs two of the same size. Less dead zones and more fin area.

Two fans being automatically better is a myth.

 

How about... If there are two heatsinks next to each other/connected and two fans in there as well? BUT the different heatsinks goes from a different direction. For example, the GPU's heatsink goes in the top with the slightly larger fan, and the CPU through the bottom.

 

You would gain more performance using the space from the second fan for more fin area and a larger fan is what I am saying.

 

Okay, the performance is greater. But do you know how to keep the noise down?

 

A larger fan does not need to spin as fast and the frequency of noise lowers. The problem with the MSI models for instance they likely could use a larger fan, it was originally designed for 85-100W work rather than 157W.

 

Okay. Lets just think of one big fan.
One big fan to get rid of the heat, and a thick heatsink, all in a 13" platform.
How will the components fit? Still with the 2.5" bay?
C'mon. I know you can think of solutions, not only problems.

 

You can get rid of the 2.5" bay because this version is about as good as you will get with a 13" machine and the bay.

Whatever we theory craft here wont make a difference to the engineers working out the PCB routing and component layout

Each notebook is carefully designed and has a very set balance in design. They could have made a larger heatsink and fan but chose not to to keep the 2.5" bay and the costs/weight down.

 

Smart move on their part. Remember their target audience tend to be best bang for your buck people. Many sager buyers want to reuse older 2.5" drives. I went with the 2.5" to keep heat to a minimum.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

The pricing is very much that way too, you can built it out for not very much at all and get most of the benefit of the chassis.

 

Not...entirely accurate.

Not only are you dealing with air flow, but you're dealing with air pressure.

Putting fans in parallel (which dual fans essentially are), doesn't really increase the air flow much over a single fan.

That, I will give you.

What it does, however, increase is the overall air pressure in the entire chassis. This does, infact, impact cooling. Not significantly, but there are definitive numbers. It helps cooling since the increased air pressure reduces the overall air-drag and friction over surface area.

There's entire physics papers about air flow and parallel vs serial vs single fan designs.

If, however, you're talking about stacking fans (putting them in serial) then yes, I'll agree that there is little benefit and depending on your chassis design or where the air is directed, it can actually make cooling worse, since you're putting in a bit more air flow, but keeping pressure the same.

A lot of this theory goes into the production of turbine engines for jets.

 

But about how much is the percentage of the improvement? (roughly)

 

It's highly dependent on the chassis design, the airflow in the case, the materials inside and outside the case, how the layout and design of the heatsinks are, lots of considerations.

It's been said though that the additional pressure can lower 3-7 degrees C though, depending on the above.

So enough to be noticeable, but not a big blaring difference.

It'd probably make bigger differences on chassis designs where airflow isn't as proven where the higher air pressure allows smoother airflow throughout.

 

But to improve the cooling in the best of both worlds (Space and cooling), how whould you suggest it?

 

Improving the chassis airflow will cool down the chipset and the ram better but wont have a huge impact on the CPU/GPU which are cooled at the edge of the machine by the flow created by the fans.

There is a reason desktops use larger 120mm fans and not lots of small ones.

 

Well, anyways, I found a new solution! I heard that Alienware actually use Liquid Cooling in their LAPTOPS (made by Astek)
Using a small form factor, it has a miniature pump that cycles liquid through the CPU and GPU. As shown in the picture:



Now note that the configuration above is made for dual GTX 880 graphics, and 4.0GHz i7. And because the laptop we are talking about will hold one GTX 870, and a 2.4 GHz i7 you could shrink the pump, as it doesn't have to transfer the heat as quick. But note, this will make just one part bulge a bit more than the other parts (Probably under the mousepad)
Now re-apply the fan-on-both-sides thing. And with liquid cooling, that would make it thermal efficient. Also with the high Air pressure. This will increase overall internals.

But about the Radiator, because the Laptop will get thicker with the pump, you might as well increase the size of the heatsink fins. Also, about the fan size, I didn't say anything about reducing it to half the size. Probably 1/5 smaller for the left one (for component space, and around 1/3-1/4 smaller at the new right one.

So first, the liquid goes to the GPU, then to the largest fan, then piping towards CPU, to the smaller fan, then back to the pump. Note, this may increase the weight for up to 30%+ more and also probably 60% more thicker, but it is still lighter than bringing a 5 kg 18" laptop. Also don't forget to make it wider a bit for space.

But remember. This is all theory, so it just could work. But about the spacing and all for the other components, that is a different problem.

Take a look at this video:

 

Yes and you don't create a solution that adds over a KG to the weight of a notebook and has no impact on full load temperatures.

Which is what that is.

For the 10th time (I am sure there will be many more).

If you put all the weight and space into larger heatsinks and fans the results would far more to the cooling performance.

However you are talking about an 8KG machine at that point.

 

Here, we are not only talking about the fan, okay? We should also consider space and cooling.

Also, there would be quicker thermal transfer.

And even though you are sarcastic, the Alienware still manages to be 5 kg. With the battery. With the processor. With the video card. And with two Terabytes of 2.5" of pure HDD. And without the extra video card, larger battery, and inefficient battery, you could achieve more with less.

 

That watercooling setup allows heatsink space to be shared, at peak throughput on all devices temperatures were the same.

Without a large radiator watercooling has no improvement over standard cooling.

All you are doing is adding in the pump, the power it draws and noise it produces along with the weight of the water and the risk of leaks for no gain.

The machine already weighs 5.5kg, adding more does start to get a little much.

The final determinant of notebook cooling is how big is the fin area and how much air are you moving through them. Heatpipes are not the bottleneck.

 

Well, with the thickness, who knows? You could extend the heatsink
And with the thickness? You could add more cells.
And with the thickness? You could make the fans thicker, pushing more air through each "space" between each fin.
And about the weight? It would be 2.5kg. And with 500 more grams, that would have better performance.

 

Yes you could, you could do all that to the standard air cooling setup without adding in all the waste and now you have a P570WM from clevo The fastest notebook in the world, and a nice machine it is too (I own one).

 

I would actually want that, but the problem is that it is too heavy to bring anyways. My books are heavy enough, and this?! We need a solution for this. Something small, portable and more futureproof. This is my concept of this product.

 

Which is where it fits in just now, the 15inch offers the next step in performance and cooling and I think that's about right weight wise.

 

The issue is most laptops are built with the usage in mind never being maxed out and used alot, laptop builders like ISP hope that most people do nothing but check email and browse the web, not actually use the tools they were given, and you see this in many laptops and the lack of cooling.

i get they have alot to cram into a system, but your post and diagram is a good example where they could spend a bit more and provider better cooling options.

 

And just the increased weight to 3.2 kg.
Also, it is not so compact.

 

Exactly. And this could change the way laptops work. Increasing functionality, and purpose, without sacrifice.
And anyways, the new Broadwell is coming, and this could increase the potential of our laptops, with lesser power. Meaning lesser heat, and lesser heatpipes. This is for you, Meaker! Lesser power with the GTX 870 and lesser power from the 5th Gen Core will increase the possibilities, with lesser!

 

Yes that's the point, to step up in cooling you need to step up in size unless you make sacrifices on the current machine.

 

I am sure the companies have had their share of Engineers go over every way they could cool laptops, like any company corners are cut and "quality" is not always #1 priority over all to keep costs down, in the end it is all about the bottom line. Luckily for us, at least some companies try.

 

Not everyone is looking for bottom line though, which is why competition is good, if one company goes too far, another takes the lead with a superior product.

 

Well, its better than bringing 3.2 kg right?

 

And that is called innovation. If no one starts it, it won't happen. Like Apple. They made one of the greatest smartphones, and now samsung is copying those, and improving them, giving more features.

 

Sorry it took quite awhile for another idea, but I GOT IT.

Remember liquid cooling? You said it was unreliable. Well, that's true, thanks to the pump and pipes. At the other hand, air coolers are more reliable, yet, air coolers can't go to temps that low.
And liquid cooling also takes too much space because of it's pump.

Well, here is the solution:
Have you heard about the Captherm Product? It is technically like a liquid cooling, heatsink AND vapor chamber all in one.



Like Liquid cooling, it is a liquid based system, capable of bringing heat out efficiently, by bringing the liquid to a radiator. Like heatsinks, it is very simple and the liquid rushes up to the coolest part of the PC and simply flows back. And like a vapor chamber (And heatsink), the liquid goes up and down, without the need of a pump.

The multiphase-cooler is very compact, efficient, and reliable. And doesn't really need a pump, because of evaporation and condensation. And with hermetic joints, it could easily pass the liquid without any spills.

And it's efficiency can be achieved by it's special liquid, that has a very low boiling point, and takes away heat quickly. And thanks to that, you don't need to have that much fluid in it. It also looses heat quickly, allowing a smaller fan/heat fin area to put.

So there you have it. To see more info, go to this article:
Captherm Introduces The MP1120 Multiphase Cooling Solution at CES 2014 | Bright Side of News*

P.S. This is still in progress. They definitely wouldn't weild the metals using C4 Explosive for the products!

 

Look at the size of the radiator like I said.

 

Sorry, I can't really recall.

And like I said about the efficiency, it is very efficient.

 

Yes, but still heavier and more space consuming than a standard heatsink.

 

Hello. You still there? Cuz I got another response.
Looks like someone "copied" my idea:
Gigabyte, stuffing TWO fans, and A GTX 870!

Well, looks like the theory works. Look here.
AORUS Gaming Laptop X3

 

Well they followed my suggestion of removing the 2.5" bay (and used a slightly wider base)

Exactly what you do with that space comes down to PCB routing etc.