Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

[PopcornMobo]

I've found only two examples of people water cooling their laptops but they were pretty sketchy.
I'm actually in the process of water cooling my laptop. I'm doing it not because the laptop runs hot but mainly because i like overkill. The laptop only gets up to 75C full load but i want even lower temps, which is why i decided to make a custom water loop for this laptop.
I'm very curious whether or not there are more examples out there of people DIY water cooling their laptops, maybe some that i've missed (i like comparing my projects to others)
Anyways, i'll attach a pic of my custom water block and if you wish to see more you can go to my blog at brimmingideas.blogspot.com .

[eccerr0r]

Re: Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

I think it's kind of ridiculous of sorts - having water cooling sort of defeats the purpose of a machine meant for portability...

[stj]

Re: Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

water does not cool, it moves the heat to a different location where you fit a radiator and fan. (and a pump)

laptops already have that with liquid filled heat-pipes.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

I do wonder about that too, at least the liquid filled heat pipes. Solid ones I get (though the thermal resistance would be quite high, it's still tons better than air), but wouldn't the liquid ones depend on the orientation of the laptop for effectiveness? That would mean it would need to be on stable ground (i.e. desktop machine or server?) to be useful.

[PopcornMobo]

Re: Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

Is water cooling laptops taboo or something? The laptop i'm water cooling i found at the dump and it has no battery so i'm not concerned about the portability of it. For now i have decided to use the laptop as a platform for upgrades and experiments.

[stj]

Re: Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

a fan upgrade would be a better start.

[PopcornMobo]

Re: Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

a fan upgrade would be a better start.

The cooling in that laptop is as good as can be but of course i want to add water cooling just for the kicks.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

A laptop can no longer be called a "laptop" if you have water cooling on it...

[fester]

Re: Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

This is cool idea,i use laptop also as not-portable workstation.After processor upgrade i get little more heat and i upgraded it like you see on the photos.Water cooling? Why not!! I like this idea

[PopcornMobo]

Re: Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

Well, i did some quick flow tests and according to my calculations my CPU temp should be less than 30C on water, that's full load on both CPU and GPU, assuming 60W combined heat output. I might have to add some cooling to the VRM as well while i'm at it. I get about 500ml through the block in about 24 seconds. That gives me 0.048 C/W, and for antifreeze i just guessed a ballpark figure of 0.1 C/W.

[desert-rat]

Re: Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

Fester 6 more posts and you can join us in the vip room .
As the water is only a heat transfer method ,I might use some thing like R134 A . sealed in a coper tube and a remote fan . It does add weight and complexity to the lap top . On a side note when the air cooled v.w. was common . One race was for water cooled cars only . A guy made a set of v.w. heads with a water jacket just to be able to run in that race .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1,1,1,2-Tetrafluoroethane

p.s. when I think of water cooling , I think of a swamp cooler or cooling towers .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower

[eccerr0r]

Re: Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

Getting a flexible tube that can stand the heat and pressure of freshly compressed R134A really means that laptop is no longer a laptop :o However most likely the only way to get below ambient is to use phase change or Peltier...

[petehall347]

Re: Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

could run some cool led lights from peltier module

[PopcornMobo]

Re: Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

not sure why we're talking about sub-zero cooling, all i want is to water cool my laptop. As of now i'm busy making a sensored three phase BLDC water pump, i already have a prototype running with a homemade driver made of discrete components. The pump i used for my tests was just a little brushed motor that was made into a water pump and that is not great since the impeller is shaft-driven and a seal has to be maintained to keep the water from leaking.

[desert-rat]

Re: Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

I would think a wind shield wiper cleaner fluid pump would work . You can get the fans that set under a lap top .

[PopcornMobo]

Re: Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

I would think a wind shield wiper cleaner fluid pump would work . You can get the fans that set under a lap top .

That's actually a good idea, i had a few of those somewhere in the garage. One problem with them is that they're noisy and what i want is a quiet setup. The three phase BLDC pump should be easy enough to make and will be pretty much silent because of the angle that i'll be switching the phases.

[desert-rat]

Re: Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

There is some thing known as a thermo. electric cell . You hook power to it , one side gets hot the other side gets cold . There used mostly for small fridges . One could use one with heat sinks on both sides . The hot side vented away and the cold side vented in to the lap top .

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

The problem with TECs is that they are incredibly inefficient.

[momaka]

Re: Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

Never seen it, but thought about it once (not to do on my own laptop, but just in general).

The way I would do it: make a custom block and somehow attach it to the existing laptop heatsinks so that the laptop can be used with *and* without the water cooling. Then run short pipes from the water block out of the laptop and maybe let them hang in the back. Now here is the cool part, pun intended : get a bucket of cold water, put a pump in it with long flexible hoses, and attach to the custom water block in your laptop. Run the pump with a power adapter and leave it in the bucket, of course.

After few hours of browsing/gaming/computer usage when you go to the bathroom to take a leak (or to the kitchen to grab a snack), take the bucket with you and dump the warm water. If you went to the bathroom, you won't even need to flush your toilet tank! - Just use the water from the bucket. Then put fresh cold water, and you're ready to go back to your computer session.

Need to take the laptop with you? Disconnect water hoses and back you go to air cooling.

Well, I'm sure all of that I typed above is easier said than done. But if I were to do it, that's how I'd attempt it. Otherwise, you might as well take the laptop's motherboard out and put it into a custom enclosure/case and do whatever the heck you want with it (Pizza box or briefcase computer anyone? Oh wait, we had a thread here on that some eons ago ).

Have fun!

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Water cooling a laptop, have you seen it done?

for me, if it was during winter, i'd soak my feet in the bucket of water. that would keep me warm whilst the cold me would cool the hot water down. gotta make good use of every joule of energy there is and not let any go to waste.

remember the physics law and the good physicist's code: energy cannot be created or destroyed. it can only be transferred from one state to another. so time to live physics!

i also saw a listing of a shoebox pc being sold in a local forum here in singapore. i'll post the link n pics if i can ever find it again lol!