Alienware M18x water-cooling mod!

[Henrik9979]

First I want to thank the community, who have inspired me to do this project.

I will give you guys the chance to follow me on this journey.

 

I hope you will all help me come up with ideas, techniques and parts that could become handy.

 

This modding may be possible to convert to allot of laptops.

 

Let's begin!

Here is the measurement of the went hole.

77mm X 16mm

 

I have 2 ideas for what can be done.

 

Edited April 26, 2018 by Henrik9979

[Henrik9979]

Idea number 1:

Cut off the bars where the air is coming out, so I will have a big hole.

 

Next

I wanted to remove the radiator from the heatsink.

 

And replace it with a water block like this:

 

But finding one in the right size is very hard.

 

This one on the picture is almost identical besides the connections, but here is the measurements:

The first problem:

It needs to be 77mm long,

82mm is too much of course I can cut the hole bigger.

 

Wide is 40 mm and this is not an issue, it can stick out of the back of the laptop. Also if a leak should happen it won't damage anything.

 

12mm thick is perfect. The maximum thickness is 16mm!

 

But here comes the real problem!

 

If I solder the water block directly to the copper pipes it will be placed above the went hole.

 

If you look at the photo of the heatsink, the foam is marking where the top of the went hole is.

It means that the water block needs to sit right below the foam.

It also means that I need to put a 6mm copper piece between the water block and heat pipes.

 

What I am wondering about is will a copper piece transfer the heat good enough???

[Henrik9979]

Idea number 2:

Cut off the bars where the air is coming out, so I will have a big hole.

 

Next

I wanted to remove the radiator from the heatsink.

 

The next bending the heat pipes so they are vertically.

 

[Henrik9979]

The reason I do not bend all three pipes is because there is not enough place. I will connect the third pipe somehow.

 

Now it fits perfectly and it is placed directly in front of the went hole.

 

This however recruires a different kind of water block.

 

 

Edited January 5, 2018 by Henrik9979

[Henrik9979]

[Henrik9979]

I found this MOS water block that might fit.

It is 80mm long, 14mm wide and 16mm high. Keep in mind the hight is WITHOUT the connections.

 

So even though it is 80mm long, the block is only 16mm high so it will not stick out of the went hole.

The connections will stick out and because the is closer together they might fit through the went hole.

 

Also the wide will not be a problem either.

 

Now the question, will the heat sink still transport enough heat when have been bend and is this water block big enough???

 

[Henrik9979]

Okay a quick update on a Sunday.

I have been reading alot about how heat pipes are constructed how they work and if they can be faulty?

 

I have been thinking how I could test if I broke the heat pipes when I bended them. 

Then it hit me!

 

Heat it up with a candle and feel if the heat travels through the pipes.

 

I straighten one pipe to measure the length, it is 135mm long.

 

The two bend pipes got very hot very fast. I was happy to discover the still could transfer heat.

How ever the pipe I straighten out was definitely broken.

While the two pipes I bend was too hot to touch the last one was just starting to get warm.

 

So yes a heat pipe can be faulty.

[Henrik9979]

Now another thing I was wondering about, was the GPU memory cooler I accidentally broke off.

 

It is just barely connected to the copper pipes, also it is made of aluminium. I was wondering how much heat the heat pipes removes from the memory.

 

I took a working NV100w heatsink and heated up the memory cooler. Alot!

 

The conclusion is as you see on the picture I could easily hold my hand around the heat pipes.

There is almost nothing being transferred.

 

Leaving me with new ideas.

 

 

Edited January 7, 2018 by Henrik9979

[Henrik9979]

Between the cover and GPU there is 5 mm

[Henrik9979]

I found this water block from a, Thermaltake CL-W0052 Tide Water.

It is only 8mm thick.

Maybe it could be squeezed in anyway.

 

I found a usb drive there is 8 mm thick. 

Nope it can not be squeezed in. The keyboard will be bended too much.

[Keltbear]

Any updates on the mod?

[Henrik9979]

12 minutes ago, Keltbear said:

Any updates on the mod?

Yes I have just bought a koolance exos-lt, and made some modifications to it.

Now I am waiting for the water blocks to arrive. The shipping is very slow!

Koolance exos-LT

[Henrik9979]

Modifications:

To understand why I modded this device you need to understand how it is supposed to be connected.

The power connection goes to the slot adapter. At the slot adapter you connect the main power and the thermal sensor. The thermal sensor should be connected to the CPU???? Stupid system I think.

Edited March 27, 2018 by Henrik9979

[Henrik9979]

This is how it should be connected. But as you can see I removed it.

I made it way more simple. Now I can connect 12v power directly.

[Henrik9979]

Also I connected the thermal sensor to the main board. Instead off the outside board.

It is the black wire with tape around it.

I connected the sensor to the reservoir, through the same hole as the power cable for the pump.

[Henrik9979]

I tested if it was working, by filling a bowl with boiling water and dumped the tubes into it. After 1 hour the fans was still running at idle. The temperature went from 26 degrees Celsius to 38 degrees Celsius. And yes I changed the water 2 times.

I also tried covering the fans and when the temperature raised to 51 degrees I let it spin up to full speed and removed the cover. The temperature went to 38 degrees again fast.

 

[Henrik9979]

While I am waiting for the water block to arrive, I have already made the processor water cooled.

[Henrik9979]

I am having a 2960xm i7

Stress testing for 30 minutes with the water cooler only running at idle:

Constant 4.4 GHz on all 4 cores

Max temperature 84 degrees.

Water temperature max 46 degrees.

 

This is insane! I already have the three piped CPU cooler but i cannot hold 4.4 GHz for more than few seconds before it throttles.

[Keltbear]

That is crazy, Nice work on the system

[Henrik9979]

My first solution didn't work out, I could not put the laptop back together. Not enough space.

So I decided to make a new heatsink and connected two single pipes heatsinks into 1 heatsink.

I put som rubber tube at the end of the pipes, glued it together so it would connect the two pipes.

 

It was hard as fuck soldering every together, if I had a second chance I would have done it differently.

 

If any one would make this mod, just buy the two piped heatsink on eBay, drill/cut the ends put something around them and glue the hell out of it to keep it from leaking.

[Henrik9979]

Now here comes the fun part that all have been waiting for. The performance.

I use Artic MX-4 thermal compound. It is very good, but not the best for overclocking.

My room temperatur is about 23 degrees.

Idle temperature

Overclocked to 4.4 ghz. After 30 minuts with stress test, it never got any higher than 80 degress. That is amazing!!! Specially because I do not use any overclocking thermal paste!!!

[Henrik9979]

Because a stress test isn't a realistic load on the CPU I tried overclock it even further, and test under normal load.

I managed to overclock it to 4.9 ghz!!!

I played Star Wars battlefront and the temperature and performance was amazing!!!

 

"4.9 ghz stable with normal temperatures!"

[Henrik9979]

The biggest bottleneck now is the power supply.

When both my gtx 980m runs at full speed the CPU throttles to 800mhz for a brief second and goes back up to 4.9 ghz again. 

It does not really affect the FPS. Maybe in more CPU heavy games.

 

"Now the problem is, that the power supply cannot keep up and the performance is dropping"

[Henrik9979]

The conclusion is that this watercooling increases the performance alot!!! Also the fans on the water cooler newer speeds up. The water temperatur never go past 32 degrees.

 

Small update:
I had to reposition the thermal sensor because it touched the pump. It made temperatur rise to 51 degrees even without hocking it up to my laptop.

Now it measures the temperatur coming out it instead. 

[Henrik9979]

Am I done?

NO!

I have a big big suprise coming up. When it arrives and I have installed and tested it out I will show you what I have made,

Actually I have two new water cooling mods comming up. One may be a little hard to make, the order one will blow you mind.

The only thing I will say, is you will be able to use the stock air cooling together with the watercooling, making it possible to still use the Alienware without the watercooling!!!

The first part of the mod have already arrived, now I am just waiting for the last package. 

Edited April 26, 2018 by Henrik9979