# Adding Heatpipes to a Richland Laptop



## NamesDontMatter (Jan 28, 2014)

Hey everyone, so I have a good old, Asus K55n right now as a primary computer. Not the ideal gaming computer by far, but it has enough umph to make games playable at 1680x1050 (900p). I'm trying to mod this to hold me over until I build a mini-itx gaming/CAD/Design pc. 

*Current Hardware:*
I've already swapped in the following components: 16gb DDR3 1800mhz, Crucial 128gb m4 SSD,  A8-4550m to a a10-5750m, and I've upgraded from the wimpy 65 watt power supply to an Asus 120 watt Power Brick. I've also added an ultra quiet AC Infinity AI-MPF120A Quiet 120mm usb fan to the equation positioned right under neath the laptop while at home (on overclock settings). 

*Current Mods:*
As far as mods so far I've bent the stock laptop heatpipe slightly to put more pressure on the processor and some pressure on the northbridge (previously had no contact with northbridge). And added a little artic silver and I'm able to hit 1050mhz on the gpu (from 720mhz stock). And I've also cut a few vents into the laptop immediately below the stock cooling fan (previously had inadequate ventilation to the intake of fan). 

However because of the insanely high stock voltage the motherboard pumps into the gpu 1.175 I can actually clock up to 1300 mhz easily and stable (no artifacts) on stock volts, but right now I'm hitting the throttle temperature limits while overclocking that much which means the only thing I can do is improve the cooling to maximize performance. 

*Cooling System Upgrades:*
Most people would stop there and give up and say and so is the limitation of laptops with tiny heatsinks. Now it seems like alot of let me just call it "entry level" modders add in heatsinks all over the heatpipe + backside of the copper chip. 

(What Not to do Example 1)






Which seems really silly because now your adding heat to the unintended areas of the laptop. And your really not doing anything other than adding mass.

(what not to do Example 2)
I've also seen other poor attempts to use heatpipes like this: 





SO it seems like few people get it correct for a tried and true method of improving a laptops cooling. 

*My Planned heatpipe Mod:*
But I'm thinking with a little ingenuity I can add a second (and possibly third) heatpipe to the equation to help get more of the heat outside the laptop. 

My top 2 goals are 

1) not to compromise portability (everything must stay in the case) 
2) Maximize airflow and Maximize surface area under airflow without constricting too much airflow.​
I've already ordered (2) additional k55n stock heatsinks/fan combos(so I don't have to chop up my stock one) and (2) k60ij heatsinks (for the heatpipes) all for less than $15.00 USD shipped, which is cheaper and easier than ordering heatpipes elsewhere, so now I have lots of heatpipes at my disposal!. 

My first plan is to utilize the two k55n heatsinks and combine them into one heatsink, one will be my new master heatsink, and the second I'm going to remove from the fan assembly, cut off the cpu copper pad, and attempt to fit as much of the full heatsink inside the fan assembly (even if its severly trimmed down fins). If I can do anything with even one the k60i heatsinks thats just gravy, but those cost me $5.00 total between the two of them, so I'm not too worried about actually using them. 

*Ideal "wiring" Plan:*




I'm hoping to keep at least some of the fins on one of the pipes and I'm thinking for the other from the k60i I may be able to cut the fins off and attach it to the stock pipe (which is attached to the stock radiator). I also have some copper ramsinks I could add into the equation, but I feel like putting these anywhere near this setup will just constrict airflow in the tiny area even more, so I might be best to keep as many aluminum fins attached to stock heatpipes as possible. 

Derivative plan (use up more room in the fan):





I'm pretty sure I can make either version work, I think its just a matter of mass, vs airflow. What do you all think?

*Lapping the heatsink:*
Wet Sanding the heatsink is so easy I might as well do it to improve efficiency. I plan to do this before adding the other heatpipes

*Void Filing: *
I'm also planning to fill gaps with artic silver alumina
-gaps between fins and heatpipes.
-gaps between heatpipes and other heatpipes. 


*Question about modifying a laptop intake/exhaust fan?*
Now I noticed that nearly all laptop fans are blower fans that exhaust air out the top(into the laptop) and out the side (exhaust). My question is why do they exhaust out both the top AND sides? My most reasonable guess is that the air is also vented into the laptop to stimulate SOME cooling over the motherboard/components. But I'm thinking this is unnecessary if I have a 120mm fan blowing over the other internals and I have some additional air vents cut into the bottom side of the case. 






So Would it be reasonable to cover the exhaust that dumps air inside the laptop to force all of the air produced by the blower through the heatsink? It seems like the engineers probably intended it to pass through to cool off the chipset, however I'm thinking with ventilation holes drilled in the back cover it might be unnecessary, and I'm thinking it could be better performance wise to button up the hole to improve airflow over the fins. 

Thanks everyone, I'm open to any advice!


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## Mussels (Jan 28, 2014)

you could swap an A8 for an A10? :O

now i wanna upgrade the A6 in my laptop...


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## NamesDontMatter (Jan 28, 2014)

heck yeah, as long as you don't have a llano! llano CANT be swapped to trinity or richland. But any trinity can be swapped with any richland. So if you have a trinity a6 you can grab a a10-5750m and get something MUCH better performing. The only thing I've found is that the a10 richland and trinity chips are power hungry and really need a bigger badder power brick/psu if you plan to do any overclocking.

I really feel like how slow the industry has been to move from DDR3  to DDR4 is whats going to hurt AMD's IGP's once we can get systems running DDR4 or 5, APU's will be doing some serious damage in benchmarks.


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## Mussels (Jan 28, 2014)

NamesDontMatter said:


> heck yeah, as long as you don't have a llano! llano CANT be swapped to trinity or richland. But any trinity can be swapped with any richland. So if you have a trinity a6 you can grab a a10-5750m and get something MUCH better performing. The only thing I've found is that the a10 richland and trinity chips are power hungry and really need a bigger badder power brick/psu if you plan to do any overclocking.
> 
> I really feel like how slow the industry has been to move from DDR3  to DDR4 is whats going to hurt AMD's IGP's once we can get systems running DDR4 or 5, APU's will be doing some serious damage in benchmarks.




i have a llano  so i guess no upgrade for me. agreed on the faster ram, going dual channel kicked my APU up about 15%


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## NamesDontMatter (Jan 28, 2014)

Mussels said:


> i have a llano  so i guess no upgrade for me. agreed on the faster ram, going dual channel kicked my APU up about 15%



Once the Kaveri Laptop Chips come out, thats when itll be time to upgrade laptops, HSA Mantel look awesome, its too bad they sort of crippled the first gen of chips as far as the shaders go though. But the APU's  they are so stinkin cheap, I bought my original laptop for $300.00 last year. Although in my case I'm just going to keep this laptop and build a mini-itx. I think my favorite thing about these APU's is they are pretty good with power efficiency. (Aka you still get battery life vs the discrete graphics card notebooks).


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## v12dock (Jan 29, 2014)

This is awesome, is that thermal paste or are you going to solder the connection between heatpipes?


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## NamesDontMatter (Jan 29, 2014)

Thanks! I actually don't have my soldering tools (in my parents basement lol). I'm going to go with giving the heatpipes a VERY light polish/lap at contact points and then use as thin a layer of artic silver adhesive (8W/m-K) as possible. IMO with soldering heatpipes its a big toss up, the risk of damaging heatpipes that are 2-3mm thick at a max is too big, also soldering can be a complete pain in the ass! I am probably going to loose a bit of thermal conductivity, but I think its the easier path to take and with thin enough layers of Artic silver I should be just fine.

On another note, its going to be interesting working with the fan enclosure, I'm definitely going to need to make the housing larger by bending the metal plates (and/or adding shims and using foil tape to cover the gaps). The bigger I can make it, the less I'll have to cut fins off the slave/secondary heatsinks.


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## Kursah (Jan 29, 2014)

I have been using an Asus K55n-ds81 since August for school and light gaming. It's still got the stock A8-4500M which has been pretty good. I wish I could find the A10 for cheaper...It's 1/2 as much as I spent on this laptop! I'd consider upgrading memory too...still may. For now it's okay...it's not my main rig but I wouldn't mind some more performance from it. I don't think I'd do anything as extreme as what you've done to yours but it's good to see someone out there modding and oc-ing this model.


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## NamesDontMatter (Jan 29, 2014)

Thanks Kursah! The k55n is a fantastic budget laptop. And I would never spend more than $300-$400 USD on a laptop personally because the money is always better spent on the desktops. It makes me weak in my knees when I see somone drop $750-$1,000 for a gaming laptop that can be beat out by a $350 budget gaming pc. Actually thinking about all this has made me wonder how much I've put into the laptop now.

Base Laptop $300 Refurb
Asus Slim Power Brick $50.00 retail (got it for $20 with a amazon giftcard)
16gb Crucial Ram $100.00
a10-5750m $120.00
Crucial M4 $00.00 (swap from old laptop that I gave away to a family member)
1TB HD $00.00 ( swap from old laptop)​
so I guess $550 isn't terrible for the kind of performance I'm getting and the upgrades have made this laptop a very acceptable daily driver. it by far outperforms the Asus UL50 I previously had with a Geforce 210M in it.


As odd as it is WarThunder(new fav game) + Steam Deals and Humble Bundles, actually got me back into all this pc modding, and light gaming. For the past 2-3 years I mostly shifted to xbox 360 for convenience/casual play, but bf4 on xbox 360 pissed me off enough to stop using it. And I was VERY unimpressed with the newest gen of consoles, microsoft dropped the ball on hardware, and sony dropped the ball on improving the dualshock controller enough to get me to buy one. So PC is back where Im at!

I think overall I'm very satisfied with the direction of the upgrades though, War Thunder was barely playable previously at 1680x1050 with the a8 (had to run lower non-native resolution), but after getting the a10 + some overclocking I easily hit 50-60 fps the sweet spot and it looks pretty good.

If I was to do it all over again today, I probably would have gone with the a10-4600m insted of the 5750m, you can grab the a10-4600m's on ebay for around $50 USD and they have roughly the same gaming performance (same shader count, slightly lower clocks) , whereas the 5750ms are 100-130 ish. The 5750m's will be a better pick once the price comes down. But as far as gaming performance goes these laptops really just need a good overclock to the GPU, and a new power supply, and good temps to keep the apu from throttling itself.

Bit of a rant, but some more background I suppose, Can't wait for these new heatsinks to arrive though!


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## NamesDontMatter (Feb 4, 2014)

Just got in all the heatsinks today! Starting to mockup a bit more to meet what I can actually fit in this tiny space!

Salvage Plans for other heatsinks:
My general goal here is to keep one set of fins + its respective heatpipe together, and then seperate another heatpipe from its fins and combine it with the one I'm keeping as one piece. Then snip the extra copper/fins to fitment, some thermal adhesive, and should have a pretty nice upgrade.

So In the end I'm pretty much going to add a second full heatsink, another heatpipe, and tieing them all together at the cpu side and at the heatsink/fins side. I'm a bit hesitant to connect all 3 pipes together to turn them into one, since it will add alot of rigidity using all that termal adhesive.






OEM Heatsink Revised Plans
I don't think I'll be able to bend the part with the fins here without cracking the heatpipe so I may have to just cut to fit. We shall see!


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## SKBARON (Feb 4, 2014)

Keep us posted! I like how you want to mod things, does look like something i'd do if i needed to . Maybe you could heat the heatpipe up a bit and then try bending it?


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## Vario (Feb 4, 2014)

I tried soldering a heatpipe once and it completely collapsed...   Any pro-mod tips besides you are using adhesive for this?


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## ZenZimZaliben (Feb 5, 2014)

Edit..never mind i guess there is a chance the gas will exploded....lol

Acetylene torch on the bend. Keep both ends wrapped in soaking wet rags up to where u want the bend. Heat the outside curve first and apply pressure while heating....works with copper pipes...idk how the gas inside will handle it though. But better than breaking it.


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## NamesDontMatter (Feb 6, 2014)

SKBARON said:


> Keep us posted! I like how you want to mod things, does look like something i'd do if i needed to . Maybe you could heat the heatpipe up a bit and then try bending it?



Thanks I appreciate hearing that! When I try to mod and create things I try and think how they can be done in the best, cheapest, and most efficient ways, and I think if you look the problem at as many angles as possible you eventually find the right path. I've considered heating them, with some low heat in the oven, but I don't think the risk of releasing mystery gasses in my oven is worth it. But to be honest heatpipes are usually very easy to bend slowly with your hands if they are decently warmed up. its always ideal to bend it the least amount possible, but I've actually done "heatpipe mods" on 2 other laptops, where you just bend the heatpipes to fix the way it distributes pressure on the processor, and none of them really required adding heat.




Vario said:


> I tried soldering a heatpipe once and it completely collapsed...   Any pro-mod tips besides you are using adhesive for this?



Yeah I've read that has happened to quite a few people on the pc modding forums, which is another reason I was so weary of soldering(and won't end up soldering anything to a heatpipe). I think its easy to forget that even though artic silver adhesive is only (8W/m-K) its still something like a 300 x better conductor than air. So if you align everything right and it fits flush with a small gap, your really not gaining much through soldering, especially with the risk of damaging the heatpipe.




ZenZimZaliben said:


> Edit..never mind i guess there is a chance the gas will exploded....lol
> 
> Acetylene torch on the bend. Keep both ends wrapped in soaking wet rags up to where u want the bend. Heat the outside curve first and apply pressure while heating....works with copper pipes...idk how the gas inside will handle it though. But better than breaking it.



Haha yeah, thats another reason I want to shy away from adding heat as much as possible, you have exploding pipes, collapsing pipes, cracking them, etc. Too Much Risk!

Other notes/updates:
So I should be able to finally get to work on this tomorrow night or sunday night. Just received my Wiss Metal Master ActionSnips the other day, which should make quick work of the thin heatsink-fins that I may need to remove, and should work pretty well for the relatively thin copper plate. Shouldn't need to break out the dremel for any of this ( I Love dremels, hate grinding metals: dust/smell/fire concerns/inhaling metal particle concerns. etc etc)


Also I think I've figured out how to increase surface area of the new heatpipes making contact with the oem on the pressure plate. Pretty much it just involves trimming less of the pressure plate.






since the original heatsink is actually opposite (the k60i heatsinks are "upside down") I can actually make a better contact area by having some overlap left when I trim the k60i pressure plates. See the diagram above


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## Arjai (Feb 6, 2014)

Very cool!!


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## Mussels (Feb 7, 2014)

make sure you do thorough heat testing and benchmarking before you add the new stuff. we really need a before and after comparison.


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## EiSFX (Feb 7, 2014)

I'm sure if you mean your going to cut the heatpipe or just areas around it. But you can not cut a heatpipe or else it just garbage after that. But i might just be reading it wrong.


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## v12dock (Feb 7, 2014)

That additional heatsink will increase the static pressure I wonder if that fan is powerful enough to push across the fins. Should be interesting its possible the extra heatpipe and fins will draw heat away from the processor and the fan will expel heat at a slower rate giving a minimal affect. Or its possible that the pressure will be to high for the fan to push air over and the laptop could suffer a heatsoak effect. Either way I am extremely interesting in what the outcome is


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## leeb2013 (Feb 7, 2014)

EiSFX said:


> I'm sure if you mean your going to cut the heatpipe or just areas around it. But you can not cut a heatpipe or else it just garbage after that. But i might just be reading it wrong.



yeah, that's what I'm wondering too. Are heatpipes being cut in this process?


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## NamesDontMatter (Feb 10, 2014)

No heatpipes being cut . I would Only be cutting fins.So did my first bout also work and experimenting tonight.

Lapped the new k55n master heatsink base to a 2500 grit mirror (was much more difficult to lap than a desktop heatsink imo because the weight of it isn't above the direction your sanding.)






not perfect but good enough for me!

Comparison old vs new







I also gently Lapped the top of the heatpipe/base plate I'll be attaching the new headpipes to. (pic coming soon)







I also experimented with cutting the fins. My aircraft snips didn't do well and crushed the fins together rather than cutting them(go figure lol) . So I'm picking up a dremel and play-doh. To cut the fins (play-doh recommended by some machinist, in between them to keep them from crunching as I cut them with Diamond cutting discs) . Should make quick work of them. Not sure if I can refrigerate or freeze the heatpipe with play-doh in the fins, would I risk them bursting?  Anyone know?

One of my k60i pipes snapped as I was bending it too much pressure,  so one down.  still got plenty more just need to be more careful.

My new plan is still to use the second k55n heatsink cut the base where it contacts the cpu so that I can fit it to the top of the stock heatsink. And I'm going to cut the fins just enough so that I can fit it in the default housing.







im planning to take temps before and after the swap and after. Going to be running cpu cores locked to 2.5 ghz and over clock gpu to 1025 mhz for testing.


I'm going to do one run with war thunder (real world scenario)


And one 3d mark, while logging temps both runs via amd overdrive

Then I'm going to compare that stock gheatsink with the new modded heatsink . Same 2 runs.

If the extra set of fins causes too much back pressure I can always cut away sections of the fins to allow more flow on through to the main set from the stock heatpipe. It's going to be very tight! But it should all fit. Also keep in mind I've cut holes in the bottom of the laptop to allow for a 120mm fan to blow upward into it the intake air path of the stock laptop fab. (will add picture here) so I have quite a bit of airflow going into it when I'm gaming / overclocking.

I'll also upload the temp logs when they are ready. Data backed testing!


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## NamesDontMatter (Feb 10, 2014)

I think it might also be wise for me to run this with and without the 120mm fan to give us data on how a stock laptop fan will handle the extra static pressure.


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## silentbogo (Feb 11, 2014)

Dude, that's awesome! 
I have a K55VM myself, and fortunately cooling or performance was not an issue so far (Core i7, GeForce GT630M, 8GB RAM). But I was thinking about swapping HDD for SSD, since I don't really use more than 200GB(actively). 

My 630GT can get up to 950MHz from stock ~700MHz, but there was no real improvement past 800MHz GPU / 1000MHz VRAM...
Only furmark gave me maybe another 50FPS in 720p benchmark. Everything else is almost the same: 3DMark, Unigine Heven etc.


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## MrH0lt (Mar 29, 2014)

I have a question. My video is 1 steap from death on my a8-4500m and i want to replace it with a richland preferably the a10-5750m. Will i have to upgrade the heat sink and powerbrick if i am not doing any overclocking? or will some arctic silver and lapping the heat sink be enough?


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## NamesDontMatter (Mar 30, 2014)

MrH0lt said:


> I have a question. My video is 1 steap from death on my a8-4500m and i want to replace it with a richland preferably the a10-5750m. Will i have to upgrade the heat sink and powerbrick if i am not doing any overclocking? or will some arctic silver and lapping the heat sink be enough?



Nah no heatsink upgrade required. And if your not planning to overclock no need for a bigger power brick. The a10-5750m is a good upgrade as long as you don't expect dedicated gpu like performance, but its still a very nice upgrade IMO, well worth the ~100.00.

you don't even need to lap the heatsink, but it would help. Just as a warning its a bit more difficult to lap laptop heatsinks than desktops, because of the way the weight is distributed over the contact plate.


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## Durvelle27 (Mar 30, 2014)

NamesDontMatter said:


> Nah no heatsink upgrade required. And if your not planning to overclock no need for a bigger power brick. The a10-5750m is a good upgrade as long as you don't expect dedicated gpu like performance, but its still a very nice upgrade IMO, well worth the ~100.00.
> 
> you don't even need to lap the heatsink, but it would help. Just as a warning its a bit more difficult to lap laptop heatsinks than desktops, because of the way the weight is distributed over the contact plate.


Have you thought about adding a dedicated card


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## Kursah (Mar 30, 2014)

As an owner of a K55N I don't think that's possible Durvelle...at least with the A8 configuraiton. I haven't seen a report of any K55N's with such an option...


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## NamesDontMatter (Sep 25, 2014)

Okay, so the gains are quite impressive(pictures are crummy and pretty blurry, sorry!). I dont know what was happening with the stock heatsink but I was hitting my thermal margins, And the pc would just reboot while gaming. So I decided it was time to finally finish my mod.

*Picture 1: *The final Product:


Had to cut half the fins off the "2nd"/ top heat-pipe (visually to the right of the top most copper heat-pipe)
The Artic Silver - Premium Silver Adhesive (ASTA-7G) is a bit messy. But it essentially coats all gaps between the upside down heatpipe and the stock setup. Without any contacting the mirror finish bottom of course.
I Also used the Artic Silver to fill gaps between the heatpipes and the fins (I have a feeling this sort of thing is much easier for most laptop users when compared to adding a additional heatpipe.
Removed the Top metal "cage" for the fan, I have a 120mm desktop fan that lines up with my laptop fan heatsink, so the more I can improve flow to the fins the better, and in this case it meant removing the highly restrictive top.







Sidenote, If you perform this mod YOU MUST remove any fins that are outside the stock enclosure or else you could expose the motherboard to unsafe temperatures or direct heatsink contact. I will add better pictures of this once I can tare it down again.









*Picture 2:* Sideview for clearance






*Picture 3: *Ahhhh fits like a glove


cut a large hole (planning to add some wire mesh). 

Had to grind down some of the "Ribbing" on the interior of the laptop for clearance

(not shown) I placed thermal tape below the heat-pipes on the laptop plastic for better thermal protection of the plastic (also all fins are wrapped in heat-sink appropriate thermal tape)






*Picture 4: Ugly but functional*








*Results*
Before: Crashing while gaming at ~720mhz gpu
After: *update* Easily attaining 1.2ghz


*Conclusion:*

This mod is quite a bit of work. But a HUGE improvement for this laptop. Especially with the a10-5750m which seems to run a bit warm. For most laptop users lapping the heatsink and filling gaps between heatpipes and fins is probably much easier and realistic. However pretty cool to be one of the few people out there to pull this off  adding a completely new heatpipe 

I also learned a few tips and tricks about working with heatsinks and heatpipes after all this. So I'll be sure to post them as a follow up.


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## OneMoar (Sep 25, 2014)

I would solder it with pipe solder plenty of flux and a propane torch
AS5 is conductive not something you want around the PCB its also very thin and will ozze out and cause a short


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## NamesDontMatter (Sep 25, 2014)

its not AS5, its ASTA-7G Artic Silver Premium Silver thermal adhesive (its a 2 part thermal epoxy), it doesnt drip. At all. Its solid as a rock. And conducts insanely well.

Also good luck soldering a heatpipe with a propanetorch, I see this advice everywhere on the internet, yet no one ever does it. I have a feeling the reason why is these heatpipes are ridiculusly fragile, especially the ones for laptops.  Its hard enough not to crack them when bending, i can only imagine how sensitive they are to extreme heat like that. I imagine it would collapse within seconds making the heatpipe useless.


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## OneMoar (Sep 25, 2014)

NamesDontMatter said:


> its not AS5, its ASTA-7G Artic Silver Premium Silver thermal adhesive (its a 2 part thermal epoxy), it doesnt drip. At all. Its solid as a rock. And conducts insanely well.
> 
> Also good luck soldering a heatpipe with a propanetorch, I see this advice everywhere on the internet, yet no one ever does it. I have a feeling the reason why is these heatpipes are ridiculusly fragile, especially the ones for laptops.  Its hard enough not to crack them when bending, i can only imagine how sensitive they are to extreme heat like that. I imagine it would collapse within seconds making the heatpipe useless.


I have  done it you definitely need to manage the heat properly you also need to use 63/37 solder
its actually not the copper you need to be worried about its the acetone inside acetone auto ignites at about 870F a heatgun with a 375F-400F temp setting is actually what I use ( 63/37 melts at 370F)


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## NamesDontMatter (Sep 25, 2014)

Oh wow thats cool! Thanks for the info. I'm sure its certainly the better route (soldering) for the absolute optimum setup. Since I don't have the tools, I figured lapping contact points between the heatsinks + thermal epoxy was my best bet, and seems to have been a success.

I'm starting to think for heatpipe/sink modding is really more about smart design and following the principles rather than solder (SnPb ~ 50W/m-k) vs thermal adhesive/epoxy  (7.5 W/m-K ). The numbers don't lie thats for sure, but if 8W/m-k is good enough to give contact from a processor ----> a pressure plate. Than its good enough from pressure plate --> pressure plate for me. I'm sure others maye have different needs/standards though.

Basics (am I missing anything here?)
1) each pipe needs to be soldered to fins(check)
2) each pipe needs to be connected to the stock pressure plate. (check)
3) minimize distances for all contact points, and maximize surface area. (check)
4) Lapping / Polishing contact Surfaces (check)
5) just adding ramsinks randomly wont do much lol. 
6) Fill All Voids between pipes and fins you possibly can. (check)

But I've very happy with my gains with thermal epoxy, Since I can max out my chips overclock a better bond wouldn't have done much for me, maybe slightly lower temps, but who knows how many heatpipes I would have killed in the process. lol


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## OneMoar (Sep 25, 2014)

if you wanted to go up a level and didn't care about portability you could go full water cooling
heres how
cut the heat pipes off the existing plate
get some 1/8 copper tubing a lay it down in a spiral on the plate solder it all up and then run the tubing to a pump/rad 
PROFFIT


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## NamesDontMatter (Sep 25, 2014)

good to know but wayyyyy overkill. I definitely need to keep my portability. Once I add the wire mesh to that gaping hole in the bottom, its about as good as back to stock. 

I've always thought laptop + water cooling seems sorta silly, the same way that watercooling a game console is sort of silly. Not much extra HP to squeeze out, with added maintenance lol.


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## zac_drake (Oct 1, 2014)

Finally someone did it! Tell me about temperature difference. Stock vs Mod, how is it?


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## NamesDontMatter (Oct 1, 2014)

It's really difficult in some ways to get consistent temp readings with these chips IMO, because of the "Turbo Feature"

I tend to use this chip in 2 ways.


When working I'm typically doing CPU intensive Tasks, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop (with OpenCL more GPU now though), Many Many Google Chrome Windows, Solidworks, 3D Printing Softwares.
I leave Turbo on and the chip maxes itself out at 1.2 Volts and bounces between 3.2 and 3.5 ghz on all cores, with a thermal margin of about 15-20C.

When I occasionally Game on PC, I switch Turbo Off. Which Locks all cores to 2.5Ghz, and I can take the GPU up to the hardware max of 1.2Ghz (higher than that doesnt actually change the clockspeed anymore).
Previously when i tried to overclock the gpu even 80-150mhz and all cores locked at 2.5ghz the pc would hit the margins and reboot on me. Now Well 1.2Ghz Rock solid speaks for itself.

Something I do want to try is leaving turbo on and seeing how far I can overclock it stable without the performance significantly dipping on the cpu. But the issue is since its an APU when run turbo mode,  and its putting 1.2 volts into the CPU it creates more heat that affects both the gpu/cpu because they are physically IMMEDIATELY next to each other inside the chip. However I feel if I do a few more mods, i might be able to achieve a solid OC + turbo mode without the cpu throttling itself down.

*As far as the temps.*

Turbo Mode:  Idles ~45C load can get up to 55C while maxing: GPu Sort of moves with the CPU temps staying usually 4-5C cooler
Standard No GPU OC:   CPU Idles ~42C load can get to ~52C GPU about the same.
Standard + GPU OC: (I'll have to collect some temp readings on this).



*Also I Don't know if I'm 100% Done yet.*


Part of me is considering adding a small heatpipe or copper bracket to better connect the 2 seperate heatsinks on the Fin side of things. To ensure that the second set of fins is really getting good heat transfer both on the pressure plate and the fin side of things.
I also want to fill a huge void in the stock heatsink where the heatpipe connects to the fins. I have a feeling by "injecting" the epoxy into that location I may see better heat transfer.
Lastly I also want to "seal" the fan enclosure better to make sure the flow is getting sent to the fins. I reused the stock thermal tape in the install, and it was fairly loose fitting.
Also it gives me a better opportunity to take good pictures for you all too 
I would be much more comfortable if I can get the chip down into 30's C something you dont often see with these apu's in laptops. But it's definitely the perfect temp range once your in the 30's.
I need to add in my wire mesh and clean up the hole cut in the bottom, so it looks like shoddy.
I also would like to cut a few slots in the bottom side of the laptop over the cpu pressure plate to possibly get some more breath-ability in that portion of the laptop. 

adding a copper shim / making a pressure plate for the chipset for better contact to heatpipe

adding some foam to the top of the open bottom fan to better seal the airflow into the laptop



some other modding canidates are,


Diagram explaining both:


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## zac_drake (Oct 1, 2014)

Can I ask how did you run your cpu full throttle? Btw, have u ever heard about coollaboratory liquid pro? it's a thermal paste 100% liquid metal alloy and it offers 82 W/(m·K) which is pretty high... the problem is the heatsink that may be a bottleneck of thermal conductivity, not sure if I'm right...


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## NamesDontMatter (Oct 1, 2014)

By default the APU runs in Turbo Mode. But can be disabled in AMD Overdrive.

Coolaboratory liquid pro is interesting, althought im not sure how comfortable I am using a liquid metal alloy on an exposed chip like within a laptop. Especially if it takes 48 hours to harden/set. but its something I'll have to consider/do more research on.


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## Mussels (Oct 2, 2014)

CLP (screw typing that every time) is designed to be permanent, not removed and replaced - also it utterly eats aluminium like it was candy, so its not what i'd recommend for use like this.


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## NamesDontMatter (Oct 2, 2014)

Lol @ CLP. Thanks Mussels your always awesome as usual!

Also I just looked in my box of heatsink parts, and I have 2 perfectly good k55n heatsinks still, so I'm thinking insted of adding a tiny 4" heatpipe to bind the 2 seperate sets of fins, maybe I can bind the fins and add another heatpipe to the pressure plate. I might just have to sand down the extra / overflow epoxy, but that shouldn't be much work.

So instead of adding 1 heatpipe, I think I may go for adding another. Maybe the first ever laptop to go from 1 --> 3 heatpipes ???? With a proper install.


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## GorbazTheDragon (Oct 2, 2014)

Might consider doing this on my MSi GT60, but I still need to fix the crummy VRM on the GPU and get a proper BIOS for OCing the CPU.


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## NamesDontMatter (Oct 2, 2014)

Heck yeah!

All you need is a dremel, some ebay heatsinks(I suggest ~2 spare stock heatsinks depending on how many pipes your looking to add. And possibly an odd sized heatsink if your planning to add a "layer" fins within the fan area like i did.
But just that the  AS permanent thermal epoxy, and a bit of time and planning. Really the worst part is just disassembling the laptop every time to work on it, i think I had to remove something like ~30 screws to get to the heatsink lol.

I really wish I could get some unlocked bios for my k55n to fix my VRAM allocation as well, I have 16gb of ram, and it seems like the default set in the bios is 512mb (and its not adjustable Grrrrrr @ ASUS) and then it seems to overflow to the "shared memory", wheras I've seen with other laptops you can dedicate a slice of up to 2gb in the bios.

Anyone know of any Asus Laptop bios modding pros or services? Also I imagine I need to dump the bios to have them modded properly.


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## GorbazTheDragon (Oct 2, 2014)

I was going to see if I could just get a few plain heatpipes to screw around with in the workshop at school. Heating, bending, soldering, etc. Then again I might not even bother, as this laptop has me up to the neck already, and just get a desktop.

The nice thing about the GT60 is that it is relatively easy to work on, just pop open the hatch, and you already have full access to the heatsinks.

IDK Seems like a whole big fuss to me, mainly the software side, the laptop comes with the stupidest BIOS I've ever seen, and it's such a pain in the arse to flash. I am just not in the mood to go around fixing other peoples screw ups, I just want to get down to my own business. I might just get one of those EVGA add on VRMs and run the GPU off that , It's insanely annoying how much Vdroop the card has (900mV-25-37.5mV droop under furmark at max clocks). But, in that case I might as well just get a good laptop with an actual BIOS, or just do away with the whole laptop thing like i mentioned before.

Otherwise I guess I can just screw around with desktop parts, making strange cooling systems and the such...


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## NamesDontMatter (Oct 3, 2014)

Cool! I can't wait to build a desktop again. Although its a little ways away for me right now, since this thing is doing decent enough in terms of performance to get me by. I'm planning on getting myself another 24-27" monitor, a newer tv since I'm still rocking a 40" 2006 Samsung 720p LCD in my living room, but the Mini ITX box is my third tech acquisition out down the road . 

I almost feel like the sleek & sexiness of a very small PC, outdoes having a monster tower these days. And I Especially since I use a standing desk. This laptop is great and everything, but I've really started to hit some performance walls working in CAD + Illustrator especially if I'm working on really large files it struggles a bit because the AMD APU's are still a bit weak on the CPU side of things. And I'm thinking I'll probably want to run a core-i5 + Nvidia card to get gpu acceleration for illustrator.


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## The Von Matrices (Oct 3, 2014)

OneMoar said:


> its actually not the copper you need to be worried about its the acetone inside acetone auto ignites at about 870F a heatgun with a 375F-400F temp setting is actually what I use ( 63/37 melts at 370F)



I don't understand how it could ignite; isn't the inside of the pipe an oxygen-free atmosphere?  I would think all that can happen is the heat can cause the pressure to build up so much that the pipe would explode.  Something you want to avoid of course, but something not related to the autoignition temperature.


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## GorbazTheDragon (Oct 3, 2014)

NamesDontMatter said:


> Cool! I can't wait to build a desktop again. Although its a little ways away for me right now, since this thing is doing decent enough in terms of performance to get me by. I'm planning on getting myself another 24-27" monitor, a newer tv since I'm still rocking a 40" 2006 Samsung 720p LCD in my living room, but the Mini ITX box is my third tech acquisition out down the road .
> 
> I almost feel like the sleek & sexiness of a very small PC, outdoes having a monster tower these days. And I Especially since I use a standing desk. This laptop is great and everything, but I've really started to hit some performance walls working in CAD + Illustrator especially if I'm working on really large files it struggles a bit because the AMD APU's are still a bit weak on the CPU side of things. And I'm thinking I'll probably want to run a core-i5 + Nvidia card to get gpu acceleration for illustrator.


I was thinking a custom water cooled Silverstone RVZ01


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## LightningJR (Jul 12, 2016)

NamesDontMatter said:


> A8-4550m to a a10-5750m



I hate to resurrect an old thread but I also have a K55N laptop and I bought a A10-5750M to replace my A8-4500M but it will not work. The laptop powers on and the fan spins up but the laptop will not post, the screen stays black and I get nothing. Did you have any issues upgrading the APU?


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## NamesDontMatter (Jul 13, 2016)

No worries at all.

Good news, bad news. Good news is I ran into the same exact issue when I first upgraded with the default bios and I was able to get the a10 apu to work marvelously. The problem is with a particular bios setting, that somehow interrupts the a10 apu from working it's magic. What I had to do to get display to change the bios was the not so much fun task of removing the apu and swap back the original, then adjusting the bios settings. Bad news is I can't remember the exact setting and the laptop is currently disassembled. I want to say it was something like csm, secure boot, or some other setting possibly powerstate related, but I can't recall which exact one.  If you are able to swap back and get to bios take some pictures of bios settings and upload them here, I'd be more than happy to assist in any way I can.


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## LightningJR (Jul 13, 2016)

NamesDontMatter said:


> No worries at all.
> 
> Good news, bad news. Good news is I ran into the same exact issue when I first upgraded with the default bios and I was able to get the a10 apu to work marvelously. The problem is with a particular bios setting, that somehow interrupts the a10 apu from working it's magic. What I had to do to get display to change the bios was the not so much fun task of removing the apu and swap back the original, then adjusting the bios settings. Bad news is I can't remember the exact setting and the laptop is currently disassembled. I want to say it was something like csm, secure boot, or some other setting possibly powerstate related, but I can't recall which exact one.  If you are able to swap back and get to bios take some pictures of bios settings and upload them here, I'd be more than happy to assist in any way I can.




That would be great. There's no problem swapping since I already have the A8 put back in.  The BIOS is very lackluster, I am pretty sure I changed everything already but I'll get some pics up as soon as I can for sure, I would really love to get this A10 working.


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## LightningJR (Jul 13, 2016)




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## NamesDontMatter (Jul 13, 2016)

I feel like theirs a secure boot option lurking somewhere in there. You may need to disable UEFI because of apu swap , but I'm not seeing any clear bios settings to do so. I may have to break out my laptop and reassemble it to see what I had running. 


Whats under "USB Interface Secuirty?", Also Any other sub panels you didnt share? Like anything inside of boot settings on a per drive basis? It looks like you posted all of them but I'm feeling a bit stumped. 

Also it may be worth trying to disable "Power Off Energy Saving", may be worth a shot disabling pxe as well via the network stack options. I don't feel like I'm seeing the problematic setting though, those are just some ideas.


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## LightningJR (Jul 14, 2016)

Disable UEFI? If you're referring to how Windows is installed in UEFI mode, that was an option I tried after the fact in hopes it would get the A10 working. If you're referring to an option to "Disable UEFI" then I am blind, I don't see it.

The USB Interface Security has "USB Interface", "External Ports" and "CMOS Camera" in it with the same options as the I/O Security, UNLOCKED or LOCKED. It's why I didn't include it.

The Boot Options #1/2/3/4/etc.. Has the 6 options you see on the boot tab and "Disable"
The separate BBS Priorities has the specific boot option and disable.

I also had the PXE and Network Stack disabled previously, again in hopes it was the issue.

I have not tried the "Power Off Energy Saving" though. Maybe i'll give that a try


I don't think there's any other sub panels unfortunately.

If you could reassemble you laptop that would be great but I get the distinct feeling that you K55N is different then mine in some strange way and it's why I can't get my Richland A10 working.

Would setting an admin password be considered enabling secure boot I wonder? I only ask because you brought up secure boot previously.

Any other help would be appreciated.

Thanks.


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## NamesDontMatter (Jul 14, 2016)

Don't think admin password would be it. Yeah I didn't see a disabe uefi option either. Your bios version seems to be the latest at 2.17, im a bit stumped right now, i know its not fun swapping laptop CPU's . I should be able to get to it tomorrow or friday, doing a little midnight coding atm.


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## M00DLES (Aug 25, 2016)

Sorry to re-resurrect an old thread but I have a k55n as well and am trying to upgrade to a  A10-5750M but having the same problem as LightningJR. Did you ever figure out what the secret to getting this to work is? I have looked all over but cant seem to find an answer for the k55n.
Any help would be appreciated


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## LightningJR (Aug 26, 2016)

M00DLES said:


> Sorry to re-resurrect an old thread but I have a k55n as well and am trying to upgrade to a  A10-5750M but having the same problem as LightningJR. Did you ever figure out what the secret to getting this to work is? I have looked all over but cant seem to find an answer for the k55n.
> Any help would be appreciated



No luck, I returned the APU for a refund, you may have to do the same.


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## M00DLES (Aug 27, 2016)

LightningJR said:


> No luck, I returned the APU for a refund, you may have to do the same.


That sucks, thanks for your response though


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