HP NX9105 Laptop - extra cooling?

[mycarsavw]

This weekend I have been mostly dismantling my laptop.

It's a 3 year old HP laptop, AMD CPU blah blah blah. Laptops in general run hot, everyone knows that, it's well documented that the AMD CPUs on this laptop run much hotter than their Intel counterparts.

Here's a link to a, flippin' huge picture, not mine, of the underside of the laptop in question.

link to underside of NX9105 pic

You can see two fan "grilles". The upper most grille has a weedy fan beneath it and a radiator of sorts on the back (which is the top in the picture).

The left grille has nothing beneath it except a fan-shaped hole and a nice slot where a radiator of sorts would fit. Just above this empty left hand grille is the CPU and heatsink. There's even a channel for air to pass from the left hand grille over the CPU and heatsink, but there's nothing in this hole at all.

The upper most fan has no channel and from what I can make out, there's no way at all for the fan to directly offer any cooling to the CPU.

I realise this is worthless without pics and they're coming when I get home tonight, but I'm thinking I can add another fan (or even move the current fan) to the empty slot and give the CPU some much needed cooling. Why there is a fan hole but no fan I have no idea, but from that pic above, I can see I'm not alone.

I'm getting my thread up and running in case anyone has any thoughts, and because I know, by the time I get home I'd have forgotten all about this.

[mycarsavw]

I'm an idiot, the "radiator" is the heatsink, linked via copper pipes - d'oh.

Even so, I'm sure better cooling is possible.

Pics;

Bottom



Hole for second fan



Channel over heatsink





Heatsink



I guess my next step is to find a fan to fit the hole and then find somewhere to plug it in.

Ideas?

EDIT: Pics look perfect on the camera but are so noisy on here

[staffsMike]

How about getting a laptop cooler. I use an antec one and it keeps mine nice and chilly

[Pob255]

Also could try giveing it a good clean out, make sure there's no dust blockages.

Could also try changeing the thermal paste, don't know what it's like on these ones as I've not had to take any my work ones appart yet.
I've taken appart a couple of NX9005's and I seem to remember there being some rubbery yellow gunk on there (consistancy of chewing gum) I think that age might have caused it to thicken.

If it is the yellow gunk (or pink, I've come across that on a couple of older sony Vivo's) it's a right bugger to get off.
There's probably a fan header for it someware so it should be possible to replace.

The other thing to do is have a check in the BIOS and something like speedfan to see if you can override the fan control and have it going 100% all the time. Not sure about this, should be possible somehow (all I use my old compaq armada for is an mp3 player and internet radio when I'm in the kitchen)

[mycarsavw]

When I do use the laptop it is usually in a dock, so it stays fairly cool.

I use speedfan, rivatuner and webtemp to monitor temps, but the fan isn't controllable. The thermal paste was redone last year some time but I recently got a free tube from OcUK so I suppose I could give that another shot.

Pob, you're right, it was like chewing gum, hardly made any contact at all.

I had it apart at the weekend to give it a good clean it out. I got a replacement plastics kit from HP under warranty just before my carepack ran out. The rubber feet detached themselves for the 23543456th time and I'd had enough!



I'm more interested in why there's a fan recess, space for another heatsink but nothing in there at all.

[this_is_gav]

It's a 3 year old HP laptop, AMD CPU blah blah blah. Laptops in general run hot, everyone knows that, it's well documented that the AMD CPUs on this laptop run much hotter than their Intel counterparts.

Dunno, the standard performance and budget (above Cerlery) Intel chips were just desktop P4s 3 years ago. Having some old Acers here with desktop P4s I can say with certainty that this will be running hotter than whichever AMD you have in yours. Despite what feels like an entire copper ingot being forged around it. I can't think of a worse CPU to put in a laptop, but they did it. Battery life wasn't good either, obviously.

[mycarsavw]

It's an AMD Athlon XP-M 2800+ Sits at 800Mhz on idle and surges (he laughs) to 1600Mhz when needed.

Speedfan reports temps of 55 - 60 when running FF and GIMP and around 45-50 at idle. The battery life is now pretty bad (WebTemp says it's 70% healthy), but it was around 5 hours at new.