Heat Sink Shim Soldering Demo
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 เม.ย. 2017
- If you find this video is helpful, you can send me a small token of appreciation via PayPal: www.paypal.me/MrFoxRox
This is a quick demonstration of soldering a copper shim to laptop heat sinks to help correct poor fit issues. Special thanks to Obsidian PC for the how to tips and special thanks to HIDevolution for providing the P870DM3 heat sink as a test specimen.
Nice video Mr. Fox, definitely appreciate it.
This is so badass, I always did case modding on my laptops for ventilation but honestly never thought of using a Shim!
Hey bro. Nice to hear from you. Yup, still kicking it, but only with desktops for a good while now. I lost interest in laptops around 2015-2016. I am, by all measurements, a novice when it comes to soldering. Heat pipes and heatsinks are really tricky. They are tough to solder because they are made to dissipate heat. I would recommend using the low melt solder paste, clamping everything together to keep the assembly from falling apart, then baking it in an oven so you can control the heat and cooling. I would preheat the oven and only use enough heat to flow the solder. You can see when the solder paste begins to flow and get shiny. If it does not happen you can gradually increase the heat only enough until it does. Once if flows, turn off the oven and allow it to cool down naturally before removing the clamps. If you do not clamp the finned radiators and all of the heat pipes in place everything will fall apart.
Mr.Fox is the best hacker!
Thanks for this, bro.
Dennis Mungai you are welcome, bro. Glad you found it useful.
Alsom can you confirm that both heat sink surfaces (CPU+GPU, in your case) have been soldered with a copper shim? I ask because your other heatsink surface seems modded.
I have nevwr soldered ashim on the GPU heat sink. This would certainly work, but I have not needed to.
Fantastic mod Mr. Fox , brilliant as usual and really useful !
Thank you, bro. :)
What size shim did you use for the 6700k? im not sure iff it only has to match the die size or the size of the entire chip. Thanks for the great video!
mod miiwii - thanks, glad you found the video useful. The shim needs to be the size of the CPU lid or larger for proper contact. If the shim were as small as the die it would reduce contact surface and be less effective. This is not for bare die application. I use a 30mm*30mm square shim. 0.5mm or 1.0mm thick.
can you use pressure tape to see if the contact is more uniform now ?
excellent demonstration.. i'm wondering if it's possible to solder copper shims on a aluminum heatsink. or do i need a different type of paste for this application. thanks!
Thank you. That is an interesting idea. If you have access to another heat sink to use as a guinea pig, it would be worth testing. I have not attempted to do any soldering on aluminum before. If you are able to do it and find it successful, please come back and provide an update.
Any update bro,I need to do the same thing solder copper shim on aluminum heatsink
Mrfox! Last time I seen your name was many years ago when I had an Alienware M18x and you did some awesome dual PSU's and contribution to that crazy EVGA EDID corruption, good to see your still active after all these years haha.
Anyway, I have a GS66 which I'm replacing the resistors on the motherboard for the GPU from 0R005 to 0R003 and to accommodate for the extra power (and heat) I'm adding some heat pipes for VRM cooling. What's your preferred method for the hot air
1) Higher temp with less time
2) lower temp just above the temperature of the low melt solder for longer time?
And would you recommend to tin both the heat pipe and heat sink surface before trying to bond them both?
I've got some MG CHEMICALS Low melt solder (138 degrees Celcius) And MG Chemicals flux.
The only thing making this tricky for me is when I heard that they can explode, I squint my eyes and prey they don't blow lmao. I did almost solder one last night but it was poor, I'm thinking that could be down to a few factors though.
Hey bro. Nice to hear from you. Yup, still kicking it, but only with desktops for a good while now. I lost interest in laptops around 2015-2016. I am, by all measurements, a novice when it comes to soldering. Heat pipes and heatsinks are really tricky. They are tough to solder because they are made to dissipate heat. I would recommend using the low melt solder paste, clamping everything together to keep the assembly from falling apart, then baking it in an oven so you can control the heat and cooling. I would preheat the oven and only use enough heat to flow the solder. You can see when the solder paste begins to flow and get shiny. If it does not happen you can gradually increase the heat only enough until it does. Once if flows, turn off the oven and allow it to cool down naturally before removing the clamps. If you do not clamp the finned radiators and all of the heat pipes in place everything will fall apart.
Hi! What is the best solder paste to use for this application? Surely there are many different types with different conduction levels, right?
Yes there are, and the lower melting point solder paste has lower conductivity rating, but it also takes more heat and makes swelling and distortion of the heat pipes more of a risk using the solder pastes with a higher melting point. I think even the lower melting point has enough thermal conductivity to be adequate without the risk of damage to the heat pipes or distorting them to where the heat sink no longer fits the laptop chassis correctly.
and what are the new temperatures?
Can you do the same to an aluminium heatsink? for example, 1) soldering a copper shim to an aluminium heatsink to later use liquid metal on the copper? 2) solder the nickle plated copper IHS plate to the cpu die like AMD does? If so, whats the best solder type that you would recommend for this? I would like to try this out, but first need to find out with those that have more knowledge on this.
You can solder nickel plate/sheet directly to aluminum heatsink using low temperature(138C) solder paste , it requires some aggressive soldering flux application (any good brand one) or you can use stainless Steel Flux which works great on nickel, copper, steel and aluminum.
This will come in handy on the Eurocom Q6. Their CPU heat sink uses a tripod mounting design, resulting in a very weak contact between the heat sink and the CPU die. Liquid metal, with the stock heatsink, actually performs worse than thick thermal paste for this reason.
hey bro, did you eventually end up doing this mod? i have the exact same issue with the tripod design?!
@@filippos989 apologies, I sold the machine before I got to tinker with that.
Hello! Me again, at what temperature did you set your hot air station during the video?
Maximum. It is difficult to heat a heat sink fast enough for soldering. Knowing what I know now I probably would have put the heat sink in the oven to get it up closer to the solder melting point and saturated so that the hot air wand would have required far less effort to melt the solder paste. You must be careful to not overheat it in the oven and melt all of the factory solder because everything will fall apart.
@@MrFoxRox thanks!
Hi Mr/Fox, but >> the solder > reduce
it's more thermal conductivity than air if the heat sink fits poorly
Is this method more effective than applying liquid metal thermal compound to both sides of the IHS and if yes, why so? Because that I have just done very recently on my Clevo P771ZM but the temperatures didn't really change compared to a 'normal' paste and that really suprised me. Can you explain why this method would be more promising? Thanks!
You would use this along with what you have already done. If you are having high temperatures because the heat sink is making poor contact with the IHS it will correct that problem. You can also try removing the c-clips on the spring-loaded CPU retention screws. That can also help correct this problem.
Thank you for explaining so clearly! I meanwhile got behind what you meant when I just removed the heatsink and saw that the GPU but not the CPU ever had real contact with it. So I couldn't wait trying the trick with the c-clips but unfortunately that was not enough so I think I will have to install a shim as well. Fortunately that finally enlightens why the temperarures in my notebook were always so extremely poor despite the 'super advanced cooling technology'. Thank you so much for bringing that to light! I had no idea about this distance issue!! I now can simply not wait to do this as well and see how temperatures decrease. Which thickness did you use as a shim? 1mm?
Probably a stupid question, but - how to verify that the heatsink isn't making adequate contact with the die? I have a 2oc gt70 and it feels as if the cpu is getting hotter over the 5 years i have it and i've tried mx2, mx4, kryonaut, adding vram heatsinks where possible, relubing the fan bearings with chain lube. The paste is always being touched, but i hat verify that it's being touched enough.
No, it is not a stupid question. The most reliable way is to use a pressure sensitive film. It is expensive. You can buy it on Amazon.www.amazon.com/Fujifilm-Prescale-Foot-Ultra-Low/dp/B004TLOG9M
@@MrFoxRox hmm, somewhat expensive, shims cost a lot less and the gap there would be under 0.5mm thinck. Guess i'm just gonna play around with the shims i have and see if it makes a differance.
00:30- man, this music kind of rocks...
00:45- This music is serious!!
02:15- what is this guy doing!? He’s taking forever to solder that thing!
03:30- oh yeah...the entire assy is copper...
04:18- hey where did the music go!?
Great video man!
If the original heatsink is warped, do you flatten it first? Also, how do you know that the new solder is "flat" and not causing part of the new heatsink to be raised?
Yes, I did. But, simply adding the shim helps a lot even if you do not do that. Removing the c-clips from the screws often helps. The problem seems to be most frequently lousy contact (or no contact in some cases) between the heat sink and CPU more so than the heat sink being warped. When they are warped it just makes contact even worse. The shim is flat and if you thoroughly melt the solder paste it will be sitting flush. I clamped the shim down as you can see in the video. Even if it is not perfect to aerospace-grade tolerances it is a huge improvement over the crap being shipped in new laptops sold by all of the OEMs. There is basically no precision in anything they do... very haphazard manufacturing and poor quality control from all of them.
Thanks for the video and detailed comments here!
Hi mr. Fox! I'm planning to do this in my ASUS Vivobook. But I have some questions:
1. Can I use the 63/37 solder paste instead? Which melts at 183 celsius? 'Cause I can' t find any lead-free solder paste here in the Philippines.
2. Does the solder paste adds a few extra mm after it hardens? I'm scared that If I will do this my heat sink will not fit in.
3. Can I use a 2000w heat gun to do this?
Hi bro. Happy Sunday. You probably can. Just be careful about swelling the heat pipes. Keep the heat gun moving and clamp everything else in place so no parts fall off. You can also use an oven. The solder paste should not add any thickness. At least not enough for fit to be problematic.
@@MrFoxRox Is there a specific temperature in which the heat sink will start to swell?
@@zuccdizz2373 I am not sure what temperature. I would recommend using an oven and only getting it hot enough to melt the solder. The risk is greater using a heat gun.
@@MrFoxRox That's all I need. Thank you so much for your response mr. Fox! I wouldn't do this if it weren't for this video and your advice.
@@zuccdizz2373 glad to help my friend. Take care and good luck. Let me know how the project turns out.
First song reminds me of goldeneye
If only I knew this 9 months ago... Ah well
That's the only way to solder copper? I want to solder 2 laptop heatpipes together, is possible to do this using this soldering methos? I was thinking about using thermal glue but after some research i found that soldering is much more effective
The best way to solder heat pipes is using soldering paste as I did with the shim. However, clamping everything together, including the parts already solders so they do not fall apart, and use an oven to melt and flow all of the solder paste. Once the solder paste has fully melted, allow the assembly to slowly cool down. This is the best approach. You have to be sure the heat pipe temperature rating is much higher than the solder paste and only use enough heat to melt the solder paste. If the heat pipes get too hot the will swell up and be ruined.
If you search "adding heatpipes" in TH-cam you will find a guy using a hot air gun in a heatpipe to glue in his Lenovo laptop. He uses for 3 - 4 minutes and the pipe expands just a bit, but you blow hot air in the copper for a much longer time, i really don't think this is safe so i will try the thermal glue and paste approach.
Where can i find the heat pipe temperature rating?
@@luizdrco if you use low melting point solder paste shown in the video the melting point is low enough you do not have to worry about swelling the heat pipes. The best way to solder large parts is use an oven. You get everything hot evenly and have better control of the heat. Only uae enough heat to flow the solder. Thermal adhesive will work but it has very poor thermal conductivity compared to solder.
@@MrFoxRox That's all very interesting. I will buy the spare cooling system of my laptop, so i will need to unsolder the headpipe from the aluminum base, do you think i can do the unsolder with and oven? About the paste you use, can you give me more info about it? I never saw it in my country and don't know how do search. The only soldering pastes i found was above 170 °C and non-lead free.
sir.. is the solder paste are same as paste for thermal paste? i mean like thermal paste for filling the gap and after you apply the solder through shim Is there any improvement for the thermals?
It is not the same as thermal paste. The solder is permanently attaching the shim. It has much higher thermal conductivity. I do not know if if fills microscopic scratches or not. It does improve temperature over applying thermal paste to both sides of the shim.
so this could be applied to hdt heat sink? like razer blade heat sink or another brand pc heatsink
Yes, that is correct. You should confirm that poor fit and contact is an issue first. If the heat sink and CPU have great fit and firm contact pressure, adding the shim is not necessary.
MrFoxRox how to make sure my laptop have good fit or bad fit?
Inspect how thermal paste looks like after an application. If its' "bubbly" (air filled), you have poor contact. Also: Thermals will tell you. Look for cores with spiking temps.
Any issues if I use solder paste Chip Quik RMA591L0LT10?
Probably fine as long as the melting point is the same or lower. If it takes more heat it might be difficult to avoid damage to the heat pipes.
@@MrFoxRox cool, it's same melting point (138°C) so no issues there :)
MR fox and now you can apply LIquid metal paste ??? or what was the purpose of that ??
No, it's about the fact that between heatsink and IHS there is a too wide gap due to poor manufacturing, so only using liquid metal (which I did as well) wouldn't fix anything because this gap is simply just too wide. For example: A gab of 1 mm+ is not made to be 'bridged' by any kind of thermal compound. And that's why he installed this copper plate, to make the distance shorter. And then you can apply whatever you want as thermal compound because then everything is HOW IT SHOULD BE since the very beginning.
that is why i said (NOW) CAN YOU APPLY LM?
yes, that is correct
I wonder is there any easier method to fix this issue (I have a Legion Y530)
There could be that I'm not aware of one. If you can think of something please share it.
A less extreme method is to use normal thermal paste between the copper shim and the heatsink instead of solder. You can then use thermal glue around the edges to keep the shim from sliding. The thermal contact will be worse than solder though.
i used liquid metal compound between shim and cpu. working great so far
I tried melting the paste, but heat pipes are cooling it so rapidly that it won't melt all the way. I managed to melt around the shim, but when I removed it then saw that under it was still pasty. Too afraid to blow the heat pipes to just keep heating it.
Are you using the same solder paste that I show in the video? If you monitor the temps and get the heat sink and shim hot enough to melt the solder paste (138-140°C) it will not be hot enough to desolder or swell the heat pipes because the solder paste I use is low melting point. Use an infrared thermometer to confirm you are not getting the this too hot.
I have a different brand low melting paste. I couldn't monitor the temps and was hoping if I heat it bit more after the paste around the shim was melted, it will do the trick. It melts really fast on regular copper surface tho. I have blown up a heat pipe before when I was salvaging components for mod so that made me a bit cautious. Got to get myself an infrared thermometer if I proceed to do this on my main heat sink.
I'd recommend to use an air station with an option to set the air temperature (exit nozzle). Removes the guesswork. Note that soldering air stations are more expensive, though.
Hey @MrFoxRox, are you willing to do something similar to a heat-sink of a game console? do let me know please. I'm willing to pay for everything.
Perhaps. I am open to discussing it, but need more details. I use the same name on numerous forums "Mr. Fox" and you could send me a private message on Discord, forums.extremehw.net/profile/564-mr-fox/ or at notebooktalk.net/profile/87-mr-fox/. I am going to be on a business trip for a few days starting tomorrow, so it might be next week before I can respond.
How thick was the shim?
1.0mm thick
Man all I have is a 60 watt cheap soldering iron!
nice, but why you don't use electricity to solder?
Please explain.
Could he be referring to Arc Welding method maybe?
Maybe so, but arc welding would not give a good bond over the mating of the shim and heat sink. The entire surface of the shim needs to be soldered to bond to the heat plate to achieve the proper heat transfer. Hot air gives you a bit better control over how hot the heat sink assembly is getting. If you overheat the assembly you can cause the heat pipes to come loose and swell them up, which basically ruins the heat sink. You only need to get it hot enough to melt the low-melting point solder paste completely.
I use to solder using arc welding. but you need the machine
Exactly, plus it would compromise the solder that is used to stick the heat pipes to the cold plate and the fin array.