self contained USB powered water cooler?

Hudson1984

Hudson1984

Hudson1984

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4 Jul 2013
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139
Hi all,

so I've just bought myself an MSI gaming laptop (the 14" one) it's perfect for my needs. Love it!

only issue is it gets hot real quick, I don't want it to die anytime soon so was hoping to work a cooling system out for it.

When I'm in the living room I put it on a Belkin lapcool thing which certainly helps (especially as I use it on my lap) but it's currently sitting on my desk in my office (still on the Belkin) and i'm seeing around 7deg raise in temp - granted my office is warmer than the lounge as it's just a small box and doesn't take long to warm up.

What I was wondering is if I pull apart the lap cool thing, could I install a water cooled fan and still power via USB?

this would mean i'd be delivering cool air to the laptop and still remain self contained and portable.

any help would be great. I only really play Warcraft! shouldn't really be killing the laptop and i'd like to look at harder games soon so I want the laptop to remain unmelted. having a separate water cooler would be idea, just don't know where to find one.
 
For water cooling to work you'd need a connection to the GPU or CPU directly really and at 5v even close to 2amp you aren't really going to be doing dropping the temperatures much.
 
d_brennen said:
What good would water cooling the fan do? Water is just the medium with which water coolers move heat...
Click to expand...

it's not so much water cooling the fan i'm after it's supplying cooler air to the laptop.

The Belkin thing is largely just an empty box with a small fan inside, I was wondering if it's possible to put a water cooler inside and supply cool air to the laptop fans.

so if I replaced the standard fan with one with a water cooling system my thoughts were it would then be drawing air across the cool radiator to give cooler air
 
Rroff said:
For water cooling to work you'd need a connection to the GPU or CPU directly really and at 5v even close to 2amp you aren't really going to be doing dropping the temperatures much.
Click to expand...

Drat!

essentially i'm just trying to work ways to keep the thing cool.

it's getting to around 75 degs today which to me is too high. I want something for the office that'll keep it cooler - as I said, in the lounge it's fine on my lap and sits happily at 65 deg under load. In here however it's getting too hot.
 
For what you are trying to do you'd need something called a peltier in the mix - and to drop around 100-150watt of heat that way you'd need quite a bit of amperage - beyond what USB can do. (
slightly different application but along these lines)

I'm not a fan of those kind of temperatures either but generally with electronics they go upto around 80C before it starts to significantly affect their lifespan and modern CPUs also stand upto those kind of temperatures.
 
Last edited:
Rroff said:
For what you are trying to do you'd need something called a peltier in the mix - and to drop around 100-150watt of heat that way you'd need quite a bit of amperage - beyond what USB can do. (
)

I'm not a fan of those kind of temperatures either but generally with electronics they go upto around 80C before it starts to significantly affect their lifespan and modern CPUs also stand upto those kind of temperatures.
Click to expand...

ok well in the office I can essentially ditch the lap cooler thing and go for something more elaborate - so if there's an external cooling system or just a bigger dock with massive fans then so be it any advice would be great - even if it's mains fed that's fine, just need something to sit it on while I work.....game lol
 
Blowing cooled air onto a warm and expensive laptop may well lead to you killing it with condensation.

Your best option is stripping it down and reapplying the almost certainly pee poor application of thermal tape/paste that is on the CPU and GPU from the factory but it also runs the risk of you killing it and losing your warranty.
Personally after running a similar system your temps don't sound ludicrous to be honest, compares to a desktop then yes they're higher than what you'd like but this isn't a desktop.
 
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