Laptop fan Questions

HotDog-Cart · Post by **HotDog-Cart** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 12:21 am

Okay. Basically I mean: One USB port is for plugging the power into. The other one thats on the fan, acts as a regular usb port. Sort of like a glade plugin, that has a wall plug built on the side of it.

Heres a link which shows both USB ports.

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/include/AddCa ... gcounter=5

See? Ones for power and the other is like a passthrough. Its basically giving me back a USB port, so it doenst take one up.

If you get what I mean. And yes, its a cooling pad

grossaffe · Post by **grossaffe** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 12:57 am

One thing I would check if I were you would be the CPU heatsink. When I opened up my brother's laptop, there was no thermal paste on there. that's a nice inexpensive way to help the heat problem.

HotDog-Cart · Post by **HotDog-Cart** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 12:19 pm

You misread what I said man. Theres no CPU heatsink. Theres a CPU fan. But in some laptops theres a secondary fan or heatsink in the laptop somewhere else. I dont know if mine has the secondary fan or heatsink.

Ben Cebhrem · Post by **Ben Cebhrem** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 2:22 pm

HotDog-Cart wrote:You misread what I said man. Theres no CPU heatsink. Theres a CPU fan. But in some laptops theres a secondary fan or heatsink in the laptop somewhere else. I dont know if mine has the secondary fan or heatsink.

If there's no CPU heatsink, you'd have one dead CPU, and likely the whole board would be dead as a consequence as well. It wouldn't be a standard heatsink, more of a plate, with fins further down from the CPU's location, and the fan blowing on the fins. I wish I had a picture of a laptop CPU heatsink to show you what I mean by that.

Short of hacking apart a USB cable and using a battery connected to the 5v line (above 5v, not exceeding 10v), there's little you can do with the cooling pad, other than getting a new one. It may be possible to open it up, and physically reverse the fans so that they blow in the opposite direction though.

EDIT: Forgive my hotlinking, please, but I found some pictures of what I mean here, here, and here. You'll notice that they are rather flat in two of the pictures, and lead to an area that has fins. There's a small contact area for the CPU die, in order to pick up the heat, and in most cases (and I would bet yours as well) they use sealed copper pipes with a liquid inside to transfer the heat from the CPU die ultimately, to the fin area, where the fan blows the heat out.

HotDog-Cart · Post by **HotDog-Cart** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 7:11 pm

Oh yea. My laptop has one of those. I remembered seeing one when I popped it open.

When I first turn on the laptop, the moment it gets to the desktop, it shows the temperature as: 50 degrees celsius. Is that high for a desktop idle when only being on for about 1 minute? When NOT playing a game it does NOT exceed 60 degrees celsius. But when playing a game it goes up to 75ish degrees celsius.

Hmm, do you think hooking a 9V battery up to the cooling pad through USB, would be fine?

Ben Cebhrem · Post by **Ben Cebhrem** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 8:20 pm

I think hooking up 9v would be fine, but make sure it only goes to the fan. I've hooked up 18v to a regular desktop PC fan, and had no issues before.

Those temps are a bit high, aye. I recommend taking the heatsink off, cleaning the contact area (where it contacts the CPU) with 90%+ isopropyl alcohol, and applying new thermal paste. If you've never done it on a regular computer though, it can be quite daunting to do it on a laptop, I have to admit.

HotDog-Cart · Post by **HotDog-Cart** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 11:02 am

I work at a PC store. Ive done it many times. Its easy.

How could I make sure that the 9v only goes to the 2 fans, and not the other USB port?

mothatrucka · Post by **mothatrucka** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 12:06 pm

Out of curiosity, is there enough space in this cooling pad to add a battery and a switch inside? Personally, I'd take the fans off the USB cord and just let that pass through to the other outlet. Then, the fans can just be powered by the battery.

Just a thought for you to consider.

HotDog-Cart · Post by **HotDog-Cart** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 12:19 pm

Well, I was planning just to have a battery holder, with + and - ends. and then putting a 9v in it. Then, taking the ends in the holder and soldering them to the USB cord.

But I need to know this:

How could I make sure that the 9v only goes to the 2 fans, and not the other USB port?

(I dont want to overload anything that would be plugged into the other USB port. AKA my USB soundcard, or my mouse. So, I would need to supply the 9v to the fan and then somehow supply the other USB with only 5v out of the 9v.)

Or, it may just be easier not to plug anything into the other USB slot. ahaha, and use the Other 3 slots that are availiable on my laptop.

mothatrucka · Post by **mothatrucka** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 12:23 pm

Why can't you just throw a 7805 in there? They're small, and work on 9V. I may have an extra, if money's the issue.

Post by **bicostp** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 12:26 pm

Or why not detach the fans from the USB port and give them an independent power supply?

Ben Cebhrem · Post by **Ben Cebhrem** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 9:18 pm

Good points above me, but using a 7805 in conjunction with a 9v (to get 5v I presume) wouldn't make much sense to me.

Cracking it open, and running the fan power wires seperate from the USB ports is one way to do it. Another is to splice a USB cable, and hook it up that way- since you won't then be using the USB port from your laptop to power the fan, there shouldn't be any issue on doing it this way anyhow (might be better for long term to splice a USB cable onto a 4 or 6 AA battery holder, using rechargeables), or to splice the USB cable into a power adapter even, as a long term solution- using a 9v battery would be more of a temporary situation as a quick try to see if it would work, as a 9v battery doesn't provide much in the way of long term power for a fan, though it can start it up. Using rechargeables, and having a spare at all times would work though, in my opinion.

HotDog-Cart · Post by **HotDog-Cart** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 11:13 pm

What would be stronger? 6AA's or a 9v? (I dont feel like doing math. Im having heart pains, AGAIN.)

Ben Cebhrem · Post by **Ben Cebhrem** » Sat Aug 16, 2008 12:06 am

I'd say the 6 AA's over time, given their amperage rating. 9v batteries just don't have a lot to them; in essence, they are 6 AAAA batteries wired in series. I can attest to the amperage of a 9v starting up a fan though; I mentioned I overvolted a fan earlier, and all I did for that was use two 9v in series to do so. It worked faster, and not much louder, but I wouldn't count on it being an overly reliable source for long periods, especially if you use this laptop a good deal over the course of a day.

Say, were you a regular over at the Sudhian forums? Your name and avatar really seem to click for me.

And uh... take some aspirin man. Heart pains can't be good.

HotDog-Cart · Post by **HotDog-Cart** » Sat Aug 16, 2008 9:52 am

Haha, I'm not. Never heard of sudhian.

Also, yea I just have hypertension and such.

So, your sure that 9v of power and however much amps 6AA's gives, wont burn out my fan?