Hey guys, I've been thinking about making a laptop cooler from scratch, and I think I got some pretty neat ideas regarding the air-flow and overall look. My laptop can be like 80 degrees celsius when rendering some 3d, so I think a laptop cooler is needed. Well, I have made this quick and awful sketch, take a look at it: My CPU is in the upper left corner, with the fan right below, and the other fan covers the ram's etc. I have made the "sluices" to better lead the air. I'm not quite sure about the fans yet, maybe I find some others. I think designing is my best part, and a black, brushed steel look, some carbon-looking stuff, and orange/red fans will definately look awesome! So, what do you think? Do you have any suggestions?
Oh, and by the way. It looks like the ACRyan fans are closed at the sides - so not quite sure about getting air in from the sides.. What do I do? Is there any way I can remove those sides, so it can have an airflow like the sketch I drew?
From the diagram, I can't see how this is supposed to work. Are the fans sucking air out of of existing ports in the laptop? are you cutting away at the bottom to add this dongle, or is it standalone? How is the air moving in one direction, sideways?
Couldn't a person take one or more of those PCI slot fans and lay em down sideways ? My oldest son's Alienware laptop has already bubbled the top of his desk. He now sets it on a cooking cooling wire rack that is about 1"/25mm tall just to get more airflow. Not powered but it works. Alienware has 80mm fan internally. Sucks dust like a pig and needs the can of compressed air about once a week. Pets with fur. He has a cat. john
You can't make the fans work at 180" like that. You can cut out one side so that the air comes out sideways at 90", but it would still have to suck in air from the side it always does. To make the cooler as good as possible, you need to consider things like where the laptop air inlets and outlets are? and how big this cooler can be? Where are the ram & hdd covers? Are you going to filter the fan properly? You can cool all sorts of things down in there by doing things like removing the covers for the ram & hdd and have air flowing in there aswell, but if you don't have a good filtration setup, you are gonna just fill the laptop with dust which will make it just run hotter soon enough... If you have the space, you can make a really nice, silent, usb powered, 120mm fan power, fully filtered cooler. eninja: just saw Jhanlon's post. You can use one of those pci slot fans, which is basically just a normal fan with one side cut = 90" fan. A cooling wire rack makes a quick and easy airflow spacer
Yeah, I have also thought about my crazy idea and it wont work. But! Could I make like a platform that my laptop is on, and then with some fans pointing downwards? So the fans are like 5-10 cm above the table? Would that work?
Definitely, but no need for it to be more than a couple of cm tall. An easy way to do this is to use pci vent fans like Jhanlon suggested, or you can just mod a couple of 120mm fans. You just need a nice base that provides heaps of venting to the laptop. A few bits of hardwood screwed together wood do the trick for example, and a few little rubber feet make it even better.
why not get some blower fans like this: http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=145&products_id=2959
This is what i was thinking, using a blower style fan, either a modded 120mm or a pci cooler like what Jhanlon suggested and as you can see one on tominated's link. Probably easier to just have a shorter top piece that goes into the side of the fan, than having to make heaps of venting in the top piece of wood or whatever you use.
mvagusta: Don't really understand your sketch. Can you explain it? By the way. The fans on my original sketch is placed below the hottest places (top left: cpu, bottom right: ram)
Fans run off of 12v, usb is 5v. unless you buy different plans, or run it directly off your battery (not a good idea), there really isn't a good way to get 12v.
Many if not most 12v fans run nice & silently at 5v They also flow a small amount of current at 5v, so you are far below the safe power ouput limit for usb. You probably would notice a slightly lower battery life if you run the cooler while mobile, maybe 5-10% less time at a guess. You need a spare usb cable, and you cut off the end that normally would go to the printer or camera. You then just solder the fan supply leads to the 5v & gnd leads, and leave the data wires alone. Here's the pinouts. A multimeter and soldering iron are needed aswell, which are both cheap and will come in handy again and again, forever! Now as for translating my sample rough drafts, the arrows indicate output airflow direction. The small grey lines are screws - (there should be a couple more on top of the bottom fan btw) The brown/orange things are meant to be hardwood. And not shown are four small rubber feet, one in each corner, so it's nice and stable, won't scratch your desk and which also aid cooling by providing a gap under the whole thing.
Thank you for your very detailed reply. I will only use my cooler when it is not running on battery. It will be running from my USB hub (all 4 ports in the computer is used ). Is your sketch viewed from the top or side?
From the top lol. And you thought your diagram was bad! I'm just in the habit of using paint when there's something i want to whip up within a minute, i should use sketchup more often. This should make more sense now: Not forgetting that they are meant to be blower style fans! I didn't mention earlier that allthough the two fans may only be drawing 100ma or so from your usb, this might be too much if all your other devices are sucking power! I think some laptops have usb ratings as low as 500ma, and the max of any usb i think is about 2a, so you need to be aware of how much power other devices are sucking, unless they have thier own batteries or psu in which case they won't be sucking anything from the laptop.
Thanks for that dude! Regarding the USB power, I will connect it to a USB hub that gets additional power
Damn.. It is actually intake vents... So, what am I going to do now? But hey, got a crazy idea.. What about having a peltier element cooling the air that flows into the laptop? Would that work out? I could also make a peltier element run from the normal power-line, so no need to run it through usb.
