Upgraded Fans on Precision 7520

[M4980]

Quick post to share a fan upgrade I did on my Precision 7520 a few weeks ago:

 

I accidentally broke one of the original fan blades while cleaning, and instead of finding a stock replacement, I figured I’d try something a bit more interesting. I had a custom set made by a Taobao modder called ThermalSabre. He designs his own fan blades and motors and adds a boost circuit (as seen attached between wires in pics below) that bumps the fan voltage from 5V to 13.2V. Everything still works with the original fan control as it’s still PWM controlled by the EC.

 

(Top: old Sunon fan, Bottom: new fan by ThermalSabre)

 

(The new fans installed)

 

After some unscientific testing, I’m seeing about a 10c drop under full load with GPU hotspot temps topping out at around 78c. At first, I thought fan noise at max speed was roughly the same as stock (just with stronger airflow), but after testing in different rooms I’ve concluded it’s actually noticeably quieter in my opinion.

 

The main goal here was to get some extra thermal headroom for a possible MXM Lovelace upgrade down the line. I’ll post an update if I ever get one installed.

 

This could also pair nicely with other thermal mods I haven’t done yet, like adding extra heatpipes, increasing heatsink mass, or joining the CPU and GPU sinks.

 

Not exactly cheap (~¥349 for both CPU+GPU fans), but I’m very happy with how it turned out and it definitely met expectations. Let me know if anyone wants more details.

 

Store link: Home-ThermalSabre Polar Blade-Taobao.com

[JadeRover]

Hi, this is a cool mod

 

So these are custom 12v ish motors for the fan ? I might attempt this if all it requires is a small boost circuit, aliexpress has quite a few. I could try bumping it up to 6 or 7 volts, that hopefully won't burn out the fans. My zbook 17 g3 with gtx 1060 has a hard time keeping the gpu cool even when fans are set to the max.

 

Could you maybe open the heatshrink tube that's around the booster circuit ? It's to see if the other wires, TACH and PWM are connected to the board he is using. 

 

thanks