Asus G50 - 260M Swap Procedure

[dtd00d]

I'm positive the card won't even fit electrically, which means we're looking at the 260m still.

I wish there were some way to modify fan speeds or something. Even if I had an external manual PWM controller for the fan I'd consider the 260m swap.

[ickibar123]

Yea ... I may do the 260m GTX swap a few years down the road if/when I find it dirt cheap but to me it really isn't much of a bump from the 9800gs.

Fan speed - We would prefer to have the fan speed be adjusted automatically .. so we could get a fan controller thing that is designed to fit in a 3.5 inch slot in a desktop and mod it to attach to the laptop somehow..

By a fan controller, I mean a fancy device that comes with at least 2 thermal sensors and one or more fan outputs... and the circuitry would have to run on 5V..
Then we could have the internal fan be controlled by this device somehow and put the thermal sensor on top of the CPU copper and the center of the GPU copper..

But I doubt we could find a 5V desktop computer fan controller.

[dtd00d]

I've been looking into a few PWM setups and so far this solution with a microcontroller is the best I've seen so far:
PWM Fan Controller - Alan Parekh’s Electronic Projects

I would need to adjust the microcontroller's input voltage values to compensate for the internal temperature (it's optimized for a hard drive, which runs from 30C to 50C, and I need to run from about 50C to 105C and measure the heatsink temp, not the gpu temp), attach the temp sensor to the heatsink somewhere, and then wire it to the correct fan terminals. It doesn't seem terribly difficult but fitting everything inside the computer would be a problem. It's the most compact solution I know of.

[ickibar123]

That sound like a fun project! PIC chips are fun.

Yea it isn't like we could have a break board duct/k taped to the lid.
We would need to make a little PCB, some way to secure the chip, ADC and it's connections. Then a DAC for the fan power or something like that.

Our Asus laptop has 2 separate heatsinks. The GPU and the CPU +NB, which is the one that has the fan. The GPU sink lies in front of the fan. It gets whatever cool air is left over after the CPU and Northbridge heatsink has been cooled.

[dtd00d]

I've only heard about the wonders of PIC chips, and color me as an inadequate EE but I've never programmed one (strangely though I've programmed an ARM chip) and I don't have the hardware to do so. But a PCB is something I can solder onto.

Yeah unfortunately after an upgrade, my CPU now gets comparably hot, and the northbridge gets even hotter under an FSB OC (90+C). So both heatsinks are pretty warm for me. I've opened my laptop plenty of times to the point where some of the plastic parts are snapped! :X I've replaced a lot of things on this computer. The poor machine just keeps going. I love Asus.

[ickibar123]

90 C on the CPU!? Even hotter on the NB? That sounds opposite how it should be.
If that is the case, then the air coming out of the fan vent must be hot. I know your fan is running @ 100% because of the motherboard not detecting the temp of the GPU (you are running a 260m GTX right? Your sig. doesn't show that) . I am thinking that there is a contact problem between the heatsinks and the chips.

If your temps are that bad then you probably want to keep the fan @ 100%!

[dtd00d]

It's the northbridge that heats up to 90C+ on stock cooling when OC'd +20%. I have an external cooler that keeps it down in the 70s though. The CPU gets to the mid-80's at these speeds (3.518 GHz). I'm running an undervolted 9800m GS at GTS speeds at the moment, and don't have a 260m to try.

[dtd00d]

Hey all,

I was wondering if anyone solved the problem of the fans running on high all the time.


I got a 260m but haven't installed it yet. I'm preparing a PWM circuit using 555 timers at the moment, and will splice it into the fan cabling to manually control the fan speed. I'll have to get creative on where to place a potentiometer. I'll be getting 4.6V out of a 5V supply at the end of it... can anyone take a stab at what that'll do to the RPMs/cooling?

[killbill]

where can i buy gtx260m for my g50 i was looking ebay and couldn't find it

[dtd00d]

You'll have to wait til one appears on eBay or grab a G51/G60 series and swap the GPU.