GPU cooling mod, upgrade options and what heatsink do I have

[ganon11000]

*EDIT pictures are now links due to there insane size*

Hey,

It's me again.

I decided to open my A31 and clean it out, boy was it awful, must have been 11+ years of dirt!!

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-JTx1 ... 105513.jpg

And it got me thinking, what CPU upgrades can this machine have, What version of the heatsink do I have and most importantly, how do I cool this GPU.

And then I had a idea:
Tin Foil + Akasa AK-455
so I got some tin foil, folded it up loads of times and squished it so its very condensed, then got a small blob of AK-455 on the GPU and a bit on the top connecting to the metal surrounding the fan.

The laptop seems cooler but I'm not 100% sure.

If anyone could do this (any thermal compound would do) and measure temps with a proper tool, does it actually work??

you'll see the tin foil at the top and a small bit of the AK-455 sticking out

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-b7V4 ... 154527.jpg


Also some questions, what are all the part numbers (EG. SLA9X) of the P4-M CPU's that work in a A31?

And what version of the heatsink do I have??

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-yAZ9 ... 154659.jpg

[RealBlackStuff]

There will be air trapped between the tinfoil folds, causing inferior cooling.
Take that tinfoil out immediately and replace it with a small piece of a sheet of copper in the required thickness.
Then use thermal paste on both sides of that piece of copper.
Get the HMM, it's all in there: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail. ... MIGR-39796

[ganon11000]

surely its better than nothing?? and I'll order a copper shim!

I was asking about the cpu because the HMM is wrong about compatible ram!

[ajkula66]

Huh?

Care to explain "wrong about the compatible RAM" bit?

[ganon11000]

they say 1GB when its really 2GB
they say 2.0GHz max when I believe you can use 2.6?GHz

[ganon11000]

here is a video update of the progress, I can't remember if I said i sanded down all thermal points but it was sanded and nice and shiny!!

http://youtu.be/Mo_8GIu9WZo

[ajkula66]

they say 1GB when its really 2GB
they say 2.0GHz max when I believe you can use 2.6?GHz

Well, at the time these machines were released, the largest DIMM was 512MB, hence the 1GB max. And it's a question of size, not compatibility...

IBM never sold A31 series with anything over 2.0 so, no, you're not going to find that type of info in the HMM. They were not instructing us on how to upgrade them, we had to figure out that ourselves...

[ajkula66]

here is a video update of the progress, I can't remember if I said i sanded down all thermal points but it was sanded and nice and shiny!!

http://youtu.be/Mo_8GIu9WZo

You are hellbent on killing this oldie, aren't you?

The way you're going about the cooling system upgrade is completely, utterly senseless and does nothing apart from increasing the pressure on the GPU.

Where you need improved cooling is VRAM which is accessible from the bottom and covered with a spongy material that one could buy as a set from IBM once upon a time, since these dry out over time.

Don't even attempt putting a shim there, though.

Just leave everything as-is and enjoy the machine the way it was designed more than a decade ago...pretty please...

As for your heatsink, what's the FRU number on the fan itself?

[ganon11000]

So when you say the gpu is failure prone you mean the vram?

And I'll get the fru in an hour

[ganon11000]

And the heat is transferring from the GPU to the cooler (CPU temps are hotter)

[ganon11000]

Not to mention this method fixed my Compaq F500 (laptop from hell :p )

[ganon11000]

The FRU: 62P4092

[ganon11000]

Another update

The heat pad wasn't touching the vram or north bridge to I bent it to touch the vram and put the north bridges one on the northbridge, the heatsink is warm where the GPU connects so the heat is transferring, I'll do some gaming of aoe3 tmnf / tmuf, civ4 and empire earth 2 to fully test it and test the heat output!

[ajkula66]

The FRU: 62P4092

That's the better fan, you can go for a faster CPU with that one.

[ganon11000]

YAY!!!

That's why it never reaches 60oC on any sensor?

[RealBlackStuff]

Instead of adding a new post every time you want to say something, you can use the edit button at the bottom/right of your last post and then ADD further comments.

[ganon11000]

Instead of adding a new post every time you want to say something, you can use the edit button at the bottom/right of your last post and then ADD further comments.

ah, thanks for telling me that, It seemed mad making loads of posts :p

I can conclude that while playing aoe3 (100% gpu usage, 100% cpu usage, max brightness etc..) it doesn't go higher than 57oC and the VRAM is warm to the touch but not really hot, Which in my understanding is safe to use?

[ajkula66]

and the VRAM is warm to the touch but not really hot, Which in my understanding is safe to use?

Do you have the machine completely out of the shell? How can you possibly touch VRAM on A3x otherwise?

[ganon11000]

I have 16MB of VRAM, which totals one chip near the ram and one chip near the dvd drive, if you open the ram door you can touch the VRAM chip and feel the heat of it and, upon removing the keyboard, i can feel that the GPU is cool and the heatsink is warm at the contact point with the GPU!!

to confirm, it's the VRAM that overheats? or the GPU or both??

[ajkula66]

I have 16MB of VRAM, which totals one chip near the ram and one chip near the dvd drive, if you open the ram door you can touch the VRAM chip and feel the heat of it and, upon removing the keyboard, i can feel that the GPU is cool and the heatsink is warm at the contact point with the GPU!!

to confirm, it's the VRAM that overheats? or the GPU or both??

Two things here:

a) You've got the VRAM location wrong. It's not split the way you presume it to be.

b) I'm going to refrain from posting in this thread from now on.

Good luck.

[ganon11000]

I think you'll find I'm right, There are 4 VRAM slots (for 32MB) I have 1 of the underside ones and 1 above:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/File:A31_ ... _lores.jpg
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/File:A31_ ... _lores.jpg

I believe my think-pad has been messed with, 1.7GHz cpu, 2.0GHz fan and the printed info on the gpu is different than other 7500's