Laptop Intake Mod

[Dreamonic]

When I modified my 660M vBIOS with a voltage of 1.25v and fixed the thermal voltage drop, temperatures were becoming a problem. So I thought it would be good to do a repaste on both GPU and CPU. I went with MX-4 and where the thermal pads were (what was left of them) I spot applied paste in replace; I had surface contact on my heat sink, verified.

Before my temps on the GPU were maxing at 89-92+°C and CPU mid 80's. After the repaste the GPU is maxing at 77°C and CPU at 67°C; The stock paste was literally clay like and crumbled during removal.

It's been a couple weeks since and everything is running cool still but I wasn't yet completely satisfied. In the past I've always done mods to my laptops, particularly the intake mod. I really dislike cooling pads because it's one more thing you have to keep carrying around if you plan on doing any sort of gaming on location.

So this is what I did:

I used a 2 1/8" hole saw (2" if you plan on no o-rings) so that I could utilize the grilles on the inside (flush outside) and secured it with Permatex Ultra Bond (gel type) which then gets covered via rubber o-rings that are cut and glued to appropriate size over the grilles. I centered the holes directly in the middle of the fans.

The tedious parts were the cutting of the grille holders on the backside of the plates (2 per plate that holds in the grilles) you have to avoid cutting off the tabs that hold the plates in place while cutting everything flush to the panel surface. Other than that, pretty self explanatory.

Results? Another 3-5 degrees drop in overall temperatures and temps drop at a much quicker rate than before. So with the repaste and this mod I got roughly a 14 degree drop overall.

Next I'll be painting the fan shrouds black to hide them and painting the fan bearing covers silver.

LINK

[gokica]

Always a pleasure reading your posts. This is one hell of a mod.

Great work! Thanks for sharing.

[13fist]

Very well done! I've been planning that mod myself I just have not gotten too it yet. It should, hopefully, reduce the amount of dust getting sucked into all the ports. I was going to do mine just a bit different and put foam weather stripping around the holes to seal against the fans to sort of duct the outside air straight in. With a 14c drop, that might not even be necessary.

[Dreamonic]

Thanks. I suggest if you do plan on going this route to make sure you secure the grilles not only from the bottom, but the top side as well. The reason being, is when you do need to remove the bottom panels, the flexing from them won't break the bond around the grilles since they are nearly at the edge. I also used 2-in-1 auto touch up paint to coat over the glue once it hardened to give it extra strength from breaking when flexed.

It's rock solid.


Looking forward to seeing how yours turns out. The intake shroud with the foam weather stripping is not a bad idea. I'm curious how well the rest of the components will cool as the air being pulled inside the chassis now won't be nearly as strong (low vacuum.) Next, I may do a copper mod of some kind, only time will tell.

[ggBanks]

Dude that's wicked! I tried similar thing on my G55 before. It wasn't the same, as I just used 1mil drill bit to drill around 100 holes in a square shape right below my GPU and CPU. That was until I got my laptop bricked by the stupid BIOS update, so I had to send it for a repair. Since I have performed such an extravagant mod and I was sure the warranty was void I was expecting a price tag around at least $400 for replacing the mobo, but then miracle happened and they returned the laptop to me repaired with new mobo free of charge 😄

The only drawback of this is that they had replaced the whole chassis too, so no holes for me now 😄 Although if I look at it from financial point of view I am so grateful for that.

I thought of doing that again, but not any time soon, and now that I saw your mod, I think I will order some G75 grills from eBay, and mod my G55 with them like you did 🙂

And since I commented on the topic, now I can follow it WOOHOOO 😄

[Tomislav]

Awesome.I like this a lot, maybe I'll do something similar in the future.

[Apexing]

Thats a good looking mod too 🙂
And if people are replacing the TIM anyway, might aswell do this mod too.

[13fist]

Hang on. I just caught it that you didn't need thermal pads to get contact when you re-pasted everything? That is good news. No one has ever verified this before.

[Dreamonic]

13fist wrote:
Hang on. I just caught it that you didn't need thermal pads to get contact when you re-pasted everything? That is good news. No one has ever verified this before.

That is correct. When I lifted my heat sink off, everything but the GPU was GOOP and the paste on the GPU was clay. On the backside, the thermal pads still appeared to be in like new condition (there wasn't any glossy surface to them from extreme thermal cycling) so I left those alone and only repasted the topside.

I did however look at the card on it's side so I could get a better look at how close of contact the sink gets all around. There is little to no gap. The distance with spot applied paste looked exactly the same as with factory thermal pads (if you can even call them that.)

I'm 140mV over stock voltage with a max overclock for my 660M, so if heat transfer wasn't adequate in the areas where paste was used in replace of pads, I would have had tell tale signs about it, especially with the mosfets, vrm and vrams. However, I know it made proper contact 😉


Happy modding!

[TokoDude]

Nice nice! congratulations on your good work!