Time to move this notebook to the next generation - Hybrid water cooled 3070 mobile and 9900KS

[Meaker]

It's finally time for the next laptop refresh project.

 

Specs before I started planning:

 

Sager NP9877

17.3" 1440p 120Hz panel

8086K @ 5Ghz

16GB DDR4 SODIMM @ 3000Mhz 14-14-14-37

1TB SM961 SSD

GTX 1080 Mobile MXM SLI

Intel 8260 AC wifi card

 

Here is what the chassis looks like:

 

 

Upgrades performed so far:

9900KS - Delidded and fitted. Can currently sustain 4.7Ghz on AVX workloads

Intel AX210 Wifi

 

Components on the way:

 

RTX 3070 MXM 8GB 140W TDP

Hybrid cooling heatsinks (30xx series cards have different core mounting spacing and are the outer holes)

 

 

Here is the laptop cooling stand I built:

 

 

It uses the Aquaero v5 controller with full support for pump control etc so will get a pump, reservoir and radiator all hooked up via it. This will let me automate the liquid cooling setup.

 

The GPU should arrive in the next week, the heatsink is being fabricated to order so will take a bit longer.

[Bombastinator]

Haven’t heard of a laptop having mxm in a while.  Interesting you can get one in amphere.

[Meaker]

The Clevo machines are the last consumer machines to do so, therefore you can still get the cards if you have a connection because they are hard to get hold of.

[Meaker]

Why hello there:

 

[Meaker]

 

The conversion of my stand is in progress. EK 280MM radiator there.

[Meaker]

Here is the front plate all back on, need to protect those fins!

 

[Meaker]

So here is the mock up of positions, pump cabling is fixed and ready to go. Waiting on the flow meter but the system is getting there

 

 

[Meaker]

Heatsink is on and fitted, temps look pretty normal on air..... and i've got a work gathering I have to go to tonight so wont be able to hook up the water cooling. Of course.

I did however get a lovely post card 

[Bombastinator]

Bit of confusion on my side here:  This is a laptop that runs on air AND water at the same time? I can see a few things it could be but I’m not sure which one, or if I’ve missed what is going on entirely. 

 

1). An air cooled laptop with a sort of super stand That produces additional cooling, to push the GPUs to greater heights (not sure how this is accomplished.  A watercooler is not a chiller) 

2)  a system with an air cooled CPU with iGP but with a water only discrete GPU system that can only function when connected to the stand, and when being used as a portable the discrete GPUS are basically non-functional because they lack any cooling (connection becomes an interesting problem) 

3) a sort of desktop converted from a laptop to look like a laptop-and-stand, (easiest, but it makes me wonder about all that grillwork on the stand which seems to sit under the laptop)

4) some way to watercool the laptops air cooling fins is being used but doesn’t have to be used all the time. So one would get an air cooled laptop with some sort of fin impedance from the watercooling gear stuck to it, but when attached to the watercolor stand a net gain is realized.  (Again I become curious about the connection system). This system could also act a lot like #2 depending on how much impedance to the air cooling system there is.

 

[Meaker]

It's a hybrid heatsink with water channels. This feeds into my dock where I have a pump/fans/radiator. Currently they will be semi permanently bound but quick release fittings could let it undock more easily.

[Bombastinator]

9 hours ago, Meaker said:

It's a hybrid heatsink with water channels. This feeds into my dock where I have a pump/fans/radiator. Currently they will be semi permanently bound but quick release fittings could let it undock more easily.

So mostly 3 but a bit of 4 with possible change using disconnects to almost entirely 4?

 

hybrid heat sink to me lately means gpu chip water block with air cooling everything else including most of the GPU area.  “Hybrid” can be a much less specific term though

[Meaker]

Hybrid generally means a mix of both. Hybrid cars use electric and combustion engines. My cooler uses both water cooling and air cooling.

 

The grill work on the stand was from me cutting out two 140mm fan holes. Originally they blew straight into the notebook and needed protection. Now the grills protect the radiator fins but are still far more open than the original deck of the notebook.

 

[Meaker]

Timespy:

https://www.3dmark.com/spy/24077416

 

 

Timespy extreme:

https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/68133739

 

 

GPU hovers around 1400-1600mhz clocks.

[Bombastinator]

8 hours ago, Meaker said:

Hybrid generally means a mix of both. Hybrid cars use electric and combustion engines. My cooler uses both water cooling and air cooling.

 

The grill work on the stand was from me cutting out two 140mm fan holes. Originally they blew straight into the notebook and needed protection. Now the grills protect the radiator fins but are still far more open than the original deck of the notebook.

 

We are both of an age I suspect.  With video card water blocks “hybrid” seems to have taken the place of “standard” in standard vs full coverage with “standard” now being full coverage.  “Hybrid” has come to mean a specific thing it seems.  For what it’s worth I like your definition better.  More accurate.

[Mnky313]

This looks sick,
I'm doing a very similar thing with my machine.

Mine's a X170SM-G (10900k/2080S), I'm waiting (very impatiently) for it to come back from being repaired (under warranty thankfully).

My goal was to still keep it portable and have the ability to quickly and easily disconnect it from the water cooling loop to run on air cooling if I needed to take it somewhere.
The plan is currently to use quick disconnect fittings to make it easy to disconnect and reconnect.

I wish I saw this project sooner so I could suggest this.
It's a pump + rad + small res all in one, hopefully it'll make the loop incredibly simple (just 2 tubes between the laptop and it). I haven't actually received it yet either, but from what I've heard it's pretty decent but is a pain to bleed initially.

I'll make a post about mine once I actually get everything and slap it together. 

[Meaker]

If I hooked that thing up I'd have no way to fill it at all, the port would be up against the stand, if you had a dedicated unit for it then yes you could make it REALLY compact so I'd be interested in your results.

[Mnky313]

On 11/8/2021 at 6:46 AM, Meaker said:

If I hooked that thing up I'd have no way to fill it at all, the port would be up against the stand, if you had a dedicated unit for it then yes you could make it REALLY compact so I'd be interested in your results.

Yeah, overall it seems like a cool idea but it does have some issues, mainly that the fans use their own stupid 6 pin connector instead of a normal 4 pin fan + RGB connector, I just used a molex to fan header cable (only 12v & ground) and just run the fans at full speed for now, I'll probably get some form of controller eventually but even running these at full speed they aren't that loud so it's not a huge problem. (and yes, it's a pain to bleed)

I'll post an update once the laptop finally comes back from repair, I plan on testing performance and temps vs stock as well just to see.
So far it ran overnight with no leaks,

[Meaker]

http://www.3dmark.com/spy/24135121

Here is my shunt modded score. Up 10% on GPU score already.

 

@Mnky313 Looks cool, are you using 4/6 tubing from the heatsink too? Where did you find the quick release for that size?

[Mnky313]

40 minutes ago, Meaker said:

http://www.3dmark.com/spy/24135121

Here is my shunt modded score. Up 10% on GPU score already.

 

@Mnky313 Looks cool, are you using 4/6 tubing from the heatsink too? Where did you find the quick release for that size?

yes, it's 4/6mm tubing. the QDCs are from koolance (they are for 3/5mm tubing because I was told that's what the tubing was going to be. Ended up using the rubber cover from the 3mm barb inside the tubing + a zip tie and it seems to be fine, it's been running for over 24 hours with no issues (though I should get 3/5mm tubing honestly).

Laptop should be here today

also, that score is almost identical to my 10900k/2080S with the stock cooling. I'll see how high I can get it with prema + watercooling. I probably won't shunt mod it though.

[Meaker]

You'll probably be around my previous scores as it just voundces at the 125w mark.

[Meaker]

The big advantage is the reduction in noise at load though I have found.

 

[Mnky313]

Laptop arrived and after spending way too damn long trying to get the thermal pads in the right spots (turns out it either hard crashes under load or VRM throttles if you don't stack thermal pads over the VRMs on the GPU and CPU....

I'm damn impressed, I can run 5.0GHz all cores without throttling (still hits the 90s in cinebench though). But hey, I beat a 1950x xD


Also GPU temps amazing, not really a performance boost but still pretty nice. Max temp in time spy was 52c. I was more interesting in getting a little better CPU performance and not throttling at the sign of any load so I'm happy the GPU performance for now. Might try and see if I can OC a little bit higher because of the cooler temps.

It still ramps the fans up under a CPU load but not nearly as much as stock.

I'm gonna make a thread in a few minutes, I'll post more info there.

[Meaker]

Nice thread you have, I'm a bit of an expert at the thermal pad thing, I've been doing it for years to optimise heatsinks. Took me about 20 mins! The VRMs are so critical to get just right, especially when over locking.

 

 

 

[Meaker]

https://www.3dmark.com/spy/24164600

Score: 11897
Graphics score: 12012
CPU score: 11287

9900KS @ 5Ghz
3070 Mobile @ 1862/2075

Driver: 496.49

I think that's the most the shunt mod will give me.

[Alendres98]

On 11/11/2021 at 4:47 PM, Meaker said:

https://www.3dmark.com/spy/24164600

Score: 11897
Graphics score: 12012
CPU score: 11287

9900KS @ 5Ghz
3070 Mobile @ 1862/2075

Driver: 496.49

I think that's the most the shunt mod will give me.

Hello. I want to ask you if it's possible to put a rtx 3070 on a x170sm-g with Prema BIOS? Do i have to mod the driver, too? Does the heatsink for rtx 20xx work for the card? Thanks for your time.