Acer Timeline U M3-581TG cooling mod

[khenderson42]

I have the Acer Timeline U M3-581TG with Intel i5-3317U and Nvidia GT 640m which works wonders for doing some gaming when I am at uni at such things. The only problem is the heat that both the CPU and GPU reach are worrying, even when using lower settings the temperature often reaches the same heights as when I use better settings. Locking the frame rate to 30fps does help a bit but not a lot. So I was wondering if I'd be able to dremel/drill a few extra vents/holes to increase airflow in and out of the chassis and therefore improve the temps? Also I have some Arctic Cooling MX-4 thermal paste that I put on my desktop and was wondering if it'd be advisable to put some of that on the CPU/GPU?

There are a few small vents in the panel which is missing from this photo but it's the only photo of the underside I can find.

This is the back side where the main(only) exhaust vent is.

Thought that possibly some vents on the side may be ok as the side are bare due to all the I/O ports being on the back. Not sure if that would mess up the airflow however and make things worse.

Any help is greatly appreciated, cheers.

 

[drumminandstuff93]

How high are your temps getting?

 

[khenderson42]

Both CPU and GPU regularly hitting 80+ degrees at high loads. NBA 2K14 was hitting 89 on both high and low settings at 60fps, dropped a bit once I locked it at 30fps but that kind of sucks when I know the laptop can run it at 60fps.