Custom Laptop Cooling Tray.

[Ragnaraz]

Ok, so I've been looking at laptop coolers for a while as I'm thinking of getting a gaming laptop.

General opinion is you can shave up to 5 degrees on temps, but when you're running fans from a 5v USB you aren't going to get much airflow. Which is fairly understandable, even more so if you have 3-6 fans running on that 1 port.

I got to thinking, if I made myself an elevated base and used a couple of 12v 140mm case fans they're likely to shift more air than a generic USB tray. Making it myself means I can put them directly where my intakes will be too. A dust screen here... voltage adjuster there... I have a cooling tray better than on the market. I could use a foam gasket to help seal against the bottom of the laptop for more optimal airflow through the machine.

Here in which I find myself wondering about a few things.
1. Aren't most case fans these days pullers rather than blowers, so would I still get the air flow I desire from these fans?
2. I'm aware that pushing too much air when not needed is bad for the fans in the laptop, hence the adjustability I have in mind. Would not having a gasket be better so any unwanted air pressure can escape?

Any other ideas and input would be appreciated. It's all thoughts for now, but I do love a good project.

 

[pp111]

I think case fans would be the wrong choice in that I think with all the bits inside a laptop, you need pressure more than anything, so pressure fans would be the answer. Also the fans inside the laptop usually spin very fast so I unless you are really forcing masses of air in I don't think you are going to harm them. You can buy very simple fan controllers that you could use. The one issue you may find is you want a non-pwm pressure fan, and those are pretty hard to find. So my choice here would be to get one or two high pressure pwm fans with a ( slightly more expensive ) pwm fan controller. I think Noctua make one. I wonder if you could get away with one 8" noctua fan??

 

[Ragnaraz]

@pp111 Excuse me being a little dense on the topic, what counts as a pressure fan?
If you could be so kind as to point me in the direction of one I'd be eternally grateful, as if you search for things, you usually get anything but the thing you're after.

I was looking at a few Noctua fans, I even saw a rather large 230mm one. My main draw for the 140mm is I can aim them directly at the intakes. As having a fan blasting at a solid surface would create a back pressure I would have thought. There was another custom one someone made that could get 15v through a USB, it drops the amps though. That said, I dunno if it was an inverter of sorts (if that's the name for them) or just basically over drawing on the USB. Any half decent fan costs a fair bit these days, ridiculously so if you want all the silly RGB crap in it.