Thinkpads Forum

Hey, I'm thinking of comeing up with a custom water cooled 600E,
I have an idea to run a clear stronge tube filled with water or gel,
throughout the motherboard, or just putting a little pack of water right next to the cpu, will water help?or make it hotter.
Let me know what you guys think.

I doubt water on cpu will make things better. To use water effciently it has to flow from heat source to cold- or at least cool area.

I believe that the good idea would be to use heatpipes, but they are expensive and hard to find appropriate size.

Also please check out my topic- heat fighting. There I play with air streams.

Laptop_wizard, I think you are wasting your time.

The 600E is a six year old machine. Souping it up sure can be good fun, but don't expect it to make a large difference in performance. And PLEASE don't try to sell anyone your brand of snake oil; especially here.

We know that the 600 series is superbly reliable and has no need for better thermal management.

First of all I'll sell whatever the heck I want, no hard feelings but you know .
and i m not selling what I am posting about, I am selling a different method, the thinkpads motherboards fail after at least 7 years the the cooler you keep a laptop, the longer it will last.
Thankyou, and to "you" I diden't mean to be angry,
(sorry )

ThinkPad motherboards fail after 7 years, you say

Well, I'll tell that to my 700C from 1992.
It probably haven't heard the news yet, so it works brilliantly, with its crispy and bright TFT screen.
Even the original battery holds charge for 15 minutes.

In two years time, it can celebrate its 15 year anniversary.
Laptop_wizard......7 years.....come on

Personally I like your idea of watercooling a laptop.
The thought itself is so freaked out, that it deserves credit.
I also thinks that it has near genious capacity.
The only fault is.....that heat issues in topline laptops already has been taken care of.

But...there's also bottom-line laptops.
For instance....Cheap laptops sold with desktop CPUs could benefit a lot from your idea.
What about developing your ideas, to meet that market ?

Kindest regards
Brian

The 7 years rule seems to be true for my 760XD. I haven't had it that long but that's how old it is and it's system board seems to have bit the bullet last week. Luckily, my 380ED, which unlike the 760XD, has no excessive heat problems and it still runs solid as a brick. The 760E is also still running strong, though it's in several pieces right now as I took it apart to remove the mWave but haven't had the time to reassemble it.

I can understand that it is not kneeded "persay" but theirs nothing wrong with trying to "exspand your mind" please Just post your advice, not criticism, and as far as the 7 year deal, it depens on how much you use it, I had a 1998 600E, and my motherboard went bad, also other customers and as far as my j2-100 cpu fans, my customers keep sending more customers. .
thankyou

The water cooling internally would have to be specifically designed for each computer. That's the big drawback I see. I don't think it's a problem for occasional users. The powered aluminum heat sinks with fans seem to be a good way to go. I'm looking for a non-powerd one myself. If it can be painted black and screwed to the bottom of my 600E it would be perfect. Then a little heat sink grease between the memory and CPU covers and it should lower temp. I'm sending this one to a tropical climate soon. I'm not concerned about lower temps, but it will heat up faster and take longer to cool where it's going. The heat sink would extend the use period some without reducing battery life.

You don't want to paint a heat sink.

While it's true that black heat sinks are a LITTLE more efficient, paint is not the way to do that. If you can get an anodized heat sink, they can anodize them to just about any color, including black.

But a layer of paint makes a nice insulator unless it has a high metal content. I would avoid painting any heat sink.

Jumping in here for the mental exercise.

This sounds like a very interesting idea, however, how do you move the water? As posted by Mantas, you need to move it around. Water will work great as a "heat sink" but then it must be moved to a cooler area to release it's now absorbed heat. To do this you will need a pump which then draws power from the battery thus shortening that disconnected time...

Would you be able to use capillary action to draw water through the system? I wonder if the water at the cpu would heat enough to "want" to expand into the next section of the water system, sort of a high pressure and low pressure system.

Obviously the water jacket would add weight to the system, albeit minimal.

I think this is a very interesting idea, I'll be watching to see how you progress....

Hey Bob thankyou Very much for your encourgement, I was thinking of turning the fan power port, and putting an extension that forms 2 ports, and just makeing a small tube of water that travels to the heatsink to some sort of cooling mecanisim, what do you think?

Sounds do-able.

Now the question I have at this stage is this. How do you do the heat exchange once you get the water warm/hot. Where is the radiator that will dissapate the heat collected from the CPU?

I would think you shall still need a fan of sorts to cool the radiator area or what have you....

An as noted previously, there is not going to be much to gain with this mod. It is mostly a mod for mod sake. Not that it is a bad thing, but it won;t really buy any speed or capacity, as it were.

farna wrote:The water cooling internally would have to be specifically designed for each computer. That's the big drawback I see. I don't think it's a problem for occasional users. The powered aluminum heat sinks with fans seem to be a good way to go. I'm looking for a non-powerd one myself. If it can be painted black and screwed to the bottom of my 600E it would be perfect. Then a little heat sink grease between the memory and CPU covers and it should lower temp. I'm sending this one to a tropical climate soon. I'm not concerned about lower temps, but it will heat up faster and take longer to cool where it's going. The heat sink would extend the use period some without reducing battery life.

Why would you want to do that? if you ant a nonpowered one just unplug it form the power, then you would have to find out witch byte disables the fan in the bios hex-editor, but why? would you want to turn the fan off?
that thing will not last long, OH! what do you mean grease it, what kind of grease and where>
reguards

Hey BoB and thanks once again, What do you think i could use for a radiator, what would fit inside the thinkpad motherobard? plus, the system
COULD NOT LEAK, that would be a pain.

Hi Wizard, that was exactly my question; what would you use, or did you have in mind for the radiator? Obviously you require a water/fluid based radiator of sorts. The space constraints of a notebook case are such that I don't think you really have any way to do that.

You could mod the PCMCIA slot area to have a tiny fan and radiator. Perhaps your "radiator" could be a small video chip heat sink with the water pipe/hose snaked through the fins or even applied to the back of the heatsink and run a small fan to exit air over the heatsink and force the air out the PCMCIA door.

This is fine/tiny work fraught with danger. Yes, the water and leakproofness (if you will) is an ABSOLUTE!

Wizard -- Heat sink grease, or paste is a better description. Some here use a product called "Arctic Silver". It's a thermal transfer paste or grease and helps move the heat to the sink. Now here's an idea -- instead of a portable unit consider an add-on unit like the fan powered "laptop coolers" available now. If it were custom made so that there was a large reservoir of solution directly under the CPU and memory and tubes through the rest of the unit there would be some convection flow. Basically you'd be spreading the heat over the unit rather than concentrating in one area. You'd need some air flow, but maybe no fan. Just a 3/8" thick unit built sort of like a radiator.

I could use one of the powered heat sinks and simply not plug into the USB port. I was thinking no power to conserve battery power, and screwing it to the case bottom so the paste could be used. Would just need a longer srew here and there. Removing the heat sink to change memory or processor would be a bit messy, but how often does a normla user do that? I saw a non-powere unit in Korea -- should have bought it while I was there!!