Will a T520 heatsink fit in a T530?

[Recife]

Will a T520 heatsink fit in a T530?

Specifically Fru: 75Y5782

As I'm in Brazil I'm considering modding the heatsink to fit my integrated graphics T530 to further improve cooling/reduce fan noise.

[hhhd1]

No gurantees that this will work, but this was my plan earlier.

the t520 heatsink with nvidia, should fit both T530, and T520 if the nvidia part was cut off.

I have compared the images of motherboard between the 2 models (from ebay), and I am 75% sure it should work.

1. someone need to verify that the heat pipe of the cpu is not touching the pad above the nvidia, some ebay images suggest that they are not touching.
2. cut through the heat pipe going to the nvidia chip.
3. optional: add some adhesive thermal paste between the heat pipes to enhance heat dissipation.

small image: http://s3.postimg.org/pccbxtlqb/002_t520_plan.png (MOD edit: Still too big!)

full image size: http://s10.postimg.org/7d54ccph5/002_t520_plan.png

[Recife]

Nice planning although I'm hoping to cut as little as possible.

I'm about to do the mod on the link below on my T510. The heatsink should get here anyday now.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=104978

As you can see for the T510 he only found it necessary to remove a corner from the Nvidia heatsink.
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f362/ ... lvztyd.jpg (MOD Edit: too big!)

Not sure how similar the T510/T530 motherboards are mind.

[hhhd1]

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=104978

Nice find.

I 'think' that the non-nvidia boards of the T510/T520/T530 are quite similar, and should share the same heatsink.

the T520/T510 heatsink with nvidia, should be possible to mod to fit any of the 3 above.

the T530 with nvidia is different.

[Recife]

https://www.flickr.com/photos/77021926@ ... 523998292/

The Flickr album documents the process very thoroughly although why he felt the need to remove the hinges I have no idea. Unplugging the DC jack from the motherboard and lifting the DC jack cable out of the way left more than enough wiggle room to ease out the fan/heatsink (after removing the relevant screws/fan jack and speaker + cable)

I'd be interested in potentially removing the GPU heatsink completely and attempting to realign the GPU pipe to run parallel to the CPU pipe and maybe even binding them together somehow along with your idea of some thermal paste to add heat transfer between them.

[Recife]

Discrete graphics heatsink and fan arrived, modded and fitted to my T510! (integrated graphics)

A picture speaks a thousand words so here it is.

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f362/ ... xtlcqu.jpg
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f362/ ... qddhqq.jpg

All neat and tidy.
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f362/ ... tttfrw.jpg

As you can see I went with my idea of twisting the GPU copper pipe under the CPU pipe + excessive thermal paste = Ugly but hopefully effective. I need to run it during a good hot day to get an idea of how well it is working but I'm hopeful for at least a 15% improvement.

[hhhd1]

Great result

if the thermal paste you put between the pipes is not 'adhesive', at least make sure it doesn't turn liquid when heated a bit

[Recife]

Thanks! The side on pictures show the early fitting stage where the upper and lower copper pipes weren't meeting very well hence the quantity of paste. In the final fitting I was able to get (bend) just enough tension into the lower pipe so that when I screwed down the upper CPU pipe they fitted together much tighter and then I cleaned off the excess paste that was squeezed out.

As I got the heatsink so cheaply i'm pretty happy but if I could get my hands on the T520 discrete heatsink for a similar price I would have been tempted to fit it stock as the heat transfer pipe seems to be considerably larger. I imagine that's what I'll eventually do for my T530.

[Recife]

Preliminary results look very promising indeed with temps of around 57 degrees celsius being typical after a few hours of Civ 5 with the fan set to maximum on TP-fan-control.

[hhhd1]

I can easily hit 95c after 5 minutes of full stress, in a hot summer day

Encouraging results.

[Recife]

I'm guessing it gets a bit hotter in Cairo than here in Brazil where it's around 30-31c for most of the year in my neck of the woods.
Before I did the mod I was getting temps of around 77-80c with the fan permanently set on maximum under moderate to heavy loads.

I would hazard a guess that the 'dual' heatpipes are what makes the difference as although it is now venting out of the back as well as the side the rear vent doesn't seem to have a significant airflow although you can certainly feel how it heats up my dock casing.

[hhhd1]

Yes, in cairo it gets up to 44c sometimes, and the average is in summer is 35~36c.
It is excessively hot.

[hhhd1]

I would hazard a guess that the 'dual' heatpipes are what makes the difference as although it is now venting out of the back as well as the side the rear vent doesn't seem to have a significant airflow although you can certainly feel how it heats up my dock casing.

I am guessing the difference is that the heatsink is much bigger, the dual heat pipes are connected to 2 heat sinks, one on the side, and one on the back of the laptop, where the old single heatpipe have only 1 small-ish heat sink.

[hhhd1]

twisting the GPU copper pipe under the CPU pipe

What did you use to bend the pipes ? , any specific tools ? , and how ?

[Recife]

I very crudely bent it with a pair of pliers and my hands. Once the initial little twist was done with the pliers it was all by hand to get it lined up nicely.

As you can see from the plier marks in the pictures the key part is trying to bend it as close to the fan as possible without damaging it. I ended up denting/folding the GPU pipe quite a bit more than I intended.

I used a hacksaw to cut off the excess parts so I'd highly recommend borrowing a dremel. It was easy enough to cut but the problem was having to keep bending it around to get a clean angle without cutting into something else.

[hhhd1]

Just did the mod.

installed a T520 dedicated fan in a T520 with integrated GFX.

I used 2 pairs of pliers to break the nivida part completely, the whole thing turned out much more fragile than expected, it took 2 minutes to break it apart.
while doing it, .. i felt cracking sound coming from the main part where the fan resides, i hope i didn't break anything there

I have not bent the gpu pipe to touch the cpu pipe yet, although i hope to do it later, for now, i was interested in seeing the results of this alone.

pics:

http://s12.postimg.org/ef3dpn2pp/IMAG0378out.jpg
http://s12.postimg.org/j9x2nx119/IMAG0373out.jpg
http://s12.postimg.org/vptshnud9/IMAG0392out.jpg
http://s12.postimg.org/jcgyar4ot/IMAG0393out.jpg

results:

temperature is down by about 22c

when stress testing, and the processor is using 34.5 watts, and maximum fan (level 7):
before: 96c , after: 74c
and also, at the later result, the processor is able to achieve higher turbo clock ( an extra 0.1 ghz) while using the same power as before of 34.5watts.

stressing both the cpu and the iGPU, i get TDP of 38.5 watts, and temperature of 81~83c , while the fan is not running at its maximum level.

notes:
1. the fan for the dedicated gfx appears to have 4 pins, the integrated appears to have 6 with 2 unused.
the motherboard appears to have: 4 pins, 1 empty pin, 1pin.
so the 4 pins only dedicated gfx still worked fine, with the extra pin on the MB left empty.

2. the fan of the dedicated gfx appears to make noise at its lowest running level of '1', unlike the integrated fan, that was almost inaudiable at that level.

[hhhd1]

Even though both fans are supposed to be similar, the dedicated fan is noisier while running at the same speed.

the igpu fan: DC BRUSHLESS KSB06105HA -AG11
the dedicated fan: DC BRUSHLESS KSB06105HA -AG10

Not sure if it is possible that the dedicated fan is somehow of lower quality, or is going bad..

[Recife]

Nicely documented! That's that heatsink I would have preferred to have bought as the the main heatsink pipe is clearly much bigger.
It'll be interesting to see if there's much difference if you get round to bending the two pipes together.

Does the fan have open blades or enclosed blades like in the following link?

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-Orig ... 05084.html

[hhhd1]

It'll be interesting to see if there's much difference if you get round to bending the two pipes together.

me too, but need to find some extra thermal paste, preferably adhesive, or a method to keep them touching like cable tie ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_tie ).

Does the fan have open blades or enclosed blades like in the following link?

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-Orig ... 05084.html

this is the fans i have:
http://s14.postimg.org/m8rkxlf5t/IMAG0398out.jpg

I think generally, the t510 fans where of higher quality than the t520 or t530, because i have seen many people starting to complain of fan noise after the release of the t520.

[Recife]

Hmmm, cable ties... nice. Apparently heat resistant ones with a metal nose exist.

I have no idea which fan is best/quietest but for some reason I was under the impression the one I linked was at least the most effective as it tends to be fitted to the quadcore + discrete graphics models.

[hhhd1]

I am not sure a fan of t510 would fit on the heatsink of t520 as 'plug and play', it might need some breaking of plastic, and maybe some adhesive tape.

the cable ties i was thinking of were normal plastic (not special thermal ones), those are the ones that i can get from the local hardware shop, anything else would be too expensive . i got 20 cable ties for 0.63 USD.

TBH, .. not sure yet what to do, so far the results are good enough, and i am not in a hurry to try something else

I now have very limited amount of thermal paste left too, so will have to not experiment too much until i get a good amount of the cheap stuff.

[Recife]

Good work my friend!

My temps seem to have suddenly jumped up to 68-70 degrees celsius just browsing on the internet..... maybe the thermal paste dripped off or I need a cable tie to maintain good contact between the two copper pipes. I shall not bother to strip her down to inpsect for the time being but something has changed.

[Recife]

Hmm strange, I have my T510 setup with a Dell U2515 QHD monitor using a series 3 dock. I took it off the dock to pop the keyboard open and do a quick visual inspection of the heatsink mod and everything appears to be in order. The strange part was when I set everything up again the temps magically dropped back closer to their original temps rather than 70+. I wonder if the dock setup/external monitor can somehow cause the computer to get stuck in some extra taxing mode that unseating and reseating the dock connection clears. Faulty thermometer? The full force of summer is also here but that's only raised the ambient temperature by a few degrees.

[hhhd1]

maybe the air vents gets blocked ?

I know the dock does block a part of the vents on the back,
if at the same time something else was put beside the laptop and blocked the side vent, this temperature spike could happen.

[netrunner]

Hmm strange, I have my T510 setup with a Dell U2515 QHD monitor using a series 3 dock. I took it off the dock to pop the keyboard open and do a quick visual inspection of the heatsink mod and everything appears to be in order. The strange part was when I set everything up again the temps magically dropped back closer to their original temps rather than 70+. I wonder if the dock setup/external monitor can somehow cause the computer to get stuck in some extra taxing mode that unseating and reseating the dock connection clears. Faulty thermometer? The full force of summer is also here but that's only raised the ambient temperature by a few degrees.

I had same experience with T410 and now the same with T420. And it's not only problem with dock blocking the vents - I disassebmled my dock and removed unnecessary parts, so vents are nicely opened. Unfortunately I've never found any solution.

[Recife]

When I was originally playing Civ 5 and getting low temps (57) and now getting considerably higher temps just browsing (60-70+), both times were using the dock.

What was strange was simply inspecting the fan and then putting it back on the dock seemed to lower the average temps by a good 10 degrees for some reason. I'm currently getting 60 degrees just posting this with the fan set to maximum which is still hotter than what I was previously getting playing Civ 5. I'm not overly concerned as it's still well within a reasonable range but puzzling none the less.