February 16, 2010 at 23:32IconBit HDS41L Player - Cooling System Upgrade
Background:
Before the New Year, the IconBit player - HD40NMT fell into my hands, I really liked it - it does not make noise, it’s small and omnivorous. So to speak, a necessary thing in the house, it is very convenient to use it as a replacement for the player - xb0x360 / ps3 (burned out). I will say right away that the home media server assembled on an old Athlon under Linux, with samba, torrent and UPNP server acts as a source of audio / video content.
I bought a 40NMT as a gift, but while I was going to buy it for myself, the market appeared: HDS41L.
I liked the fact that, outwardly, it is the same as 40NMT, but you can still push the laptop-HDD into it yourself, which gives:
- Extra bed
- The ability to install additional. applications, for example, a torrent client (in 40NMT, this requires an external drive).
History:
I bought this miracle for myself, connected it, stuck a 40GB disk into it (left over from the PS3), set it up - everything works fine, everything shows.
Turned on the child cartoons "Well, wait a minute!" - on the fourth series I notice that the picture is streaming (like satellite / digital), I’m the next, the next series - all the same, I wind on the first - the picture is streaming, although before that it was normal!
I tried to launch a heavy MKV - it is not possible to watch.
The thought crept in that the CPU was overheating (there wasn’t such a thing with 40NMT) - it turned out that way later, it cooled down for 20 minutes and “Wait a minute”, the player showed without “crumbling”.
Patient Examination:
Turning the player in my hands and not seeing any warranty seals, I armed myself with a screwdriver and climbed in: The cover is removed with a bang, you just need to unscrew 8 bolts, four on each side, plus two more bolts for removing the slide under the internal HDD. Here are the insides. There is only one heatsink on the board, under which the CPU is hidden. Want to see how it is attached? And it is attached to a double-sided thermal tape, which in my opinion is far from the best option for normal cooling. The radiator took off easily and opened a Realtek chip under it:
By the way, compared to the 40NMT, this player has a smaller radiator, + 40NMT has a space around the radiator, and there are more ventilation holes in the case. Immediately with the internal HDD installed, the gap between the disk and the heatsink is less than 5mm, and the ventilation holes are quite a bit - most of it is closed due to the drive rail.
Operation:
I decided to upgrade the cooling system.
I really didn’t want to use any coolers in order to leave the system silent, as a result of searches in the nearest stores, I came across a cooler for a processor in a 1U package. I chose him as a donor of a copper radiator. With a hacksaw, a vice and a file, the radiator soon took the desired shape and was glued directly to the chip with hot melt adhesive. In addition, I glued radiators to the memory chips and to the CPU on the back of the board (surprisingly there was enough space, about 5mm) Bottom view: Two radiators are installed on the back of the processor
Among other things, because the player is installed vertically (it doesn’t fit in another way), I had to come up with a leg for it to increase the air gap between the shelf where the player is installed and its body.
The leg turned out to be very simple, from an ordinary paper clip, curved in the desired shape and glued to a double-sided tape. Bottom view: Top view: That's all, actually, now my player feels much better, even in the dense surroundings of his electronic friends.
