Case Mod - In Progress project - "Tribal Toshi"

Well it's time to let the cat outa' the bag once again lol!!
This is something i've just started on due to neccessity rather than anything else!
The doner laptop in question - Toshiba Satelite proA10
specs.......intel mobile celeron (R) @2.0ghz, 512mb ddr ram, intel graphics ( i'll get the specs up on that later! )
Anyway I bought it from a college friend about two years ago because he was fed up with the issues he was having and well, I had a feeling i'ld be able to sort it out with some tlc!!:evil:
The main issue and the reason for the hasty start to this project is there was no cpu cooler
installed whatsoever!:shhh: and the temps were running dangerously high!:amazed:
I also had to replace the 'rattly and funny knocking noises' hdd! quickly replaced with a 20gig hitachi drive stripped out of my bro-inlaws old advent notebook!
So i have been racking my brain as to how i could cool the cpu and make the laptop mobile again! up till now ive basically been directing the airflow from my desktop fan over the lappy which i've had enough off!
Now take into consideration I have no money at the mo and i also have another 4 projects on the go........
I found an old 'cooljag' 12v dc fan from an old athlon xp hsf i had kicking around so i decided i would use that!
Now to the tricky parts.........
first of all I had to trim out about 2 thirds of one of the fans sides to allow airflow to come through the vent ( you'll see what i mean in the pics! )
then i had to power the thing! PROBLEM TIME!
If I can explain this simply...... the way the laptop's original cooling system is set up is as follows - the fan kicks in when the thermal sensors detect the cpu raising above a certain temp ( unknown! soz ) and there is no way of disabling this function! i did some research but came up empty! some of you may have better luck or knowladge?!
I wanted the fan to be 'always-on' and under my control, well this lead me to the idea of powering the fan from an external source, but this would render the laptop immobile again!
so then i toyed with the idea of a 'portable fan controller' yep. i was rofl aswell!!:haha:
eventually i came up with the usb powered fan idea, although i would lose some performance
with usb1.0 only putting out 5v dc, i realized that when the laptop is 'out' with me this would be enough for just wordproccessing, internet browzing etc.
So I stripped a stock usb cable down to the +/- red/black wires and soldered them up to a female 3-pin connector ( the fan already has a male 3-pin connector on it. )
I have also cut a small chanel in the outer shell for the fans cable to exit! and I had to shave some of the original fans mounting chassis away in order to get the larger fan in! If any of you attempt this, be EXTREMELY CAREFULL! there is nowhere near as much space to work as there is in a normal pc case! NO ROOM FOR ERRORS! in one place where i had to dremmel out a mounting lug/standoff for the original fan i was literaly 1 to half a mil from the hdd!!:scared:
Just so you all know, if you get this wrong you could seriously fry your laptop permanently!
And it works just fine!impin: I then did a clean xp essential2 install and installed speedfan etc
My laptop is performing better than it ever has since I bought it!
here's some progress pics and some screenshots of my temps at idle!












This is in no means finished, I have a ton of idea's for this project including a complete re-spray with some airbrushed tribal design! the usb/fan cable will be stealthed later on!
Let me know what you all think so far!:thumbsup:

 

I'm surprised you couldn't disable the auto fan speed adjusting in the BIOS. I'm assuming you checked this?

That would be the first place I would go.

Good job though, hopefully you find a nice stealthy way to get rid of that wire.

 

yeh, i couldn't do it?! frustrating but there u go!! just gotta find another way! thats what moddin's all about imo!! thanks for the comments dude!!
ive got a few stealthing idea's for the wiring but thats for later on!!

 

Hey,
if you want to get rid of the wires, you can connect them to the internal solderpoints of the USB connector, USB connectors are normally "thru the board", and not SMD, so soldering shoud be "easy" if there is such a word when dealing with laptops.

When the internal soundboard on my laptop said "bye-bye", i mounted a USB-soundcard inside the laptop..

 

yeah i know! but i want to beable to disconnect the fan at times, this is due to another seperate but related mod somewhere down the line!