P180HM (or other) cooling mod

Hi there!

I am really keen on slapping some RAM heat sinks onto the GPU when my P180HM arrives, in the manner depicted in this post. That particular mod sliced a whopping 15 degrees off the max temps on that GX740.
Would I be naive to expect a similar result?
What opinions do you folk have on this idea?
Is anyone else keen to give this a shot?

Cool

 

I wouldn't do it. Not only is this a completely different case design, it's also a completely different GPU. I would honestly just buy something like the CoolerMaster U3. Save you the trouble of voiding your warranty by potentially damaging a fairly expensive GPU.

 

If you use thermal adhesive, the heatsinks will never come unstuck and thus there is no plausible way to damage anything, not so?

The face of the GPU seems quite similar and this seems encouraging.

Also, would doing this void your warranty? If anything you are prolonging the life of your system, so I can't see why it should. You could probably remove the heatsinks with some alcohol should the need arise too...

 

I think these are better and you can pack more onto the heatsink.
Copper Heat Sink For DDR DDR2 DDR3 RAM Memory Cooler | eBay

I wonder if it's not safe to stick these on the GPU memory chips :/

 

I considered those, but the thing is- they have very limited surface area...

 

I got 24 of those waiting to do some mod depends on how you want to locate and design your heatsink layout, those cubes are not too tall as well

 

I still say this is a waste of time and money. Much better spent on something like a U3 and just cooling the entire laptop rather than just one portion.

 

It costs less than 10 bucks and it takes less than 5 minutes. And cooling down is still better, and some advanced users like OP and I like to do this kind of mods to enhance the experience. Beside if it causes no harms

 

Perhaps one of the resellers could pipe in? If the pads use thermal adhesive that never comes off....I would think you have just voided the warranty on the GPU - you made a permanent mod to it....if you couldn't remove the pad without potentially damaging the ram. If you ever had a problem with the GPU and sent it in for warranty with a permanent aftermarket mod to the failed bit, you might be in a sticky situation.

 

The heatsink used on the P180HM's gpu's covers the entire card. Then the fan rests on top of that. So, this mod would not be possible on the P180HM. However, I did do a similar mod to my P150HM and it did drop temps slightly. Like 2-3* C.

 

Eldaren, where on the sink would you put the similar copper heatsink on (and was it cube or rectangular)

 

You would pull the white paper off the GPU heat sink, then put the smaller heat sinks around that square. Don't put them on the pipes though. This mod really only works if you have a notebook cooler, as it moves air through the bottom of the laptop.

 

2 items worth doing to "upgrade" the cooling on the P180hm.

A. Artic silver $5 for a 7 app. tube.

B. Upgrade the fans(Something with a higher cfm rating).

Anyone know where you can get some plug n play fans that throw more air?

 

If you can reduce 2C by using heatsinks - do it. Every tiny bit counts when talking about power systems. I'd also invest in ICD-24 or better paste and look for better fans, but those are unlikely to be found.

 

OK, ordered a bunch of the Cooltek RAM cooler and some Arctic Silver Thermal Adhesive...may take some time till i will be able to do the mod on my P170HM3, but let`s see how it goes...

 

The RAM heatsinks honestly is basically just tossing money away. The way your going to make any significant gains in cooling is with good thermal transferring paste(which you picked up) and better air flow(ie stronger fans). The stock heatsinks are actually very good, the problem is getting enough air in and out quickly to dissapate the heat build up.

 

Allready did all the other stuff. GPU is undervolted, airflow optimized with tape, ICD thermal paste and Notebook Cooler. All those things brought down my gpu temps from 96c to 72c during an identical benchmark, but my CPU (2960XM) remains at 90c+ (with fans at full blast) during folding at stock speeds...so i take my chance here unless someone can point me to an actual fan replacement for the P170HM that fits... ;-)

 

THe i7 CPU is going to remain pretty much constant with or without those RAM heatsinks at the temp your reading. Thats fine too. The GPU's are what need the attn, but your notebook cooler is accounting for most of that reduction in temps on your GPU's. Hell if I lift my 180hm off the table during benchmarking I lose nearly 10c's in temp alone. The P180HM pulls all its cold air through the bottom vents which means that just getting some extra space underneath will on its own drastically improve the cooling vs. laptops that pull cold air in from the side.

 

Like what ^^^ he said, i put plastic bottle caps under the rubber stoppers on the bottom of the laptop. just the ones on the back. This reduced an average of 10C of my on-load temps.

DO NOT underestimate the importance of creating more clearance for the intake vents. this makes a very real, measurable difference.

 

Yes it`s lifted with the Notebookcooler...will bump that one from 5 to 12volts maybe today.
Funny thing is that the temperature of the hottest CPU core is like 7c hotter than the coolest and that with like a million repastes and even a different CPU it allways remains the same core to be hottest and the same core to be coolest.
If we take alook at the heatpipes of the CPU heatsink we can see that the pipes are not centered and arranged in an angle to the actual cpu-core.
So i suspect that the cores are unevenly cooled because the pipe isn`t covering all of them evenly. Thats where i`ll put these cooper blocks and see how that turns out for the hotter cores.
Luckily the P170 has breathing wholes directly below the CPU so those cooper blocks in combination with the Notebookcooler may have an inpact.

Anyway THX guys for your comments, will let you know how everything goes. And if someone finds a fan replacement that works....you are more than welcome to share it with the rest of us!

 

Someone just needs to pull the plate off that houses the fans for the cpu and 2 gpu's and pull off the nodel #, then google it and see if you can trackdown the mfg. and where it can be bought, there are quite a few places online that just stock mass amounts of different fans, hardware etc, the 3 used on the 180HM are a common sized fan and config. Something tells me there is a replacement or 2 that will bolt right in that pushes a few more cfm's.......