Laptop Heat Production, wow @ the differnece!

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dextr3k

Gawd
Joined
Aug 3, 2004
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550
Backstory: I own a dell xps m1210, which if anyone has any experience has a 7400go discrete videocard, i have upgraded the cpu to a T7200 (2ghz core duo), and to 2gigs of ram. It comes in a 12.1" screen package so it has the footprint of a Letter sized paper. It only has 1x40mm fan in it to cool it.

So naturally over the past year that I've had it, I'm accustomed to it pumping out heat, even during normal internet browsing and movie watching.

AS with most members of this forum, I like hardware, and that includes taking apart everything I own. So yesterday I took apart my dell, found out about all of the connections, and then I get to the main part: The cpu heatsink. Its a heatpipe design, connecting my videocard and cpu, then into the side of the computer into a heatsink with the fan blowing all of the heat out. I took it off, and proceeded to wipe the thermal compound off, and get this, it was coming off in chunks, it was like dried on chocolate, no stickiness, no indication that it was thermal compound. I put some AS5 on and reassembled the whole thing.

I am thoroughly amazed at the temperature difference. Now the system is still at the same temperature because the fan is controlled by heat sensors. But i really notice a difference in it, because my keyboard, even above the cpu is completely cool to the touch. I was a non-believer, but now I'm a convert, I didn't realize it would cause this much difference.

I just wanted to post this, because my jaw is still in shock and I cant talk properly without mentioning how much cooler my laptop is.
 
Glad to hear you got some improvement. I've been thiniking of putting some AS Ceramique on my G1S.
I recently bought a USB fan (link below) for my Asus G1S to suck the hot air out of my laptop to ease the burden on my fan while gaming. I have the Zalmon cooling pad as well but it's impact on cooling is marginal for me due to where the G1S's fan is located. I recommend this little fan to anyone who has their notebook in a fixed location. It's not really ideal for travel of course.

http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-M...3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1215079685&sr=1-3
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
I also own a laptop cooler, but since most of my gaming is done on my desktop, I don't use the cooler much (due to noise, and general awkwardness), I just have my laptop sitting on my desk.

I might take apart my desktop now and put some AS5 in my video card...=)
 
That's one of the amazingly stupid things about most laptop makers: if they spent a few more bucks per laptop on some decent thermal compound - Arctic Silver being widely regarded as the best - the number of heat/thermal issues, customer complaints, and other heat related problems would effectively become null and void really fast.

It seems pretty illogical that a company would pride itself on designing and manufacturing such nice hardware and skimping on such an important aspect of that design and manufacture. But they do, and they skimp, and put a dab of that cheap shit thermal paste on the processor on the assembly line and slap it all together, box it up and ship it out and move on to the next one.

Brings "The Chewbacca Defense" to mind...

"Does that make sense?" ;)
 
I have no clue what the chewbacca defense is, lol.

I do completely agree, since dell is such a large tier 1 designer, and this being a laptop, you would think they can put more effort into considering things like this. the stuff they put on was coming off like chunks of wax, it wasn't even sticking to anything. Granted I don't know what this stuff looks like a year ago when it was new, but after my warranty ends, the thermal compound is effectively useless, like....forcing me to overheat and pay them money for repairs?

I won't go into evil conspiracies, but I do want to add, since I replaced the compound, with good ventilation, the laptop will get so cool that the fan will actually stop occasionally. Never had the fan do that before.....
 
I put AS5 on the P4 in my mom's inspiron 5100 and the thing runs much cooler now. I hate that clay-like "thermal paste" a lot of manufacturers use. One time when I removed my processor's heatsink from my main computer the paste was so hard that my cpu came up with it -- with the ZIF socket locked :eek:. Boy, was I lucky that nothing was damaged when everything was put back together.
 
A guy at work wanted me to look at his computer when he found out I had some experience with them.

Apparently at some point the plastic mounting bracket that holds down a P4 had broken on two corners. An IT guy at work had looked at it a couple years before after this happened and when I got to it it looked like about 2 tubes of something like AS5 had been squeezed all over it. It was being pushed out the sides and everything. He had removed the top half of the bracket so the thermal paste was the only thing holding it on. When it started having problems he turned it on it's side so the weight of the stock Intel cooler was holding the thermal connection together.

I just went to newegg and got a cheap HSF with the same mounting holes as the P4 bracket, problem solved. Just funny that he used his computer for several years with nothing but thermal paste and gravity holding the HS on the CPU.
 
lol, nothing but thermal paste, I guess he was using ceramic or non-conductive stuff, or else it would have shorted a long time ago.
 
Hmm, I'm gonna try this. I have a D630 and its overheating pretty handily at times (enough taht apparently my ram or video ram is going bad :( )


Are the laptops hard to take apart/put back to gether?
 
I might do this on my XPS now. The heat sensor on the GPU is always pegged during gaming. I feel bad for it.
 
rayman2k2 said:
Hmm, I'm gonna try this. I have a D630 and its overheating pretty handily at times (enough taht apparently my ram or video ram is going bad :( )


Are the laptops hard to take apart/put back to gether?
Click to expand...

Not really, you just have to keep track where every screw came from, because they use different lengths/sizes sometimes. See if you can find a manual on your laptop, because with different laptops, they have different parts that come off in different orders.

The order for my system was power panel > keyboard > screen > plastic top > heatsink
This will vary with every system, and also keep track where every plug goes in. I had to use a bit of force sometimes, but not enough to break something, so exercise caution, but sometimes it just needs that extra bit of push.
 
for a core2duo merom cpu, do you just stick a small pea size in the middle?

It has been a long time since i applied some AS5 to anything. I used to apply a very thin layer to the whole heat spreader. I heard these days its a bit different now and you dab a little pea size in the middle and the pressure of the heatsink spreads it out and doesn't necessarily coat the whole surface but it turns out to be fine.
 
rayman2k2 said:
Hmm, I'm gonna try this. I have a D630 and its overheating pretty handily at times (enough taht apparently my ram or video ram is going bad :( )


Are the laptops hard to take apart/put back to gether?
Click to expand...

Dell has some of the best documentation regarding their laptops, with exact and precise instructions on how to disassemble their hardware to get to all the good stuff, then you just reverse the procedure to put it back together again. Aside from IBM itself I've never encountered a company that provides as much information in terms of technical schematics and disassembly procedures as Dell does.

Dell Latitude D630 Service Manual - viewable online, or download it from:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/latd630/en/SM_EN/SM_EN.zip
 
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