Laptop cooling pad

[acousticlemur]

i got borred the other day and decided to make a cooling pad for my laptop. pretty much the only thing i use it for is to watch tv shows online and movies. and the cpu gets up to about 145 F and the graphics chip heat sink on the bottom gets really hot, so i bought 2 14.5 x 11 sheets of 1/8" plexi and dusted off the dremel.

and i have a 5v 50mm fan ordered that is gonna blow into the intake for the cpu fan, and run off a usb cable. i will update more as i get more done. let me know what you think. and suggestions. thanks, acoustic

 

[Abdullahamir]

hey i think so that u put some 2 more fans and which laptop have?

 

[Triprift]

I think ur on the right track acoustic i bought a cooling pad for me lappy which run off usb and the only thing i didnt like was the sound was so loud but certainly kept the lappy cooler.

Keep us updated i look forward to seeing what it ends up like

 

[joinmeindeath417]

thats sorta a good idea except you have no way of getting the heat away from the heatsink thus it will just alltogether get really hot? put some fans on opposite sides of the heatsink (small ones) and that could help disperse the heat away from the heatsink

 

[acousticlemur]

hey i think so that u put some 2 more fans and which laptop have?

it is an acer aspire 1640 with a Pentium M 740 stock 1.7 OC'd to 2.3 and a gig of ddr2 533 running at ddr 708. and it is running vista home premium. i was totally surprised with the over clock 33% i think i could get higher with some better memory, but oh well 2.3 is plenty good for what it is for, and it has intel graphics so gaming is out of the question. and yeah i think i will put a small fan on the side of the heatsink to draw heat away too. i was thinking about cutting a rectangle off the bottom of the laptop and exposing the aluminium plate that disapates the graphics heat so that it would sit directly on the socket a heat sink on the cooling pad but i decided against that as i dont want a hole in the bottom of it if i have to return it or decide to sell it later. this is the 50mm 5V fan that i found for the cpu vent

http://www.directron.com/ec5010m05ca.html

i tried running a 12v fan off the usb but i dont think it will do much so i stumbled across this one after a few min of googling!! gotta love google!!!!

they also have a 30mm fan that i might get for the heatsink. i was also thinking about an on /off switch or some lights but i think i will just stick with the basics on this one and then go all out with my next one.

the next one i want to be made of 1/4 or 3/8 plexi and water cool the heat sink with left over parts from my fish tank computer idea i have been storming on for a while now... but that one is for later when i get some $$$$$$$$$$ and some fish!! thanks guys, and keep the ideas comming...

 

[Ripper3]

I was thinking about making one myself, something along the line of yours, but maybe with a slight slope, although that's kinda of unnecesarry, considering I use an external monitor, keyboard and mouse when at home, which is where the pad would be kept.

The laptop definately needs cooling though, until I get my 3850 back from RMA, I'm stuck with just the laptop, and even with an application of new TIM today, the laptop still very easily reaches 45-50c idle on the CPU (although the HD has always run cool, from what Speedfan states, it's usually running at a maximum of 35c idle or load), or near idle. The fan isn't loud, and it does its job well, bringing it back down to a nicer 40-45c, until it rises again, but as the cooler has a single heatpipe stretching from the Intel chipset to the CPU, and on to the rear fins, which are mounted on the fan, it means there's an awful lot of heat to be dissipated, even if I have got the lowly 1.5GHz T5250, and the integrated X3100 for graphics. Hell, the CPU gets to a scorching 65c, when I'm playing WoW...

Most laptops are alright for use between spread legs, as they can get plenty of air, but the cooling is stupid when on a desk... they pull air from underneath, the few millimetres between laptop and surface is not much, and the exhaust is maybe a centimetre away from the edge of the intake. To me, that's jsut asking for trouble. I also know the battery is best placed in the centre for cenvenience, but having the cooling off-centre is not good, especially when it's off-centre enough that the intake could end up being right over your leg.

Anyhu, my idea for a laptop stand just mostly included two fans, a 120mm blowing air over the left rear section of the laptop, at low speeds, should blow more than enough to cool the CPU a bit, with another placed lower right, maybe a smaller 40-60mm, runnign at 5v, just blowing some air into the lower section, which for my laptop means HDD and WLAN card, which is't exactly system critical, but meh, it'll feel the benefits that the HDD feels.
As my desktop monitor is about 2.5-3" off the surface, I'd lift the laptop about 1" at the front, 2-2.5" at the back, which should provide a farely good slope, and maintain enough room for air to move underneath.
I'd probably also have a USB hub attached under the right hand side, to be close to the right-hand USB port. Maybe some cable management would go well with all of that too, to make sure power cable, monitor cable and USB cable(s) don't get in the way of the fans too much, or at all.

I'd say the watercooled idea is going a bit far, since you'd only see a real dfference, if something made direct contact with the laptop or, better yet, the CPU. That'd just make it annoying to carr about though, a whole watercooling arrangement, heheh.

Oh, and nice OC, I've been meaning to undervolt mine, but I just haven't gotten round to it. It's a pretty nippy CPU for what I use it, so overclocking isn't necesarry for the moment, but 1.5GHz will soon be seen as not enough, even for a dual-core on a light system.

 

[steelkane]

That would look awesome with some Gloss black plexiglass http://www.estreetplastics.com/

 

[acousticlemur]

That would look awesome with some Gloss black plexiglass http://www.estreetplastics.com/

i was thinking about painting the inside of the plexi with either silver or black, but i am not sure yet.

 

[Cold Storm]

It sounds great! if I still had a laptop I'd think about doing something like that. Can't wait to see how you got at it. I believe that if you do sliver on the tops of the plexi and do black on the edges then it would look great!

 

[Deleted member 3]

Since when does Plexiglas conduct heat well? ie how will heat end up at the heatsink? Can't imagine it working efficient.

 

[acousticlemur]

Since when does Plexiglas conduct heat well? ie how will heat end up at the heatsink? Can't imagine it working efficient.

the heatsink is fitted in a hole in the plexi so that it sticks up just enough to make contact with the heat "plate" for lack of a better term. (the aluminium plate that the graphics chip heatsink hits to get the heat out of the computer) i was also thinking about cutting the plastic off the bottom of the computer so that the heat plate is exposed and would come in dirrect contact with the heatsink on the lappy colling pad. but i decided against that cause i dont want a hole in the bottom of my lappy. but any way the heatsink sitts directly on the heatplate on the bottom of the lappy which is why i decided to do this in the first place cause it gets hot enough to burn my leg a bit when watching movies for an hour or so.