Haggis Veteran Posted July 5, 2013 Veteran Share Posted July 5, 2013 Hey guys, my laptop is about 5 years old I am not going to buy a new one before anyone suggests it It gets quite hot when playing games i was going to buy a cooler then thought why not try a little diy lol so i am going to add two fans or one big fan to the table itself i will then be rubbing all the table down and varnishing it again i want to connect them to a usb port or two pon my laptop to help with cooling 1. Does anyone have any suggestions 2. whats the nest way to connect these obviously normal desktop case fans need more power than usb can provide little picture of what i mean Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Som Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 you could try one of these.... http://www.northstatehc.com/store/sc_images/products/3576_large_image.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phouchg Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 You'll have to find ones that will start up with 5 volts - not all of them do. Apart from that question one USB port can output maximum 500mA @ 5V. Fans will usually have their amperage for +12V written on the sticker. By P = I * U we get that a single USB port can do a maximum 2.5W. If a fan runs, for example, 0.15A @ 12V, then it wants 1.8W and one such fan can thus be powered from USB. Pick apart USB cable, red is +5V and black is ground, the other two - data+ (green) and data- (white) - don't touch those, connect only power and you're good to go. The only way to double the current would be to connect in parallel, like many actual USB devices do - they have two cables or one with two plugs, but you'd run out of USB ports pretty quick that way, right? ...although it's easier to get a $30 laptop cooler. Better looking and way less prone to have a short circuit and kick out your USB ports. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted July 5, 2013 MVC Share Posted July 5, 2013 "my laptop is about 5 years old" Why do people waste time with such hardware?? My laptop at work was less than 4 years old, and it was painful to use with just email and work stuff, visio documents, etc. Finally got a replacement, its night and day... I can not image trying to play any sort of current game on 5 year old hardware ;) Your time and money would be better spent researching what you can get that is current that falls into your budget if you ask me.. Money spent of fans, time spent on varnish ;) Or a cooling pad for $30 would make more sense put towards current hardware - be it that is not what you want to hear or not. +Frank B. 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Fahim S. MVC Posted July 5, 2013 MVC Share Posted July 5, 2013 "my laptop is about 5 years old" Why do people waste time with such hardware?? My laptop at work was less than 4 years old, and it was painful to use with just email and work stuff, visio documents, etc. Finally got a replacement, its night and day... I am with you (my 4 year old laptop got upgraded at work and my boot time went from 10 minutes to about a minute) but it is surprising how much performance you can get from a machine by adding an SSD, as much RAM as it will take and a clean install of Windows 7/8 as long as you use it basic browsing and e-mail although a chromebook would probably cost less and give you better performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rsrcomp Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 Find an old power supply and fix it to the underside of the table and connect the fans to that. No need to modify anything. A 100 watt PSU is more than enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
papercut2008uk Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 since it's an old laptop, i would try modding the case, cooling pads dont really make much diffrence. some people cut a hole out under the fan so there is unrestricted airflow through it, it will look bad, but usually works well. locating the fan inside the laptop, cleaning it might work better than a cooling pad/fans under the laptop aswell, you really dont need the fans (unless the bottom of the laptop is all mesh, and the airflow will be directly cooling the internal components), all you need is a flat surface to place it on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haggis Veteran Posted July 5, 2013 Author Veteran Share Posted July 5, 2013 its a Intel® Pentium® Dual CPU T3400 @ 2.16GHz 4gb ram why bother upgrading if its not needed? For the other guys that stayed on topic thankd for your replies and i will look into the fans that only need 5v :) never thought about a small power supply either but would like to try and stay away from needing a 2nd power source :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+LogicalApex MVC Posted July 6, 2013 MVC Share Posted July 6, 2013 Of course, I agree with BudMan. You should probably upgrade the machine... That being said, was this machine always overheating or running hot in these situations? Even when new? If not, you can probably save all of the money and time doing some external cooling device and just open it up and clean out the dust that has clung to everything. Dust acts like a blanket and traps heat onto the hardware causing it to overheat when it otherwise wouldn't. Additionally, if you don't clean it off regularly it will start to cling to the hardware making it harder to remove later (like now). More than likely you'll get a far better ROI by just cleaning the hardware and putting any money spent towards a true upgrade. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haggis Veteran Posted July 6, 2013 Author Veteran Share Posted July 6, 2013 It only ever gets hot when playing flash games or java games everything else runs fine and does not get overly hot including video encoding and image processing etc I have already looked at taking it to bits and cleaning stuff but to get to the fans you need to basically remove everything first (very bad design) The money spent on doing this to the table will be a grand total of ?0 I already have spare fans, i have spare usb cables, i have the table and i have the varnish Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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