6kd's Vid Card Heat Mod

Not the best but its given me great results.

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for any mistakes caused by this. Do this at your own risk. Newbies, please don't even try to attempt this..

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The tools -

1) Screwdriver
2) Flathead Screw Driver, Small one (or whatever you have to remove the weird shaped screws on the video card heatsink)
3) Metal Plates. (I used aluminum, you can use copper or any other kinds)



The plates are most likely 1.25" in length and .25" in width. I'm not sure about the size because I forgot to measure them when I had it taken apart. But the rough size should be 1.25" x 0.25". Nothing thicker then 3 layers of printing paper

Note: NO GLUE IS INVOLVED WITH THIS. NO GLUE NO GLUE NO GLUE. I know the 8600 heatmod involved gluing the copper to the heatsink but not this

First off, take apart the laptop using this guide:
http://support.dell.com/support/edoc....htm#wp1000139

This guide should take you to the steps where you have your palm rest completely removed so you would have easy access to the heatsinks.

Next, remove the video card. Unscrew these two screws to remove the video card. It took me 15 minutes to realize the second screw.



Afterwards, the video card should come off without any trouble. There is no screws on the top section of the video card.



I used a flathead screw to remove the heatsink but you can use other tools also. I couldn't find a good shaped tool but it worked for me.



Note: Your video card would look a little bit different than the pic above. This is because I took the picture after I've done this mod the first time. The black areas SHOULD have the dell original heatpad, a blue mushy stuff. Remove it. On the video card die, it also should have one, remove that also but be careful of the side of the pad. The side (black stuff around the die) is basically a very light layer of some type of tape and it is very easily removed. You don't want this removed

Now, put AS5 (recommended) or any other good thermal compounds. The pics currently shown is not AS5 (hence the color difference) but it works pretty good for me. (ran out of AS5... too lazy to goto the store) Put thermal compound and spread it out so they make a layer only on the black drawn areas in the pic. Advanced users should know this already.



Afterwards, put the metal pad on (copper works best but I used aluminum. I basically cut a piece of the PCI card cover off and used that.) After the pads are placed (DO NOT GLUE) put more AS5 on the top of it. Make sure the pad's upper side (the part that touches the heatsink) is filled with AS5 and spread out.



After that, put the heatsink back on. No metal pads is used for the GPU's core here because theres not enough room to stick a thick pad of copper or anything on the video card. There is a way to put a very thin piece of metal plate or foil on it but I haven't tried it yet.

Put the system back together and test. I have gotten 0 errors from this and the system has booted up every time with no problems.

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Any mistakes, problems, or anything else, feel free to yell at me about it

This mod has brought my temps down dramatically. My GPU currently idles below 35 deg C. Under gaming with max fan, the GPU still remains under 35 deg C. With slow fans, the temps reach a top of 50 deg C. On morning boot up, the GPU usually stays under 25 deg C for nearly 30 minutes unless i'm using the system to do any high end work.

yeah, i know. When i first did it, i was like "big deal, all i need is power not worrying about heat" but after I did it, my clocks went WAYYY up without artificats or problems. It may vary between systems but I got near 20-50 mhz increase in core and 10-30 mhz increase in mem. It may not seem a lot but I haven't tested it long term though

my 128 shows as 128

I use i8kfangui to monitor temps and i basically use trial and error on clock settings. Since I play X3 most of the time, i usually have the game running 24/7 for several days (sometimes).

Here's a pic of the temps, 2 hours after i put as5 on not completely idle, just chatting. I purposly left the fan off during the 2 hrs.



just tested a few runs in F.E.A.R... most stable clocks are 447/349.. I got it upto 455/355 but it gave artifacts after 10 minutes. At least my temps are down, i'm glad for that.