The HP DV9000 Series is a feature rich laptop with 17″ screen, two hard drive slots, 2 RAM slots up to 4GB, Media Center Remote, Keyboard with number pad, poor cooling, and overheating components. In all seriousness, this laptop is quite remarkable with the right modifications to enhance cooling of the critical components: CPU, GPU and Northbridge. The overheating issues must be understood to solve the problem.
I’ve compiled a list of flaws in the design of this computer (BOLD items will be fixed in this mod)

• Primary hard drive is next to the GPU (the hottest component in the computer)
• Secondary hard drive acts solely as an external drive
• Heatsink configuration allows heat from the CPU to travel over the Northbridge.
• Northbridge is offset from the height of the CPU
• Cheap thermal pads are used to replace thermal paste
• GPU does not have its own fan for cooling
• GPU does not have thermal paste on it; instead a metal sticker (?) is used for cooling
• CPU fan gathers dust in the vents and line of lint is created in the back of the vent.

The list goes on but these are the major issues I’ve noticed.
Before we begin, I must say that any information used here to perform modification to your computer is the choice of the user. Be aware that I cannot take responsibility for any damages incurred by following my modification. I can assure you that these modifications where done several weeks prior to me posting this for confirmation that they work.

This modification was done to a HP DV9500/9700 laptop. There may be subtle differences between the different models in the DV9000 series. Make sure you do enough research to confirm that we have laptops with the same layout. This modification was done to a Intel-based version. The AMD version has 4 mounting screws over the processor. This may yield different results so be aware of this. 

Continue reading →