Random Phrase: Taking working from home a little too literally...


Read Me First!

This is the Spode's Abode archive. The old articles and forum have been kept here purely for historical purposes.

This section of the site is not kept up to date and there is no guarantee that all portions of the site transferred to this sub-domain intact.

Please visit the new site!



Router in a Suit Case
Written by Stuart Ladd (18/Apr/03)
Page 5 of 6

Untitled Document

Yes, the router was toasty. Toastier than I expected with only one 80mm fan running at 5V. After about an hour suddenly my remote desktop connection cut off and I couldn't get to the router at all. Loud music blaring around my ears I had no idea what had happened.

After switching the music off, I went to investigate. Opening the lid of the box seemed to cause the cpu fan to rub against something - turned out the sound was actually the sound of the fan spinning up while hitting something- lifting the lid also lifted up the HD which was pressing on the cpu. The HD's glue had melted and it fell onto the CPU socket and stopped it. For how long, who knows? It had been running for around an hour.

They don't build 'em like they used to, I doubt the fragile core on my Athlon XP 1600 would have survived the impact (although I've seen Duron cores boot that have been pretty beat up). After a few minutes switched off and cooling down, I restarted it. Ran perfectly and I hadn't so much as got a file hashing error in the protein it was folding. Still I couldn't run it with the lid closed so the next day I set to work improving the design.

First thing was to get the HD back in. Instead of gluing all over the flat area to get good contact (as this is the hottest part of the drive) I turned it round and glued around the lower edges so it was stuck to the case upside down. I then put plenty of glue around the edges to make sure it was strong enough with the reduced surface area. To prevent heat melting the glue, I superglued a couple of old Socket 7 and Socket A heatsinks onto the hard drive. In this picture you can see the heatsinks and the excessive glue around the edges

For active cooling, I revolted the 80mm blowhole to 12V (my main rig with a 120mm fan makes so much noise that the router needn't be quiet. I also installed a tiny 45mm fan (stolen from the green heatsink now on the Hard Disk) and glued it into place blowing air in the direction of the PSU. There were times before when putting a drop of water on the PSU heatsink would make it bubble off. This heat doesn't seem to be affecting what's left of the foam lining inside the box.

 


<< Back | 1 | | 2 | | 3 | | 4 | | 5 | | 6 | Next >>



Copyright Andrew Miller
Please read our disclaimer

Search the site:

Random

The Ultimate Ducting Guide