2018 Acer Swift 1 SF114-32 heatsink, cooling, and thermal modifications

Mateo620
Mateo620 Member Posts: 97 Fixer WiFi Icon
edited January 2019 in Swift and Spin Series
Welcome! I wanted to start this thread as a collection of heatsink, cooling, and thermal modifications that can be done to our passively cooled SF114-32s in order to reduce thermal throttling and to sustain longer turbo clocks. I want to come up with and document creative yet functioal cooling mods we can do to get the most out these cool Gemini Lake SoCs. Pun intended.

I gotta admit I'm really enjoying the ownership of this awesome fanless lightweight laptop and think others have yet to discover it's greatness. In stock form it runs very cool, quiet and it has absolutely amazing battery life. However, I'm a tinkerer by nature and this is right up my alley.

My first mod is going to be hopefully pretty simple and straight forward. I picked up a spare copper heatsink (434.0E603.1002, A02-02625, N17W6, CC29) off ebay for $7.30 after using some eBay bucks and figured it was cheap enough I had almost nothing to lose. I don't know exactly how much it weighs but it can be felt if ever so slightly in the palm of your hand. Regardless it's probably nothing to lose sleep over and worth the expected cooling improvement. Since the SF114-32 is passively cooled I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to try and improve the thermals whenever reasonably possible. I've seen cooling mods done to Apollo Lake and Gemini Lake based fanless computers and the results are usually pretty good. That is what inspired me to move forward with mine.

My spare heatsink arrived today!









As you can see there's not much to it. Its pretty thin as is and comes with bolts, a black insulator sticker and some black rubber risers. I'm going to remove all of these and clean it up as best as I can. What I'm basically going to do is sandwich some thermal pads and thermal paste between the existing heating and this second heatsink in hopes of better heat transfer, dissipation and cooling of the SoC and other surrounding IC. I'll be sure to record some before and after temperature readings to see what if any difference this makes. 

Answers

  • Bytemare
    Bytemare Member Posts: 18 Troubleshooter
    This is very interesting! I have the excact same model as you do. I would love to replace the thermal paste one day, just to see if it got less hot, but other than that I'm very happy with this fanless laptop. But please keep us updated how this project goes :) 
  • Sodawood
    Sodawood Member Posts: 2 New User
    Hello Mateo620 can you please tell me if the Swift 1 SF114-32 will power on without the battery cable pluged in ? I need to know because I want to use it without the battery only with ac cable pluged in so it would be so nice of you if you could check this for me and nice project by the way my friend.


  • Mateo620
    Mateo620 Member Posts: 97 Fixer WiFi Icon
    @Bytemare - I think replacing the thermal paste will be easy for this laptop. I've heard people have had positive results when upgrading to a higher quality thermal paste. I don't know much about thermal paste, are there recommended brands/kinds to use and avoid?

    @Sodawood - Good question. I'll test that out and get back to you asap!
  • Mateo620
    Mateo620 Member Posts: 97 Fixer WiFi Icon
    edited January 2019
    Here's what the copper heatsink looks like after a good cleaning. A few pics of the clean up. I think it came out ok considering how stubborn the adhesive was. I used a heat gun to carefully remove the black sticker, not sure what its purpose was but I imagine its gotta be an insulator of sorts. I also removed the little black rubber spacers and mounting bolts/screws.









    Note: all I had available to use was gasoline and carburetor cleaner. I don't recommend using what I did but it worked after applying some elbow grease. It came out just as I expected. I'm sure alternative adhesive removers exist. 😅

    I test fitted it and as shown sits flush with the battery height. I put the bottom cover on just to see how well it fit and sure enough it sat perfectly inside. However, once I add thermal pads and paste it will increase it's Z-Height a bit. I'll report back on this later. 




  • Mateo620
    Mateo620 Member Posts: 97 Fixer WiFi Icon
    edited January 2019
    Sodawood said:
    Hello Mateo620 can you please tell me if the Swift 1 SF114-32 will power on without the battery cable pluged in ? I need to know because I want to use it without the battery only with ac cable pluged in so it would be so nice of you if you could check this for me and nice project by the way my friend.



    Ok I tested this and YES the SF114-32 does power ON without the battery cable plugged in and using only the AC adapter! There you go, an easy way to preserve your battery if you mostly use your laptop plugged in all the time.

    What are your plans?
  • Sodawood
    Sodawood Member Posts: 2 New User
    Thank you so much. I will remove the battery because I work only with cable plugged in. I stay tuned and will watch your project its very interessting to see modifications and posibilitys on this device you are very technical talented.
  • Bytemare
    Bytemare Member Posts: 18 Troubleshooter
    edited January 2019
    Thanks for the reply Mateo620! :)

    May I ask how many screws holds the copper-plate and is it easy to lift up once the screws are out?

    I've always used Noctua NT-H1 and been happy with that. But ArticSilver and probably many others will deliver better than fabric.


    Looking forward to see test results after your done, cool project! :) 
  • gmddaniel
    gmddaniel Member Posts: 1 New User
    Hi Mateo620. I am also the happy owner of an sf114-32. I have already modified mine with followings: heat sink copper shim 20mmx20mm kept the stock heat sink on top of it. After i have covered the top part with thermal cooling pad 1mm thick and on the exposed side after peeling off the protective paper layer i have added aluminium foil. Now i can see that makes a huge difference laptop runs super smooth with a room temp of 24 degree average cpu temp never goes avoer 37 or 40 degrees. In a 30 min stress test cpu never went more than 57 degrees and used wattage was around 9.4 W. So definitely  worth the effort.  
  • tanteemmaa
    tanteemmaa Member Posts: 1 New User

    @Mateo620

    Hi there and cheers from Germany (Wiesbaden)

    i also bought a Acer Swift 1 ( SF114-34-P854) with the N6000 Processor, and would like to apply your MOD, because after about 30 min or so, it beginns to throttle and sometimes clocks down under 400MhZ, which can get really anoying (and that at winter time), altho according to Core Temp it never climbes over 63°C

    Therefor i have some questons:

    How thick has to be the thermal pad (there are 0.5, 1.0, 1,5, 2.0 and so on)?

    Im a bit confused about, your description using thermal paste in combination with the thermal pads, how should i imagine that!?

  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,219 Trailblazer

    Since you are planning on sandwiching two heatsinks together, you can assume the surfaces will not be a perfect mate. In that case you are likely better off with thermal paste instead o a pad. The surface is large enough that you can end up with bubbles when installing a pad, and the bubbles will not transfer heat as efficiently.

    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.

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