Cooling system for poor laptop?

[king156]

Hi first post. I put it in the systems category because I could not find a cooling category.

Anyways I have a dell inspiron i5 with a dedicated gpu and when I play games such as gta iv it gtes very hot and shuts down after about 30/40 minutes of gaming I know its a heat issue as it just shuts off and my laptop is very hot too touch. So I am wanting to make a homemade laptop cooling pad I was thinking of buying 3 120mm 12v fans and putting them onto acrylic or something similar and maybe soldering a switch on or something but I am unsure on how I would power these fans do I need a separate psu? I don't want it to be battery powered as I need it lasting all the time or could it be usb powered also it needs to be small enough to be portable any ideas anyone. Much appreciated

 

[biflash]

try cleaning it first, its probably full of dust, one way to do it without opening is using your vacuum cleaner for short bursts on the entrances and exits of your laptop so it sucks the dust, this while the laptop is on so the fan is moving and it doest get stuck.

 

[hans_pcguy]

You wont find the kind of power you need to run two 120mm fans from your laptop. Depending on the voltage of your ac adapter you might be able to run those fans in series to reduce the voltage to both and run them from directly tapping into the ad adapter. You will need a little expertise in wiring\soldering to do it. HOWEVER, like biflash says, you can clean the laptop. You can do this by just trying to suck the dirt out of the out vents on the laptop OR you could open the laptop and clean it that way. If you did the latter, you could then also modify the heatsink to work better. On the older laptops, going back to P3's and P4's many of the cooling systems had to be modified because they were inadequate. Check youtube for your particular model. There might be a walk through tutorial on how to do it.

 

[Eximo]

Quick and dirty. While it is off, If you can see the fan blades jam something in there so it can't spin, then take a vacuum cleaner and see what comes out.

There are plenty of youtube videos out there on Dell products, particularly inspirons. Removing the heatsink for the GPU and CPU (usually one piece) is very easy on a lot of them. Cleaning it and the CPU and GPU themselves and reapplying new thermal compound can make a huge difference.

When the fan is removed give it a spin by hand, if it feels rough it needs to be replaced.