Case Mod - In Progress Project: Watercooled Laptop - Campus Party WINNER!!!!!

Hi guys

This is my first work that I show here. I hope you enjoy.
Sorry for my English is really bad

INTRODUCTION:
This is laptop, Toshiba Satellite pro M40X before the mod:



It's not powerfull laptop and when I playing computer games, the laptop becames very hot, specially the GPU.

My idea was create a external water cooling unit who can plug to laptop when I would like play games.

It's important that when I take it the laptop at other place, It can works without water cooling unit without losing any feature.

When I be in my home or LanParty, I will connect the water cooling unit to laptop and I can play many hours and do overclock the GPU.

I started dissassembling all and searching how I can cool that.


After, I designed an improvised waterblock:

For build it I used copper plate thickness of 2mm.
Note that when laptop runs without water, the waterblock will transmit the hot from GPU to CPU cooler. Thus can run with or without water.

cleaning:


putting waterblock at place:


Making coupling support:

Is painted with galvanized spray

I'll use these pneumatic connectors. They are special because when I disconnect the tube, the valve automatically closes. So I can connect and disconnect the cooling system while the laptop is running without loss of coolant.

Very thanks to guys from Norgren by send me these samples


Next I will paint the laptop with granit style spray

 

=O zomg.
very nice.
i havent seen anything like this before.
then again i havent really looked around for watercooled laptops

 

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GREAT IDEA...i have been wanting to do something like this for a while now...

 

Nice! From looking at the pictures you only have 512mb of RAM? Wouldn't your lappy run better with more RAM?

 

Welcome to the forums!

A very good idea to try if not rather ambitious. I look forward to seeing how this works out.

I see its only the GPU you're cooling with water which is a good place to start... And will you be clocking it down again after gaming sessions?

Personally, I'd be very tempted to design a custom enclosure for the remaining water cooling parts, which is also attachable to the laptop exterior. That way, you might even be able to have water cooling on the go...

If it helps, here a few nutters who have tried the same thing:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Watercooling-a-laptop-on-the-cheap/
http://hackedgadgets.com/2006/10/28/waldic-water-cooled-laptop/

Hopefully you might be able to make something marginally better looking Will you also be doing any (aesthetic/non functional) customisation of the laptop?

 

KICKASS! IF this works, Man you will be my hero. This is the unlimited modding, ROCK IT ON

 

wow, very nice idea. if this doesn't make the laptop look too far from stock, maybe i will try the same with my MacBook Pro which sometimes pushes 80 C.

 

you could cook an egg on that macbook!

suggest you open it up and remove most the dust and fluff now blocking the heatsink and fan!

 

Subscribed! Great work.

 

Nice work. I like that it all still fits in the original case. That extra blob of copper will change the stock cooling properties a bit too. It wouldn't be too hard to make a WC box that could sit under the laptop. The only problem I see would be finding a pump SMALL enough to work with this little loop. Most WC pumps are overkill power-wise for this setup.

 

cool idea, I'll be watching this.

 

lol i liked the idea, and it seems cleaner then most the tries out there

 

looking good, nice work on the block. keep us posted!

 

I have 1gb of ram but the other module is below the motherboard

I only cool the GPU because it's the unique part of the laptop who can do overclock (with atitool). When I turn on the laptop, starts with default GPU frequencies. When it's connected to watercooling, I'll rise up the GPU frequencies with atitool. The CPU can't overclocked because the BIOS don't have CPU modifiers.
I hope that future laptops allow overclock CPU and will design a full cooling system.

I had already seen before those links but my intention is to make it much more practical and almost without external elements.

On aesthetics, I'll paint with spray and i'll try to add a digital thermometer for see the GPU and CPU temps.

I have a small pump, approximately 3x3x2cm. My uncle gave it to me when I went to japan. It works with AC 12V so that i'll put a small 220-12v transformer.

More updates soon

pd. my english is very bad and google traductor was worse, you can understand something?

 

Yes, yes. Don't worry

 

Hi again

I have some updates

First I would like to show the tools I used to make the mod. Are very rudimentary tools but are sufficient for my intentions



I bought some sprays for paint the parts:

from left to right: galvanized spray, priming for plastics, granite effect spray, lacquer.


I first protected areas that should not be painted. you can see the wear through use.


After sanding I applied the priming for plastics in all parts.



I did a small test to see how is the spray because it had not seen anything like it before

the effect is shocking (at least for me).

Now I am waiting for the primer dries

 

Nah. That's just how hot the MacBooks get.. Both the CPU and chipset are cooled by a heatsink appr. 1x1,5x5 cm large, so it's not really that strange

And Taro; great work so far! Can't wait to see how you pull this off.

 

3X3X2? I want to see that pump now!
You should check the test with the granite spray for wear resistance. They are often latex-based. That makes them easy to rub or scratch off.

 

hi Cheapskate,

This is the pump:

I stuck a piece of box cd with superglue. before had a water filter that was too big.
is not as beautiful as yours but works well (i saw your modded dangerden pump).
The dirt is because has been turned on for two weeks to verify that works well.
Pump will go into the tupperware.

now i'm searching what i can use as radiator because i have some radiators but are too large.

I currently have happened two solutions:
- make my own radiator with copper tubes and plates
- disassemble a cooler with heatpipes. open heatpipes and passing water inside

which you think is better? you have another idea?