Making a fanless Pentium M system from a centrino laptop
Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2004 7:32 am
I'm a kiosk developer, and epia-based solutions just don't have enough muscle for 3D graphics, Flash presentations, video, etc... but my kiosks need to be multi-media rich and absolutely quiet (I'm even using a CF card for the hard drive, it's running linux). I've been drooling over the prospect of a Pentium M motherboard, but was real disappointed in the high cost.
Then it hit me: Grab a barebones centrino laptop (the Centrino is basically a Pentium M before marketing decided to call it Pentium M) and throw a big heat sink on the CPU (Or heat-pipe it to the kiosk's aluminum skins). Since it comes with an 15" LCD screen that I can convert to a touchscreen my total cost should be nearly what it was with the Epia solution, but much faster. Plus, the integrated battery works like a powerful integrated UPS.
Anyone have experience converting a fanned Centrino laptop to a fanless desktop, or do you have have any pointers, or warnings? How big of a heatsink would I need (22W of power)? Anyone ever removed their laptop screen so it can be used seperately (at least hyper-extend it so it works like a tablet)?
Thanks!
Dave
PS - this is what I'm thinking of using:
- Barebones 15" Centrino laptop: $399 http://www.abspc.com/app/search.asp?sp-q=34-221-009
- CPU: $168 http://www.titannotebook.com/product/co ... /sl6n4.asp
Then it hit me: Grab a barebones centrino laptop (the Centrino is basically a Pentium M before marketing decided to call it Pentium M) and throw a big heat sink on the CPU (Or heat-pipe it to the kiosk's aluminum skins). Since it comes with an 15" LCD screen that I can convert to a touchscreen my total cost should be nearly what it was with the Epia solution, but much faster. Plus, the integrated battery works like a powerful integrated UPS.
Anyone have experience converting a fanned Centrino laptop to a fanless desktop, or do you have have any pointers, or warnings? How big of a heatsink would I need (22W of power)? Anyone ever removed their laptop screen so it can be used seperately (at least hyper-extend it so it works like a tablet)?
Thanks!
Dave
PS - this is what I'm thinking of using:
- Barebones 15" Centrino laptop: $399 http://www.abspc.com/app/search.asp?sp-q=34-221-009
- CPU: $168 http://www.titannotebook.com/product/co ... /sl6n4.asp