Laptop Cooling Tray

With the help from other instructables I wanted to create one describing what I did to stop the ever frequent blue screens and retail techies trying to sell me a solution for $100+...Anyways here is my cooling solution.

Sorry about the pictures half way through the project. The camera was in storage and couldn't get to it until half way through :S

Step 1 Brain storming

I think this is one of the hardest steps in this project. Trying to figure out the design and hold to build it and hunting down the materials. I found online that there were many shapes, sizes and prices of cooling trays. Nothing really jumped out at me and the comments from users were 50% yah!~ and 50% nah.

So I ended up walking around the house checking out this and that. When I came across the fireplace grate I thought that would work the best and it had a simple design. :) Grate it is.

I scrounged round the house and gathered some old copper tubing from an old plumbing project. Found all kinds of shelving, scrap wood and other planks from various home improvement projects that my roommates had done.

I didn't technically measure how high I wanted the grate to sit from the base board so I did it the good old fashion way...Eye balled it and figured I was going to put som fans in there (80mm computer case fans).

Comments

[MadCow2007]

Hmm I guess it is a bit ghetto / poorly thrown together looking at if from someone elses eyes. But its my baby and it does its job really well. I plan on decorating it. Perhaps crayons and paint. Make it look professional ;) Bamboo and rope aye? It would be like the Swiss Family Robinson's made it. lol. That actually would be fun to make. I have another tray in progress. Its a passive cooling system. Just as ghetto but without the soldering. Took the heat sinks from 2 pentium 2 CPU. Oh yah! Still have more copper tubing. Fun stuff.

[mbainbridge]

have you looked at the laptop trays on www.essentiallaptopaccessories.co.uk
or the ones on www.elaltd.co.uk they are fantastic i play online games and had two blown laptops now i have a lap-surfer i game in comfort and am protected from over heating and skin cancer

[red-king]

its like a big heatsink screwed onto a board with fans on it... lol but it works anyway

[Sinner3k]

It might not be pretty, but if it gets the job done, that's what counts. I'm working on a similar project (design-check, materials-check, build time-not so fast there pal!) and hope to get it done before the next semester starts. And a bamboo/rope/coconuts laptop stand would be awesome in a "Professor from Gilligan's Island" kind of way. -S3K

[bleachworthy]

LOL!! good design, poor construction, nice instructable. at first it looked like you made it from bamboo and hemp rope (if I make it, I'll use those materials).

[Tool Using Animal]

This is so ghetto.. Love it.

[mrmath]

If it's still under warrenty why not have them fix the speaker? I used to have real problems with my IBM T41 overheating. IBM has a grid computing program they want us to run (I'm an employee) that takes up the unused cycles of the CPU. Think SETI@Home, only to find the cure for cancer and other stuff. I had that running on my T41, and didn't think about it at all. I had to get a cooling tray for $30 because the laptop was over heating. It didn't work. I had IBM replace the laptop. The new one over heated too. I was getting close to burning my legs if I used it on my lap. I turned off the grid computing thing, and I stopped having the over heating problem. Just like that.

[Spectrace]

@mrmath was the thing you were running by any chance called "Folding@Home" ?

[mrmath]

Nope. It was World Community Grid. A great cause, but it was killing my laptop, so it had to go.

[MadCow2007]

Well The ultimate reason why I don't get the speakers fixed is because I have a hard time waiting 4 weeks to have gateway handle it. I'm not at all impressed with the service gateway provides. Perhaps its because I got the laptop through a retailer. The laptop will be in use in a couple weeks and I can't afford to not have it for the start of the school year. Besides after doing this project I'm sure I can fix the speakers myself. The grid computing is an interesting ability. It sounds similar to Sun Unix machines. If one sun machine is crunching away at a process it will call up other idling machines to help out. I'm not sure if my laptop has something like that running. I should look into that. Thanks for the comment. :)