EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Electronics => Beginners => Topic started by: L3P3 on September 20, 2020, 10:30:55 am
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Hello, first post. Be aware that this can probably be deemed as hacking. ;)
A year ago, I've found a Packard Bell KAYF0 in a dumpster. I was happy to see it had a dedicated graphics card which means that "in theory" I could upgrade it.
I went on ordering a much much better and bigger card. https://www.ebay.de/itm/254399734398 (https://www.ebay.de/itm/254399734398) I had to remove a little plastic pile off the housing and then it fitted in just fine. And it even works -- almost perfectly. But after some minutes of very graphics-intensive gaming, the machine turns off, obviously it is some thermal issue. If I limit the CPU to minimal frequency, it does not turn off and I can also play with pretty good settings.
The graphics card gets cooled by a copper bar which is interconnected with a heatsink at the back of the device. The previous card had the same main chip location (appears to be part of the graphics card form factor spec) so the heatsink fits almost perfectly mechanically. The inductor coils and the memory ICs on the original card had an additional metal plate attached to the copper bar but this plate did not fit since the secondary components on the new card have different locations.
So the current situation is: The new card is just mechanically attached to the heatsink on its main IC. The inductors and other ICs on the graphics card are just very passively cooled by some little airflow, there is a small air slot on the opposite end of the housing.
I have the suspicion that the machine turns off because the other components on the graphics card get too hot.
Now my question: Is there any thermal compound / gue I could put on the entire card to thermally link all components together to the copper bar at the core? Would this make sense? I would give it a try if there is something like this and you think that this may help. It is really cool to play somewhat modern games in high settings on a 2010 notebook. ;)
Thanks a lot for anything.
L3P3
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Thermal compounds , glue and pastes only transfer heat in very small distances by filling in the very small gaps , which transfers heat more effectively from component to heat sink . They don't dissipated heat very well in large globs but in fact can do exactly the opposite. Metal transfers heat much much more effectively . What you can do is attach small heat sinks to the other components or modify heat sinks that attach the components to the heat pipe (Bar) . Better if you can attach the modified heat sinks to the heat pipe with low temperature solder .
Aluminum will not solder so use copper heat sinks it you intend on soldering to the heat pipe.
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That helped a lot already. Thanks.