MT860U Back/Bottom Panel Questions

I ordered a replacement bottom panel from Sager to try a mod to help cool the HDD a bit. When it arrived, it had this black tape-like material covering most of the vents on the inside of the panel. When I went to remove the tape material, it ended up either leaving a sticky residue, a fuzzy residue (non-sticky) or just taking the paint right off of the panel. You can see the two panels below, the original is on the left with some sort of shiny material and the replacement on the right with the remaining two tape-like material sections.



Here is a close up of the top section of the replacement panel.



Does anyone have any experience with these replacement panels?
Is there a proper way to remove the tape material?
Will the residue cause any problems when it starts to heat up?
Will the spot where the paint came off be a problem?
Is that paint "special"?

Thanks!

 

The question that I would be asking is "Is it supposed to be like this?"

Perhaps they found cooling is improved with those vents blocked?

 

the sticky residue should not do anything except cause some dust to stick to it.

you can remove the sticky residue by just getting some sand paper and rubbing it out.

If you wanted to remove stickers or other adhesives.... the best way is to heat up the surface around them with a heat gun or hair dryer.
.... then the sticker/adhesive will peel up perfectly like butter.

What mod are you going to try?

 

Did you try contacting Sager as to why they might have placed that tape in those places?

Also, could you update Gophn's thread with the approximate price of the replacement panel, just for a quick reference for those interested in that mod?

 

Seranis & eqmiami: I assumed that it isn't supposed to be there as the piece I removed was covering the fan intake hole. However, it is probably a good idea to ask, just in case! I will give them a call today.

Gophn: Do you think the sand paper will take off the paint too? IF so, is that really a big deal? (i.e. is it some special purpose paint on there?)

I am going to try a mod similar to the one in Gophn's thread and GrxOne's thread.

The total cost was $38. $25 for the part and $13 for shipping. This was directly from Sager. They were very helpful, by the way, if not a little hard to understand.

 

the tape material is to help with cooling..

cooling a confined space is not as simple as opening up holes my dear friend. go read up on radient and air based heat transfer.

You have prob just increased temps. by removing the silver tape frame at the top section of the panel. (not to mention the part you removed is not even close to the HDD)

 

You shouldnt remove the stickies. All new builds of this model come with this "modification" from Clevo. It helps cooling the HDD as it redirects air flow to go over the HDD.

 

I must remove it, or the airflow to fan is too small and both my CPU GPU will overheat.....

 

Looks like you just got Self-PWNED

Might want to unremove it now Ovreagr

 

LOL! Either you all are not reading the post carefully or I did not write it in a clear enough manner! I will try this again!

Those are two SEPARATE back panels! The one on the left is the one that came with the 8662. I have not touched it at all.

The one on the right is the one from Sager that had that black tape covering almost all of the vents, including the fan intake vent. Which is why I removed that particular piece. That led to the discovery of the residue remaining behind and my questions/concerns.

Sager's tech support says to take the tape off, all of it. I tried to talk to them about the residue and removing the paint, but they didn't have any solutions/suggestions for that. Of course, there is a bit of a communication barrier when calling their tech support line. Not horrible, but just enough to cause some confusion, at least on my end.

EDIT: I will try Gophn's suggestion of sand paper and heating the remaining tape before attempting to remove it!

 

Keep us posted on your progress Ovreagr.

I enjoyed your "Benchmark NP8662 w/ GTX 260M (for the love of god!)" thread

 

Thanks for the post Ovreagr! I will order my own tomorrow. I had been wondering where to go to get one, but had not actually taken the time to atually go hunt one down.

 

No worries!
If you have trouble ordering from Sager, I know you can order them from Xoticpc too. They are a little more expensive though.

Glad you liked the thread Seranis! Hopefully it was helpful!

 

Well I tried the hairdryer method for getting the black tape off and it did make it much easier to remove, but it still left some residue on the panel. I am going to pick up some fine sandpaper today or tomorrow and try sanding it off.

Anyone have a suggestion as to what I should use to cut the panel? I was just going to use my Dremel or maybe start by just drilling some small vent-like holes with a drill and see how that works. Should be interesting!!

 

Well finally got enough free time to get most of the sticky crap off and to cut out a hole over the HDD area. Now I just need to get some wire mesh/screen material and cover the hole. Don't want a lot of dust flying in there!

EDIT: Can anyone suggest a glue or adhesive that I could use to stick the screen material to the inside of the cover? I would assume it would have to be something that can resist very high temperatures without losing its adhesive qualities and/or dripping on to any components!!

 

hot glue works from what a few people have told me when they did the same mod. works fine with the mesh that will cover the hole.

 

Regarding the sticky stuff use denatured alcohol on cloth and it should remove with a few applications.

 

Gophn - by "hot glue" do you mean from a glue gun?

alexka - would rubbing alcohol work too or is denatured alcohol significantly better? Also, any risks to taking off the paint from the plastic with denatured?

Thanks guys!

 

yup...

glue guns are under $5 normally at a hobby store or even at a dollar store.

I think they are also cheap at stores like Walmart.

 

rubbing alcohol works as a substitute for denatured alcohol and both should not remove paint. Lightly rub it in.

Hot glue does refer to the glue gun glue to answer your second question as well.

 

I'm also hardware modding my M860tu atm, about to cut the hole at the HD position to further drop the heat.

Right now I've seen 3 different back panels regarding the covering of the holes.
I've just opened the hole right under the GPU as it was covered to see if that will make a difference.

I'll post my results later on

 

Ok I cut a nice hole on the bottom today where my HD is located and also removed the 'plastic' covering the GPU fan at the bottom, but kept the rest covered as it is by factory default (well at least as it is on my system).

After doing a FurMark test for 20 minutes pre-modded and then after the mod is saw my max GPU temp dropping from 66 max to 63 degrees celcius. Not bad for a 9800 GTS! Keep in mind I have done ALOT to make my system run cooler as I can't stand the airplane fan mode.

I only play WoW atm so it doesn't require the max from the 9800 GTS.
I've undervolted the 9800GTS to 0.9v when in 3D mode (1.1v is default) and I've also dropped the Core by 25Mhz and put Artic Silver no5 on the GPU/CPU. I still get a solid 9300 3DMark06 points, which is still great for WoW.

The CPU temp dropped by 4 degrees celcius (50 to 46) and my HD temps stayed around the same after I ran Orthos . Now Orthos is a CPU stress test, so that could explain why the HD temp stayed the same (40 degrees celcius).

 

Skillz, would you mind or be able to post up some pics of these mods you are doing (drilled hole, GPU fan, etc.)? It would be great to see what you have done to yours so far!

Also do you have any before and after numbers/temps for HDD benchmarks (HDTune, etc.)?

EDIT: Skillz, you say the vent under your GPU was closed up from the seller? That seems almost dangerous, doesn't it?

 

I finally got around to getting a hot glue gun and some aluminum screen material. Here is the quick and dirty mod. I plan on cleaning it up a bit if this turns out to be a helpful mod. I will post some preliminary results as soon as I get a comparison!
Back panel outside view

Back panel inside view

Close up of inside screen

 

thats a good job with the mesh.

 

The mesh wouldn't trouble the internal parts of the laptop? Will there be any problems with the mesh touching say, the motherboard or wireless card etc. and cause a short circuit?

 

if the mesh is flat against the panel, there should be not issues what so ever.

I wanna see the HDD temps with that mod and a notebook cooler like Zalman.

 

Thanks Gophn!

Deathwinger: The mesh is flat against the panel and does not stick out much. If I remember, I will take a picture from the side to show how little it sticks out.

Unfortunately I just sent back my Zalman 2000 for an exchange with Newegg. It had a very annoying tick/rattle sound at all fan speeds. I will be happy to run some temperature comparisons once I get the replacement though.
If it helps, however, I did play UT3 for about 2 hours the other night and the HDD temp never got above 48C. Not sure if UT3 is HDD intensive though!

 

Soz for my incredible late answer, but I promise to post a pic of my mod soon as I bought a new digicam yesterday.

 

That's pretty good. I'll try that mod sometime. Right now I just have small holes drilled. But nothing like yours.

 

I finallly managed to take the pics of my laptop and here they are:

Notice the black plastic layer covering the vent holes. This is how I got the laptop and even the GPU hole was covered.


Now the other side. I think the mesh looks really nice. If you're wondering about the odd looking 'feet', I've changed those aswell because in my opinion the laptop was standing too high on its feet. I know this is because of the airflow, but I have no problems with heat, as my laptop is undervolted, gpu core has been lowered(!) by 25 mhz and I reaplied thermal paste on the CPU + GPU.


Close up of my new (gpu) mesh. Notice how the Fan-cover that you see inside the mesh is covering alot of the fan? I'm wondering if cutting that fan-cover to a larger circle would improve the cooling?


Here's a close-up of the fan-cover. I've removed the cover and noticed that 5mm of the fan blades are covered.


And finally a view from the side so you can see how low the laptop is standing on it's feet now.


I ran furmark for over 30 minutes yesterday and the max temp reached was 67 degrees Celsius.
I also get 9300 3DMark06 points, which is plenty to run WoW.

All in all I'm happy with the looks of my mod, but I did get lower temperatures (max 64 degrees celcius) when the original GPU fan mesh was still there. So I think I'm going to remove the new GPU fan mesh and do a new furmark test and see what temperatures I get.

 

Wow! What did you use to cut the holes? What is the mesh made off?

 

most of the people that made these panel mods used a dremel to make the holes... its the easiest and cleanest way to do it.

 

Thanks!

What can I use as a mesh?

 

Thanks!

What can I use as a mesh?

Sorry for the double post- browser delay- pls delete.

 

I actually used one of those hole cutting drills. Kind of hard to explain but it's like a normal drill with a wider cutting cylinder around it. I taped the places where I was drilling.

The mesh was something that just happened to be around.

 

It's called a hole saw

 

Yup, that's exactly what I used

 

Skillz- Did you order a spare panel or are you saying your laptop came with nearly every vent covered? If so, who the heck did you order your laptop from?!
Also, have you tested your HDD temps with this mod yet?

A hole saw! DOH! Yeah, that would have been better than a spade bit like I used. Looks like a cleaner cut around the edges. Nice.

k9hydr4 - I am not sure what Skillz used, but I used aluminum screen mesh.

 

Just make sure you use a punch tool to start the center point--prevents the hole saw from skittering off as you try to start the hole

 

Hey guys, just to recap why this black shield/film is applied over the vents in the first place.

Initial Clevo version of UT860M had the vents exposed just like the OP has on the first picture. Later, when users reported high HDD temps, they had to come up with this quick fix which makes sense actually:

Instead of sucking the air right underneath itself, the fan now pulls most of the airflow from the biggest opening reamaining under the HDD. Also, as the area of the opening decreased, the speed of air going through increased which helps cooling the HDD without sacrificing other temps. Plus the air is being taken from the front of the laptop instead of under/back near rear exhaust.

So to all of you who are not going to use an external notebook cooler, I strongly recommend to keep the black film sticker. I have myself removed it and tested in various configs and had to put it back as it turned out to be the most efficient way to cool it. you can play with undervolting, thermopaste and such instead = bigger impact.

But if you are overclocking stuff or just like your laptop superchill and use something like Zalman cooler, then yes, you would benefit from removing this sticker whatsoever and exposing all your vents to the airflow from cooler fans. But then you are a bit dependant on the cooler.

One last cheap trick is to just raise the back of the laptop by an inch. You'd get your 5C drop for free [; I use just 2 small pencil eraser pieces under rear feet. Works like a charm and doesn't slip.

 

I am not sure that is entirely accurate Static.

When I asked Sager about the black film/sticker, they said to remove it all, as I mentioned back in post #10. So I doubt it is actually supposed to be on there other than for production and shipping. The picture on the left is how the original panel came with the computer from Xotic.

Hence my questions to Skillz about why he had the black film still on his panel. Now I suppose you could just do what he did and cut out the parts you want, but leaving it all on seems like a bad idea!

The 8662 runs fairly cool for the most part. This mod was done to specifically address the high temperatures in the HDD, which some folks (myself included) have been concerned with.

 

In the most extreme setup, if the M860TU is operating without the back panel at all, temperatures across all components would drop modestly, and even moreso with an active notebook cooler.

The same principle applies here: the more openings there are in the backplate over a specific component, the cooler that component will run. The difference may not be as clear as night and day depending on how far you want to go with hacking apart the backplate, but it is noticeable. You can either drill small holes, or blast out a huge gaping hole and cover it up with mesh, which is pretty much the same thing.

I agree with Ovreagr. Rip all the black film off of the backplate.

 

It's the original panel.

As you can see in the pictures, yes, allmost everything was covered. I ordered my laptop from XXodd.nl, a Dutch distributer.

If I recall my HD doesn't get over 47 degrees celcius atm. It's not the original HD that came with the laptop tho, had to place a nice 7200rpm HD with very fast read access times.

As for the mesh, I think it's aluminum, I got some pieces from work.

 

Skillz, what brand HDD did you put in?

 

The more airflow across components that generate heat (northbrige, wireless card, hard drive, etc) the cooler temps will be. The tape particularly below the fan seemed to me to positively affect airflow.

It sounds like Static tested it with and without the tape and it was better with the tape.

(However it does sound a bit like a after-production kludge and that using a cooler or cutting vents in the bottom of the case may help more then the tape)

Ovreagr, you've been great with testing and posting results. Why don't you try to duplicate the tape (with or without your mods) and see if there are any differences in temps? (I think there is a strong possibility you asked someone at Sager that didn't understand you or doesn't know what they are talking about)

cr

 

Seagate Momentus 7200.3

I've got the 160GB version

 

Hi again,
Sov Sun, have you tested it without/with black film on? It could be configuration specific.

In my case WITH black film on I had 2-3C lower GPU/CPU temps and a 5 degrees drop on my HDD temp. So now HDD never goes above 55C under heavy use (no cooler), idles at 47C.

You say the more openings the better. Yes, if there's circulation (via cooler underneath). However if the fan is exposed (as in no film cover) that makes it suck air directly beneath it (not far from hot exhost btw) as such air does not flow over the components as in the covered with black film state.

There are some disadvantages of the black film. For instance in "silent mode" when fan is cut off, system gets a bit hotter throughout as opposed to silent mode without black film, since now the airflow is missing and opened air vents would actually help passive cooling.

But one thing is certain, black film is put there for a reason by Clevo to deal with hdd heat and it is not there for shipping purposes. That was confimed by many retailers.

Cheers

 

Wow. Nobody has called me Sov Sun in a long time, haha.

Anyway, I do not have an M860TU. My barebones M570TU did not have black film on any of the vents when I first got it.

Yes, it is true that you are getting better hard drive temperatures with the black film covering many of the holes. The fan would need to intake air from the only available opening at the lowest end of the backplate. This is an effective way of cooling overall.

At the time of my post, I made a mistake and overlooked the hard drive setup on the M860TU. I had the image of my M570TU's hard drive in mind. The M570TU's hard drive is mounted to the notebook's frame by a large aluminium plate that also serves as a heatsink. The M860TU does not have this leaving only the thermally inadequate silicon board exposed to air flow.

With this said, I will propose a new idea. There are many online metal works that sell sheets of copper or aluminium, depending on your flavor. We would cut the metal sheet and mount it over the bottom of the hard drive and witness a benefit in temperature.

 

Small update: I've changed the mesh that I used on my original tweak to a more open version and I managed to shave off a few degrees in the process.
However, the main reason for swapping the mesh was because the first mesh was producing an irritating sound.

Expect some new pics