I've got an old Vaio laptop (PCG-F801A) with an AMD K6-2 533MHz cpu and I was wondering is it possible to have it running fanless? The original cooling solution is very loud (even when replaced) and because of that I stopped using this machine.
The cpu itself seems to be an ordinary PC one (maybe even in the socket) and the heatsing is quite large.
What do you think?
No way...
Notebooks are so confined. Best you can do is replace the motor, replace the thermal paste and that's it.
Yeah you can't go passive because there will be almost no airflow in there and it will go thermal runaway. You would have to use like a 5W CPU.
The cpu itself seems to be an ordinary PC one (maybe even in the socket) and the heatsing is quite large.
They've installed a Mammoth heatsink in there for a reason... don't you think? 😉
Requests are also possible... /msg kixs
wrote:They've installed a Mammoth heatsink in there for a reason... don't you think? 😉
Touche.
You could replace the old thermal pad with a copper shim and fresh thermal paste.
Let the air flow!
If you want to attempt this at all you should at first try to reduce the power consumption of the CPU.
This Vaio model is supposed to come with a K6-2+ 533. Maybe you could check this by software?
Are there any options to underclock the CPU? That alone would already help.
If that works you could try to reduce the voltage, although I'm not sure the CPU would run then, but it shouldn't hurt to try.
The multiplier of the K6-2+ should be changeable by software (I'm pretty sure Mau1wurf1977 did this with a K6-3+). You cold get as low as 2x.
The CPU should also support Cool'n'Quiet so undervolting (at least with reduced clock) might be possible by software, too.
Within a laptop's casing it may very well overheat, but I run a Pentium 3 1GHZ (29W TDP - little bit more than a K6-2; specs I found are 12W typ and 20W max) under a Thermalright SI-97 with no fan, with no issues. The fins don't really get warm in that setup. I guess the bigger question is how do you feel about dramatically modifying the system's enclosure, or can you put the CPU in a desktop board?
A K6-3+ @1.6V and 400MHZ clock can run passively. And performance should be similar to a 533. But i doubt the motherboard supports it, or you can even change voltage.
