M860TU HDD Cooling

Hi,

I had a few corrupted registry entries and decided to go ahead and reformat. I now have a fresh Win7 x64 install with all the most recent drivers. However my HDD (Seagate Momentus 320gb 7200rpm) temps seem to be higher than before.

I think I've done all the software fixes (Intel Matrix drivers, SATA drivers, disable indexing and write caching) but the temps still seem too high, ~50 idle ~55 under load, on a glass covered table, no cooler. My CPU and GPU idle at 40 and 45 respectively (CPU overclocked to 3.2Ghz).

50-55 is not that bad but the other night I was playing WoW for a few hours with my CPU overclocked for the first time and I noticed that the lack of fresh air behind the laptop was limiting the CPU and GPU cooling. What happened is that the hot air coming out of the rear vent warmed up the glass cover of my table to over 60C, so I decided to raise the rear of my laptop by a few inches and it solved the problem. However, in this position, the HDD gets even hotter... 55C idle and 60C under load. It is quite counter-intuitive... one would think that more air underneath the backplate would favor HDD cooling. Perhaps the CPU and GPU cooling are so good in this position that the fans do not work as much, hence more hot air accumulates in the HDD area?

I used this rig for a year and a half now and I was always slightly annoyed by the poor HDD cooling but now this issue really pushes my buttons, I think I want to go ahead and implement a hardware mod. Has anyone tried to drill holes in the backplate on the M860TU? How does it work and how efficient is it? Also I noticed that there is an aluminum sheet underneath the HDD, but this does not seem to transfer the heat anywhere, as there arent any heat pipes. It just seems to transfer heat deeper in the chassis... this seems counter-intuitive... wouldnt you want to transfer heat towards the backplate to dissipate heat?

Anyways I know this has been discussed before, and there is a great cooling thread going on about the M570TU right now, so hopefully someone will be able to point me in the right direction.

Thanks,
Mat

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/5284539-post5.html

 

thanks Soviet, great link I'm sure I'll be back with more questions

EDIT: well... I went through the entire thread, and I'm left even more puzzled than I was before!

It isnt even clear whether it is best to block or open more holes in the backplate, hahaha! I think the confusion has to do with the testing conditions... More backplate openings would be better for passive cooling and would yield better idle temps, while covering the central vents and forcing the fan to take its air from the external ones would result in better active cooling and better HDD temps at max load. Would that make sense?

As a side note I tested raising both the front and back of the laptop (no angle) and I'm getting similar idle temps as when I only raised the back (with an angle). This is confusing Seems like I'm getting the best idle temps with the laptop flat on the table.

 

It isnt?

OK heres clear: drill some holes in that backplate, quick!

I think the fan intakes pretty much all of its air through its intake vent and some from the keyboard. there is hardly any room for it to intake air from anywhere else. Additionally its widely agreed there just arent enough vents were the hard drive is, its not like your fan spins up in adjustment to hard drive tempuratures.

I'm considering adding thermal tape and copper to my hard drive. I hardly ever run my laptop with the backplate on, it seems to get hot anyway.

 

Yes, niffcreature said it correctly. roymathieu, what I wanted you to get out of that year old thread is that you should give your HDD some medium for heat to saturate into. The M860TU's bigger brother, the M570TU is built very similarly, but it has a full aluminium bracket whereas the M860TU only has that sliver of aluminium that holds the HDD down. The heat is sunk into the aluminium plate in the M570TU, and that is what will give you results. Perforating your backpanel in the area above your HDD will also help. A bare circuit board has abysmal dissipation.

From your test, I can now see that it is the clearance between the bottom of the fan intake and the desk that the notebook is sitting on that is affecting your HDD's temps. I don't know how I could have missed this back then. If you can recall from my other posts in various other threads, mainly in regards to the Asus G51 and the W860CU's "CPU sticker," the closer the fan is to a solid object, the more airflow will be impeded as there is not a straight path for air intake. This is similar to using a vacuum hose and putting near a flat surface; if you put it close enough to the surface, it will struggle to suck in air. With your notebook sitting flat without anything propping it up, the fan intake is closest to the desk surface and more air will be sucked in through the other intakes scattered across the backpanel. Of course, this is a less efficient way for a fan to operate as each fan revolution would pull in less CFM, but more air will be drawn from the interior of the notebook rather than directly from the main fan intake. When you prop your notebook up to increase the clearance between your notebook and the desk, the fan will not be restricted by turbulance and more air will be sucked in through the main fan intake.

Just do the above and your HDD temps will go back down into the 40's. I'd recommend a sheet of 0.5mm thermal padding on the bottom of your HDD with an aluminium or copper plate ontop of it. You can hold it down with thermal tape or electrical tape, or whatever you find to be useful.

 

Yep, I think you nailed it. I put my laptop back in its original position, flat on the desk and the HDD temp went down from 58 to 51 and the GPU / CPU went up from 45 / 40 to 52 / 46, plus I believe I can hear the fan working harder. These all support your explanation.

I'm convinced now that providing a heat sink + drilling holes for the HDD is the only way to go... makes you wonder what these engineers at computer companies are getting paid for! It seems that the user community keep solving all of their problems, for free! +1

I'll start with the holes to begin with, see what kind of improvements I'm getting, and then I'll work towards making a heat sink. I'll report back later.

 

Other laptop designs i've seen have had better results by seperating the hdd entirely from the hot components. D901c hdd under the battery stayed very cool, msi gt725 had its own compartment as well just for the hdd.

Is there any room between the gpu and hdd to insert copper sheets to act kind of like a heat shield? Its not really that sager/clevo didn't provide enough vents, they really just put the hdd on the wrong side, it shouldn't be sitting right next to the hottest component in the laptop case. I think quite a few people ended up upgrading to a ssd hdd to stay within the warranty, but odds are by now your out of warranty and can cut up the back panel.

This thread shows a pretty clean setup.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/292702-m860tu-np8660-easy-ways-keep-hdd-cooler.html

 

what about sticking these on the HDD?

Copper RAM Heatsink Heat Spreader SD/DDR SDRAM RHS-03 on eBay.ca (item 280510485043 end time 17-Nov-10 21:30:38 EST)

I havent tried it so I was just wondering, also they are "cheap" so my thoughts are that the contact might not be effective?

 

Those are the ones that I used on my M570TU and recommended to the Asus group last year. I no longer recommend them because they require severe lapping as the bottom of each RAMsink is concaved like a taco shell so that only two edges of the surface would mate properly to whatever it is mounted on. They are cheap because they are not pure copper, and in order to get the most benefit out of them, they need additional elbow grease. Most of it I explained in the few few pages in the linked thread. http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/414147-grab-copper-drill-now.html

I still have a whole box of them sitting around. They are too thick for the M860TU's HDD unless 2mm is sanded off from the base. That will take quite some time if roymathieu does not have a hobby belt sander with the proper grit belts, and there is a large amount of area on the HDD amounting the use of several blocks. If he has the time to pull it off, then it would be marginally better than just a simple pure copper plate since the fins on those blocks are poorly designed and don't expose that much more surface area. But then again, the goal is just to get the HDD temps out of the danger zone, in which the copper plate can easily do. Using the blocks with thermal tape also means that any future disassembly of the blocks from the HDD would be very messy and the risk of damaging the HDD's PCB is likely.

 

is it even safe to put anything metalic on the hdd seeing as its upside down compared to other laptops?

 

Thats what the sheet of thermal padding is for.

 

I've never made any cooling mods before but I'll give it a try.... How much clearance do I have, or what is the maximum thickness of the thermal padding + copper plate? I'm guessing the thicker the plate the better cooling effect I'll get?

Also could you point me to a good place to buy thermal padding material? All I can find on ebay is that thin sekisui tape, nothing that looks like .5mm thick pads.

Finally is it better to drill the backplate holes from the inside out or from the outside in? There seems to be a protective layer inside the backplate, I would assume that drilling from the inside out would minimize the chances of ripping off that sheet?

EDIT: How important is it to drill 1/32" holes? I just went to a local hardware store and they dont have anything smaller than 1/16".

 

Thermal Compound, Thermal Adhesives, Thermal Pads & other cleaning products for your CPU, GPU and Northbridge processors

 

Thanks for the link mmoerbe!

Is Copper 106 a good enough alloy for heat sink purposes? I found this 100x100x1.2mm sheet on ebay: COPPER SHEET 100mm x 100mm x 1.2mm C106 JEWELRY on eBay.ca (item 160462438053 end time 27-Nov-10 02:08:47 EST)
Are these sheets easily workable with normal scissors or do i need special tools to cut them?

Is 1.2mm thick enough? I think I have about 2mm clearance at the bottom of the HDD, probably more at the top of it (the backcover is angled).

 

I was too lazy to complete my mod... I drilled the holes as shown here:



But then I got lazy and never ordered the copper and thermal pads. The holes by themselves did not seem to lower the temperatures, but I got a Coolermaster Notepal U2 and placed the fans directly under the HDD and got amazing results. Perhaps the holes make a difference with the cooler but I cant test it for sure.

Here is a summary of my idle/gaming temps in different configurations
No cooler, intake fan blocked: HDD 50/55, GPU 52/82, CPU 48/80
No cooler, free intake fan: HDD 55/62, GPU 50/75, CPU 45/70
Cooler, free intake fan: HDD 40/48, GPU 48/74, CPU 42/70

This is with my Q9200 overclocked to 3.2GHz and my laptop hooked up to an external HDMI 2048x1152 monitor which is pretty demanding on the GPU. I'm really satisfied with my current temps for now... I may or may not finish the mod later.