By
MC-Sammer
Over the last month or so, I've been planning on overhauling my (slightly dated) P157SM to give it better cooling, and possibly higher performance.
There were a number of sources I used for inspiration, and I'll attempt to document all of them later on, but first, pictures!
This is the first modification I made. I increased the opening of the CPU fan to allow more air to go into the fan. As I recall, it helped with idle temperatures but I don't remember by how much.
This picture shows how much I increased the opening by, I didn't do just that bit and stop
Next up, I increased the width of the intakes directly over the GPU and CPU to reduce ambient heat buildup in those areas.
I ultimately decided that increasing the width was not the best route to go (and it was quite ugly) so I decided to simply remove the vents
I used some diamond mesh to cover those areas, but I don't have any pictures of that at the moment.
Next I used some HVAC tape to direct the air flow from the CPU fan into the heatsink and not out the tiny gaps in the area.
Then I swapped out the heatsinks (originally I ordered this from XoticPC and went with their copper cooling upgrade (I was young(er)) for some bigger ones.
Everything is all nice and snug
And finally with the lid back on.
With the changes made between cutting the vents, and the last picture, I was able to drop load CPU temps ~5C which I thought was pretty nice.
My goal is to also get rid of the vent over the fan, but I haven't found time to do it. I'm also planning on lapping the GPU heatsink, which will, again, take time.
I'll post more updates as I make them (and post the benchmarks I've already done).
Update:
GPU Work:
So I have a 780M at the moment (I'm planning on going to a 980M, though I may just wait for the Pascal GPU's to come out) and I decided to lap the heatsink, since I'm planning on overclocking it.
Fresh of the block
400 Grit (10 minutes)
600 Grit (10 minutes)
800 Grit (10 minutes)
1000 grit (7 Minutes)
1200 Grit (7 Minutes)
1500 grit (about 25 minutes for this stage)
And I thought it looked pretty smooth. One of my references mentioned cutting off the little tabs on the block, since they're mostly there for adding additional pressure (since the plate is usually warped) and I wanted to just lap the area directly over the GPU die (plus I don't really have a good place for grinding copper with my rotary tool).
For the paste I used http://www.coolermaster.com/cooling/thermal-compound/mastergel-maker/ which I went with based on the favorable review posted at http://www.play3r.net/reviews/cooling/cooler-master-master-gel-maker-nano-thermal-paste-performance/ and the pads are Fujipoly high end (didn't think I'd need to go ultra).
I also added some little sinks on to the heatpipes, though they might be suspect (more on that in the results below).
And I sealed up a gap in the fan to direct more airflow through the larger fins.
I also used from more HVAC tape to try to prevent ambient air from being drawn in to the fans, but this too might be suspect (it might be needed to draw it away, since where else is the heat from all those fins supposed to go?)
And the results are... interesting...
pre upgrade
post upgrade
So the initial benchmark had a 5C drop in temperature, but the following results aren't as promising.
In fact, the stress test results appears to be higher (I'm speculating that it'd be over 86C by 400 seconds).
I'm thinking that either the added heatsinks on the heatpipes are dispersing the heat before it can get to the fins, my lapping job wasn't so great, or I added too much TIM. I may try the washer trick from the p150 cooling threat mentioned below, but I'm spent on energy for this weekend.
June 3rd update
I finally got back around to working on my clevo some more and after a third re-pasting my temps are down (taking into account that today is hotter than when I first tested)
I suspect that my older paste jobs were either too thick, or I bent the heatpipe and kinda threw the plate out of alignment.
Inspiration:
Modding my clevo in general:
http://null-bin.blogspot.com/2015/04/extensive-clevo-p150sm-cooling-and.html
Sealing up the gaps in the fins:
Additional cooling ideas:
By bigchuk00
By MC-Sammer