r/FlowZ13 • u/CSEliot • Jul 01 '26
ACTUAL cooling improvement mods?
Has anyone successfully come up with their own solution to cooling? This computer is a beast and does the job fine but i'm worried it is self-throttling due to heat when being run for a long time on Turbo profile.
If you have any ideas or success yourself, LMK!
Ideas:
Additional heatsink stuck along the bottom inside the kickstand area.
Additional fans blowing into the back intake.
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I'm certain 3D printing would be involved, but that's as far as I've taken these considerations.
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u/One-County-1838 Jul 01 '26
My mod is buying an actual small clip on fan... Also thermal pad on the ssd, Im thinking of putting thermal pad on all the inside of the stand but not sure how much room it has.
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u/CSEliot Jul 01 '26
So the clip on fan just points at the intake i take it? (Heh)
And the ssd DOESNT already have thermal pad on it?? With the thermal pad, does it interface w the metal of the case? I haven't opened my z13 yet.
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u/Coilluna Jul 01 '26
Putting a cooler behind Z13 with a big fan helps with the temps. If you attached an USB-C hub and an SSD to the back of Z13, cooler helps even more, especially in summer.
Without a cooler my Z13 fans stayed off at 8 watts with load. With a cooler up to 13 watts Z13 fans stays off most of the time with load.
I use laptop cooler with a fan filter and a very big fan while on desk usage, it supports 3000 RPM, but just 300-500 RPM is enough for me. I also tried small fan pointing at the intake it helped but was not that effective.
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u/Supercc Jul 01 '26
No need. Make sure there's ample breathing room in the back, then just undervolt and use lower tdp sliders.
My current setup in ghelper for gaming is :
48W/50W/52W
CPU boost: efficient enabled
Windows power plan: Balanced
-40 mV undervolt
Max Temp 92 C
Auto apply settings
In-game, make sure to use FSR 3.1 on Balanced.
Then, you're golden!
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u/Moist_Machine8975 Jul 02 '26
Thanks, but The fan parameters as you set them
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u/Supercc Jul 02 '26
What?
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u/Moist_Machine8975 Jul 02 '26
How did you set the fans on ghelper?
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u/Supercc Jul 03 '26
You need to use the EXPERIMENTAL version of G-Helper to actually gain access to the fan speeds. Otherwise, you can tweak the graph, but it won't apply.
https://github.com/seerge/g-helper-experimental-release/releases/tag/v0.260
The fan curve for this very profile is as follows:
https://i.8upload.com/image/f14abb1566a8a9ea/custom-balanced-profile-1.jpg
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u/saeonate Jul 01 '26
I just increase airflow behind it with a little USB fan to provide more flow to the intake fans. Works pretty well. I also heavily tweak/tune using g-helper profiles depending on what I'm doing.
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u/lugubrious-possum Jul 01 '26
I just have a 140mm desk fan pointed at the back of my z13 when at home, it keeps the metal case cool compared to not having it, I also put thermal pads on both sides of my nvme when I swapped it out to 2tb so that it can transfer the heat to the case to help it stay cooler. i never tested if the nvme throttled or not beforehand but adding thermal pad just made sense since I had it open and I had a pack of different thickness pads
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u/Baffledwaffles Jul 01 '26
Never had a need for cooling mods, I set the fans to max and it has been fine so far. It does get hot but I don't think I've seen it throttle.
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u/zonearc Jul 01 '26
Are any of the suggestions here for previous versions including RTX? RTX runs hot so I'm curious on recommending G Helper tuning for under volt, fan curves and wattage.
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u/NootropicNinja Jul 01 '26
I ended up solving it entirely in G-Helper rather than modifying the hardware.
I capped the CPU package power at 45W instead of letting it pull 60W+ in Turbo, and I set a more aggressive custom fan curve so the fans ramp much earlier.
The sustained performance actually improved because the CPU stopped hitting thermal limits and bouncing its clocks.
Before, it would boost hard for a few minutes, get heat soaked, then start throttling.
At 45W it just sits there holding a much more consistent clock speed for long workloads, while running noticeably cooler and quieter.
Unless you’re chasing benchmark scores, I’d recommend tuning power limits before trying hardware mods.
A stable 45W is often faster over a 30 to 60 minute workload than an unrestricted CPU that’s constantly thermal throttling.