[GUIDE] Homemade heatsink (really easy to make)[Updated]

[Guest ottomanhero]

So I was using my friend's Iphone 5 today.I did some heavy gaming and his phone was transfering heat to all areas of the phone equally, making the chipset get rid of heat easily.If you played some games with 4x hd you'll notice only a part of it gets hot, the part below LG logo at back cover.

 

So I thought 'why not' and tried to transfer heat equally around the back cover.Had a simple but 'can be effective' idea.Surprisingly this worked greatly and I could feel the heat even at the sides of the phone.

 

So here is what I did:

 

The image pretty much describes it.I used aluminum foil to direct the heat from hot areas to cooler areas.While it sounds too easy it works like magic.

Note that I cut off the connection between the top and bottom aluminum foil so that chipset wouldn't heat the battery up.

 

(işlemci sıcaklığı = CPU temp   and    pil sıcaklığı = battery temp.)

No matter what I've done I couldn't get the cpu temperature to go above 60 until I did an antutu stability test and it was around 65 C in the end of the testing and quickly descended to 50 in a matter of seconds.

 

This screenshot was taken when I had a download of 4~ gb size and phone was just plugged off from charger (all this heats up the battery) so expect battery temperature lower than 40 C in normal usage. (37 ish in my case)

 

FAQ

Any side effects?

GPS

Did my own tests and while it does not block the signal completly, it weakens them...

With this new method there are no side effects, gps works as perfectly as it would normally and any "possible" (no one reported it so far) cell signal problems are solved aswell.

 

GPS signal without foil : http://puu.sh/dvF9z/102fc62ba1.png

GPS signal with foil : http://puu.sh/dvF9c/aff68118e3.png

I have toggled gps on/off in both tests before begining the test.

Note that satellites are never stable in my city (signal quality changes per 5 - 10 seconds in both cases due this) so the foil doesn't actually boost your gps signal, screenshots are to show that they both give the same signal quality.

 

Won't this make my sdcard/battery/SIM card unswapable?

You can still swap battery easily if you ease off with tapes.You'll still be able to swap your battery, microSD and sim card exactly the same way you do now, ONLY if you clothe just the back cover and not the phone as this new method requires sim and microSD slots to be covered tightly.Guide to back cover is under 4th step

 

 

But what do I gain from it?

1_)It will increase your battery life.How much depends on how you use your phone.If you put heavy load on it regularly this'll help a lot.If you don't use it long enough to even heat the chipset up it's help won't be noticeable.But even browsing the web gets this phone hot so...

2_)You'll get better performance from your phone : Hot CPU gives less performance compared to a well cooled CPU.Mainly due to throttling*.

*This may or may not prevent throttling on stock ROM as LG has stupidly put a tablet chipset into a phone with only throttling as a temperature adjuster.But I can guarantee no throttling on custom kernels with no overclock.

3_)You will be able to play games without your battery getting drain ridiculously fast.This is mainly due to battery heating up as chipset drains power from it/chipset's heat affecting battery and this will reduce this effect by reducing heat of both.

4_)Extends your phone's life.It is known that running electrical components under high temperature reduces it's lifespans.Battery in particular gets damaged over time, reducing it's capacity and eventually dying off.

5_)You can overclock your phone further as maximum temperature your chipset gets to is reduced enough to overclock it by a bit.

6_)Your chipset will barely heat up to the point of hurting your hands.

 

How to do it?

You need: 1_) A scissors 2_) An adhesive tape and  3_) A piece of aliminium foil a little longer than your phone (about 3-4 cms longer)

If you adjusted the size by comparing it with screen, you might want to cut the edges of aliminium foil by a bit since back side of the phone has a smaller area than the screen. (do this at step 2)

1_) Shut down your phone (incase battery falls off)

2_) Cut the foil you have to two pieces, one will cover the battery and the other one will cover the chipset AND you'll connect those two aluminum pieces together later on so make the bottom (battery) piece bigger than it should be.

Now you might think this would heat the battery up but our battery has environmental protection and it actually gets hot via the heat transfared through the circuits from chipset to battery.

3_) Make sure you make gaps in the foil for ; 

a_)Camera & LED : See how I covered all around them with foil? I just added 2 pieces to cover the top right edges.Don't trouble yourself trying to make gaps for them on the whole foil, use shortcuts.

b_)NFC

c_) GPS ANTENNA : See how in the picture there is a red highlighted spot, half covered with foil and the other half naked? This makes your GPS work.Also the naked part next to it lets your GPS work, so do this part exactly the same as in the picture, if you didn't then don't complain your GPS is not working.Keep the top piece of the square as naked as you can, otherwise the foil may block the signal (in the picture I cut it off like a triangle)

Note : The foil must cover that square even if by a bit since chipset is right below it.Having the foil not touching it would mean this would make a very little difference in temperatures, making your effort go to waste.

d_)Speaker : Below the battery there is your phone's speaker.Don't cover it with foil (reason is obvious)

4_) Use tapes to stick the foils to the phone.The blue colored marks on the picture are the spots where I used tape on.

 

Enjoy!

 

And If you want to still be able to swap your microSD and sim card, do these steps on back cover of your phone (inside of it).This might prove difficult and probably less effective.But if you want even better cooling you can do both.Make sure the foil on your chipset and the foil inside of your back cover are identical and don't block the GPS signal ( http://puu.sh/dzJZ6/d234d3b347.PNG see how I left the bottom left naked? It's because of gps antenna)

 

And say good bye to your frying pan! 

 

[Thanks to:

Sipi1302 for the great feedback and making me notice GPS issues.

Flying_Bear for helping me find where GPS antenna is located at.

Mourta for the idea of clothing insides of the back cover.He is a great developer and I highly recommend you to try out his work.]

XDA version of this post was also featured in xda portal http://www.xda-developers.com/android/lg-optimus-4x-hd-heatsink/ 

Edited December 18, 2014 by ottomanhero

[Guest daru]

Which side of aluminium foil is on cover, shine or matte ???

btw, good idea and great tutorial.

[Guest ottomanhero]

Matte side should face the phone while shiny side is faced towards outside like in picture.It might effect how effectively the foil absorbs heat but not noticeably so works either way.

 

[Guest Mourta]

Matte side should face the phone while shiny side is faced towards outside like in picture.It might effect how effectively the foil absorbs heat but not noticeably so works either way.

 

You could also use some thermal paste right next to the lifted up piece directly to the left of the card slot. That is where the heat is actually coming from.

 

You can also use thermal paste and fold enough foil to make it stick to that and clothe the casing with the aluminium foil (in the same manner) using double thin adhesive tape and that would work as well but it wold give you the benefit of having access to everything including battery when removing the cover.

[Guest Mourta]

I have to say, ottomanhero, this is a good idea, heat sinks work by spreading the heat so more heat dissipation can occur over a larger area and this does exactly that.

 

A true hardware fix that is simple enough for anyone to implement. good on ya.

[Guest ottomanhero]

You could also use some thermal paste right next to the lifted up piece directly to the left of the card slot. That is where the heat is actually coming from.

 

You can also use thermal paste and fold enough foil to make it stick to that and clothe the casing with the aluminium foil (in the same manner) using double thin adhesive tape and that would work as well but it wold give you the benefit of having access to everything including battery when removing the cover.

Thanks for the compliments and the idea :)  might give this a shot the next time I get a thermal paste for my PC

You can still access everything if you go easy with the tapes though.But your idea makes it more practical  :D 

I actually wanted to cloth the casing at first but then I realized it could heat up the battery and it wouldn't exactly touch all the areas so I went with this instead.Though I could cloth only the top part.It wouldn't heat the battery up and probably improve the connection between the foil above chipset and back cover, thanks for the idea :)

Done and added the steps to OP

Edited December 14, 2014 by ottomanhero

[Guest ottomanhero]

There were issues with GPS and cell signal.They are now fixed and applying this heatsink or not they'll have the same quality/signal strenght.OP updated with fixed method.

[Guest GalaxyRom]

Thank you very much for this awesome guide

[Guest Mourta]

Back in the day we used to use a form of heat valves by simply painting a larger surface area with conductive paint... i wonder if you couldn't just to that on the lid and conduct it from every hot point on the phone using just several layers of the paint and a bit of silicone paste (or whatever you have handy in that area, obviously the best would be arctic silver).

 

I mean, a heat spreader should be thin and effective and that is why aluminum foil works, so that should work as well and it shouldn't affect any radios.

[Guest Espressoul]

This old thread saved my phone. I'm using a ZD551KL/ Zenfone Selfie and it has bad heating issues. I'm glad I found this thread cause it reduced the heating problem incredibly well. This was so simple I had my doubts at first but it's a pretty amazing fix.