• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Measuring Heatsink Gap

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

Maverickblog

New Member
Joined
Mar 4, 2009
Location
Washington D.C.
Hi All,

I am fixing and modifying my Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop. An overview of the project and pictures will be uploaded on my site when I am done.

I am concerned with the cooling on this laptop. It has been shutting itself off overnight, and I believe that it is because of a cooling issue. I have completely disassembled it and have new thermal paste for the CPU.

My issue is with the GPU. There is a considerable gap between it and the heatsink that it shares with the CPU. There was a crappy blue foam(ish) material on the GPU before to fill the gap. I want to do the copper mod, but want to know how to measure the gap precisely. Its in a hard place to see directly, and I dont want to break something by putting in too thick of a copper shim. How should I measure this? Putty?

I had some idea of using some of the guitar picks I have around since they are specific sizes like 1mm, 1.14 mm, etc. Any better suggestions?


Thanks in advance.
 
To measure it precisely ... This is how I would do it.

You say you're thinking of using guitar picks, so I'm assuming the gap is about 1mm? Get a good measure of the actual thickness of a pick that fits in there easily. With, say, a micrometer.

2ma1oi.jpg

Then, using a feeler guage ...

k3x0yo.jpg

Slip the guitar pick into the gap alongside one of the blades of the feeler gauge. Keep going up in size until it's difficult to get them in. Then add the thickness of that blade to the thickness of your guitar pick, and voila.

Of course, if you don't have these tools already, it may be a little much of an investment to take one measurement. Maybe someone else will chime in with a solution on the cheap that will be good enough for your purposes.
 
Yeah I also agree on using a feeler gauge.

The blue stuff is indeed crappy. You can use thermal tape vs using a copper shim. Like Conumdrum says, you can get several different thicknesses. With the right thermal tape, you can knock those temps down quite a bit.
 
Follow up: I ended up using a .9mm x 11mm x 11mm copper shim for the GPU + heatsink gap. Project went surprisingly well.

I wrote a huge post about it on my site (link in profile), feel free to check it out.
 
Back