project - "Tribal Toshi"

[Ronin"MrM"]

Well it's time to let the cat outa' the bag once again lol!!
This is something i've just started on due to neccessity rather than anything else!
The doner laptop in question - Toshiba Satelite proA10
specs.......intel mobile celeron (R) @2.0ghz, 512mb ddr ram, intel graphics ( i'll get the specs up on that later! )
Anyway I bought it from a college friend about two years ago because he was fed up with the issues he was having and well, I had a feeling i'ld be able to sort it out with some tlc!!:evil:
The main issue and the reason for the hasty start to this project is there was no cpu cooler
installed whatsoever!:shhh: and the temps were running dangerously high!:amazed:
I also had to replace the 'rattly and funny knocking noises' hdd! quickly replaced with a 20gig hitachi drive stripped out of my bro-inlaws old advent notebook!
So i have been racking my brain as to how i could cool the cpu and make the laptop mobile again! up till now ive basically been directing the airflow from my desktop fan over the lappy which i've had enough off!
Now take into consideration I have no money at the mo and i also have another 4 projects on the go........
I found an old 'cooljag' 12v dc fan from an old athlon xp hsf i had kicking around so i decided i would use that!
Now to the tricky parts.........
first of all I had to trim out about 2 thirds of one of the fans sides to allow airflow to come through the vent ( you'll see what i mean in the pics! )
then i had to power the thing! PROBLEM TIME!
If I can explain this simply...... the way the laptop's original cooling system is set up is as follows - the fan kicks in when the thermal sensors detect the cpu raising above a certain temp ( unknown! soz ) and there is no way of disabling this function! i did some research but came up empty! some of you may have better luck or knowladge?!
I wanted the fan to be 'always-on' and under my control, well this lead me to the idea of powering the fan from an external source, but this would render the laptop immobile again!
so then i toyed with the idea of a 'portable fan controller' yep. i was rofl aswell!!:haha:
eventually i came up with the usb powered fan idea, although i would lose some performance
with usb1.0 only putting out 5v dc, i realized that when the laptop is 'out' with me this would be enough for just wordproccessing, internet browzing etc.
So I stripped a stock usb cable down to the +/- red/black wires and soldered them up to a female 3-pin connector ( the fan already has a male 3-pin connector on it. )
I have also cut a small chanel in the outer shell for the fans cable to exit! and I had to shave some of the original fans mounting chassis away in order to get the larger fan in! If any of you attempt this, be EXTREMELY CAREFULL! there is nowhere near as much space to work as there is in a normal pc case! NO ROOM FOR ERRORS! in one place where i had to dremmel out a mounting lug/standoff for the original fan i was literaly 1 to half a mil from the hdd!!:scared:
Just so you all know, if you get this wrong you could seriously fry your laptop permanently!
And it works just fine!impin: I then did a clean xp essential2 install and installed speedfan etc
My laptop is performing better than it ever has since I bought it!
here's some progress pics and some screenshots of my temps at idle!

This is in no means finished, I have a ton of idea's for this project including a complete re-spray with some airbrushed tribal design! the usb/fan cable will be stealthed later on!
Let me know what you all think so far!

 

[indokyne]

good thinking.

so what does the bottom look like when it's all buttoned up? Does the fan have an adequate vent to suck thru?

 

[Ronin"MrM"]

the fan sucks air through that side vent! i've thought about opening up a 'blowhole' of sorts directly beneath the fan with a modded grill but then the airflow would actually be reduced i think because the fan sucks air thru that vent then thru the pipe to the cpu! if i were to open up the enclosure then it would blow air out of the laptop instead of directing it to the cpu.
i'll run some tests and see what i come up with..............

 

[indokyne]

hmmm... from the looks of it, i thought it would push air out of that hole in the fan shroud you made...

 

[Ronin"MrM"]

its all as it was apart from the custom fan and usb power cable i knocked up!!

 

[Adidas4275]

if you have a volt meter... just find where the solder points are for the usb and solder the fan wires the the + and - of the USB

 

[flofloi]

Nice Wallpaper!!!

Where did you get that?

Regards

 

[jackknife]

I had to do something similar since the power connection to the fan on the mobo of my A30P fried due to a long screw scratching the pcb.
I soldered the fans cables directly to the power rails of one USB connector, they were hidden inside under a little metal shield. That way all the cabling stays inside the notebook, I also added a variable SMD resistor and tweaked it to a setting between good airflow and noise and left it at that.
Has been working like this for well over a year now, it´s developing other issues (screen) but the temperatures are great even when gaming.