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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.

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