anyone can explain why elevating M860tu caused HDD to overheat?

so...after the aluminium foil trick doesnt work well...i try go into extend by modding the back panel , cutting the whole block that covered the HDD...

then , trying to boot the computer , play some games and to my surprise the HDD still overheats(only 1-2c drop)...
at that time i still using erasers to elevate my laptop couple degrees....

the results of elevating the laptop :
-CPU and GPU temps decrease..more air can be sucked into the fan...

-from middle where the touchpad located to the right of the palmrest , gets very hot...the fingerprint , ridiculously overheats too...and its the hottest part of the whole palmrest section...(when gaming....without gaming = warm)

-the upper part where the speakers are located , also gets hot , although not as hot as the touchpad section

-hdd reaches 58~60c easily(even when doing simple tasks such as browsing....gaming increases the HDD temp to 63)


the results without elevating the laptop :
-hdd temps drop to 50C(max 53 when gaming)

-the palmrest , speakers and touchpad feels warm on gaming , but i didnt feel uncomfortable because of it....

-CPU and HDD temps gets higher , but not close to the threshold limit

-it seems that with the laptop heat is evenly distributed

so...anybody can explain with some scientific reason why elevating gives bad results instead of helping the laptop dissipating heat?

 

Lol are you serious? Like when your computer is opened for long and you elevate it it will increase temps of about 10c??

Are you sure you weren't defragging in the background without knowing it or the ambiant temperature dropped of 5c or so?

 

i have two HDDs , the primary i put in DVD slot using a caddy...

and the secondary i put in the internal HDD slot...
i dont defrag the HDD...its just filled with installer softwares , some old junk videos...
no paging files.....
all are passive files...i only access them when i needed...

 

Yeah, i posted heat increases with elevation. Its weird, i think it has to do with heat not being able to be pushed away from the hdd, it may sound stupid, but it could be that when the laptop is elevated, there isn't enough pressure to force the air over the hdd.

 

devilcm3. Sorry for viewing this thread and not responding to it. But can you do a more controlled test of the HDD temperatures by running HDTune's benchmark or error scan with the laptop elevated and non-elevated?

I have two theories in my head right now that I would like to put on the table. My first one is a gyroscopic physics explanation. Discs spin with the least friction when perfectly parallel or perpendicular to gravity. By angling your laptop a few degrees, the relative inertia of the spinning platters would want to naturally move back to a zero angle position. Because of the additional friction caused by the angle, the HDD motor would need to work harder to keep the platters spinning. However, this is only at minor angles. At steep angles such as 30-45 degrees, convection would be more prominant and outweight the effects of the inertia and the HDD would actually be cooler.

My second theory is from a passive cooling perspective. Like I have mentioned before in other threads, the HDD has no heatsink whatsover and all the heat would remain saturated inside the drive while cool air would take very little heat away from the exposed thermally low resistant circuit board on the bottom of the HDD. With the laptop non-elevated, the fan would still suck in a fair amount of CFM over the hard drive. If elevated, there would be more areas for the fan to take cool air from so less CFM would be going over the HDD.

The only hardware solution that I can think of to assist in cooling the M860TU's HDD is to cut holes into the backpanel over the HDD, which you have done, and add an aluminium or copper plate to the bottom of the HDD. The heat from the HDD would saturate into the heatsink instead of staying in the HDD. The sheer mass and surface area of the plate would dissipate heat a lot better than a circuit board can.

 

so...the first picture is after full benchmark + error test...

the second took a long of time..so i decide to run the error test + farcry2 to quickly produce the scenario where the internals heat up....only less than 30 minutes then..68c...
its amazing...im speechless

oh yes...im running the machine on air con room...i think the room temp around 19~22c

tomorrow i will run try running error test + playing games in a non-aircon room(temps will be around 28c) for non-elevated position and post the results here...

but even with this two pictures i can clearly state that elevating the notebook causes increase of HDD temps around 10c...

and i would have sacrificed couple degrees increase for CPU and GPU rather than HDD...

 

I have the same thing on the HDD of my laptop. Left on normal stand it works at max 52C. Elevate the back and it will jump to +60C.

 

Ouch, that's really hot then. Right now, your HDD temperature takes priority, so leave your laptop flat.

 

Guys, just do the mod that I did.

1) Put Electrical or thermal tape on the hard drive
2) place a piece of aluminum (or even better copper) sheeting to go on top of that part,
3) Place some electrical or thermal tape on 2 sides of the sheet to hold it down (try and leave as much surface area of the sheeting exposed, I find this allows for faster cooling and better temperature control).

The hard drive runs a bit cooler and also the palm rest heat disappears (today I must note that in the air conditioned room, the right palm rest for the first time ever felt COOLER than the left palm rest, this was with a notebook cooler as well though). Look at the new 15 inch clevo is bringing out, it has this mod (of course better as the aluminum is cut precisely for the hard drive) and I'm sure it addresses the problem.

 

Could you give us a few numbers, Deathwinger? Nothing too extensive. Just a quick before and after on HDTune or something similar.

 

I need help with this problem as well. Are there any programs or anything that will lower the HDD temperature? I don't have enough money for a laptop cooler at the moment, and am scared to open up and tweak my laptop.

 

This is me repeating myself. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5290645&postcount=14

 

My theory is the same as Soviet's second theory I think. I think most likely when the laptop is elevated air is more easily pulled into the main vent intake directly under the fan. This would reduce the air being pulled from the smaller vents. If this theory is true then one would expect the GPU/CPU temps to go down a bit when elevated but most other temps to go up.

Devil, you've posted in this thread but I thought it was interesting how some people blocked the main vent which in turn decreased the HDD temp (at the expense of CPU/GPU)
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=375196

 

blocking the vents wont give a good result..
i already made a hole on the HDD section , and only extensive usage of the HDD can made it reach 56c...
else its just stays cool at around 50c....the room temp is around 28c non-aircon

you can use some tools to do the work such as hole saw , or in my case i use mini hacksaw that i bought for $12 to do a rectangle hole rather than circle..
the more part of HDD exposed , the cooler the HDD is ...but exposing 100% the HDD , i dont think thats good idea...around 80% of the HDD is good enough..

 

I guess from your reply that I wasn't very clear.

I was just saying that I thought when you elevate the laptop the HDD temp goes up because less air gets drawn over the HDD because more air gets sucked in through the main vent that is directly under the fan.

I wasn't suggesting blocking vents, just pointing to a thread that I thought showed the relationship between air being draw in the main vent vs being drawn over the HDD.

 

ou..thx...sorry for the misunderstanding..

 

Not sure if I missed it in another thread, but what kind of temp drops did you see with the hard drive vent cutout that you did?

 

i think only the HDD temps...ACPI , CPU and GPU does not drop...when i stressed they still rush up to the rooftop around 75cpu and 85gpu

 

Damn. 10char