Antec Laptop Cooler Mod

[bradyapba]

A small mod here, nothing like my water cooling, or high end cooling mods...

Well heres the deal... i got a laptop from work($100) as they were buying all new ones... its older, p4, 2.8, 60 gig HD, 512 ram, it also came with a free wireless card and bag. Its a generic brand, So all in all, i cant complain. I just wanted it for the TV room for email, surfing, etc...some streaming, XM radio, etc....nothing heavy duty...

What i did notice was, it gets HOT on the bottom, when i do anything for any length of time...surf, stream, watch ah.... videos, yeah, videos.......in fact, it gets choppy from the heat after about 2-3 minutes of watching anything video related.,.. so i thought, shoot.. ill get one of those coolers....didn't want to spend too much, but i got one at Circuit City, that was $9 after rebate....if it doesn't work, well, it was only $9.

So I bought this cooler:

The only real temp i can monitor is the HD....at least thats all that Speed fan found to read... pre Cooler, it was around 50, and 55C under load... with the cooler, it was around 48, and 52.. so it was a little cooler, noticably. Also, i was able to stream about 4 minutes, before the stutters started to happen..... so not bad...and i left it for a while, but then i thought, i could make it better....shoot if i ruin it, it was only $9

Ill also tell you what. Its not the best design. It stead of blowing cool air up, and cooling the hot spots, it vents the hot air away, out the vents. Not that great, as there is no active cooling.

So heres what I wanted to do.

1. It has the annoying very bright BLUE led when its on. You could read by it. That needs to come out.
2. Add 2 mirco fans to actively cool the hottest part of the bottom of the laptop.
3. Mod the openings so the fans can blow out.

 

[bradyapba]

Ok so here we go.

1st you got to pry the feet off (they are just semi sticky)

remove 4 screws behind the feet, and viola, your in.

1st thing was to remove the little card, and take out that awful blue bulb.

bulb is gone!

Heres are the goods.. scirrors, razor blade, 2 mirco fans from Radio Shack, electrical tape, and velcro.

 

[Mohonri]

nice mini project!

If the laptop is overheating that quickly, you might seriously consider opening it up and cleaning out all the heatsinks inside. It's not as hard or intimidating to open a laptop as it might seem, and it would make a huge difference.

That's not to say you shouldn't do this mod--it will be fun to watch.

 

[bradyapba]

ok so heres where i wanted to put one of the fans, but there was a piece of plastic in the way, so a little thumb force, and bam it was gone.

heres me stripping the fan wires

heres a test fit

looks good, so i wired them in, wrapped in tape, and taped down.

i turned them on, they worked, decent air flow for such a tiny fan, and they were silent, so i started to put it back together when i realized...

Silly, there are no air holes in the top, so I stopped, and starting drilling air holes.

i put it all together, but one of the fans, was up to high, and was rattling, once it was all together, so i took it off the velcro, and just taped it in place... heres the sad velcro i had to take out..

heres the laptop, and the hot bottom, and the cooler now in place..

 

[bradyapba]

your right Mohonri , i never thought to do that, i think i will!

The only testing i have had time to do, it the HD...

and it now idles at 37C, and load at around 40C...

so those fans are really helping out, and the laptop is really cooler up at the top, where it was so hot...

next is to test some video watching.... ill let you know!!!

So far very pleased...

very easy....very silent...and improved cooling.

 

[bradyapba]

just a little update, went home at lunch, and watched a 15 minute video, no stutters, so at least, thats like a 300% improvement... ill test it longer tonight..

 

[bradyapba]

i was able to watch a 40 minute video, streaming, with no stutters, the HD temp went from 37-43.....So thats a 10X improvement, from just the cooler stock. So i am VERY happy with these 2 little fans.....they are helping a ton.

 

[Gen.Ben]

Wow, thats a pretty cool mod

Like someone else mentioned earlier, open up the laptop and clean off the heatsink/fan, shouldnt take longer than a few minutes and then you wont even have to worry about stutters with cleaning it out and that cooler.