Solved! Laptop HDD cooling

Thavion Hawk

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Dec 29, 2007
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I've got a base model Dell Vostro 1000 with the stock 60GB HDD in it.
As you may have guest from the post title I've go cooling problems.

This laptop was given to me by a coworker so I jumped to spending
what I didn't on getting it upgrading it with more ram and a bigger
7200RPM WD320GB drive which in about a month half melted. That
drive was shipped back for RMA and it's replacement is in an external
case with the stock 60GB 5200RMP back in.

Even with the lower RPM drive it reaches 60C after about two hours
of web surfing and far less just playing any sort of game.

I've started using my 1GB SD Card for the page-file but even then it's
no help.

Here's my question for you all... Is there anything like an integral HDD
cooler or heat spreader on the market? If not would it be possible to
create such a thing?

With a quick trip to Radio Shack and Home Depot(Next to each other
for convenience.) I've come up with an improvised aluminum heat
spreader idea. It would be a peace of aluminum that conducts heat
from the HDD and then draws it out to a plate on the outside. Would
that even work?

At the moment I've got a passive heat pad that sublimates to draw
heat from the system and cool it, but it can only take so much heat
before it's fully used and becomes about as conductive as shag carpet.
It works for day to day use, but I use this laptop for some old games
like StarCraft and the like at Lan parties so the heat pad isn't cutting it.


 
Solution
get a notebook cooler! i use zalman nc1500 it cools down the laptop to a little cooler touch and dropped all major temps by 5-6 on full load. You can also do a little modding, where the bottom is idk if theres a tab for that comp, where if you can take a tab off and you see the ram, hdd, cpu etc... You can either A get an aluminum thing and cut it to the same size as the tab so when you have a notebook cooler it will cool them extremely or drill holes on the tab.

Espada

Distinguished
Jul 9, 2009
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get a notebook cooler! i use zalman nc1500 it cools down the laptop to a little cooler touch and dropped all major temps by 5-6 on full load. You can also do a little modding, where the bottom is idk if theres a tab for that comp, where if you can take a tab off and you see the ram, hdd, cpu etc... You can either A get an aluminum thing and cut it to the same size as the tab so when you have a notebook cooler it will cool them extremely or drill holes on the tab.
 
Solution