4 ms·

I did this for my younger sister's first computer. We didn't have a lot of expendable cash, so I took my old laptop, stripped the motherblard out, mounted it on

I did this for my younger sister's first computer. We didn't have a lot of expendable cash, so I took my old laptop, stripped the motherblard out, mounted it on a makeshift open-air rig, and hooked it up to a second-hand monitor (laptop screen was irreparably broken). Served her well for three years or so.

d3nj4l 6y ago
How did you get good contact with the CPU die? I've considered an open air setup even before I had a backup PC to be bold with the laptop, but I wasn't sure it could cool the CPU.
- moftz 6y ago
  It won't be pretty but if you can access the CPU from the top or bottom, you can strap a desktop heatsink down with zipties running both ways around the laptop.
  - rolleiflex 6y ago
    I did this with a 2015 MacBook Pro, because I needed it to go full tilt and didn’t want it to throttle. https://twitter.com/nehbit/status/1243329494481432581?s=21 https://twitter.com/nehbit/status/1243329494481432581?s=21 In my case, the weight of the fan connected to a 12v motorcycle battery was enough to make it not throttle at indefinite 100% load, I didn’t have to zip tie anything. Mind that I did not remove the existing fans, just used thermal interface material on top of the existing heat sink, add some salvaged aluminium passive cooling sinks on top, and then on top of that, have the fan screwed into an Amazon shipping box so that the fan blades didn’t hit the sinks.