How do you cool it?

Mario · Post by **Mario** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 3:34 pm

'K, so I'm making an N64p. I'm wondering how I'm supposed to cool this
thing. I am going to have a fan, but should it blow air in of suck it out?
Which is more efficient? Also, why does everybody replace the heatsinks?
What's wrong with the original ones? Thanks in advance. (The N64 board will
be facing down, if that makes a difference. I.E. the heatsinks will be facing
to the back of the portable)

evilteddy · Post by **evilteddy** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 4:38 pm

When you opened the N64 you should have seen a lot of shielding and metal. These touched the heatsinks already there. The heat on the chips would then go onto the heatsink and then to the rest of the metal. This is called a passive cooling system because you do not use energy to cool the chips. Most of us choose to remove this metal because its heavy and large erego we need to put active cooling (which is in this case a fan) in the case to keep it cool. Now the heatsinks already on there are great at passive cooling where they just suck up lots of heat and disperse it on the top. What it is not good at is sucking up heat and then being cooled by a fan. This is because of its low surface area. A high surface area will allow more air to pass over the heatsinks meaning they are cooled properly.

The point to note is that you can keep the stock heatsinks if you plan on keeping the rest of the metal which is what Hailrazer did if I remember correctly.

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 5:15 pm

I know the N64 (unmodded) gets rather warm when it has been running for a while; this is another good reason to put on heatsinks and use a fan - why hold a rather warm portable when you can hold a cool one? You need to have a system cool anyway.

To answer the original question, some people fan out air, other fan in air. Personally, on the two N64 systems I have made, I sucked air out. It works fine, on my Multi system I only used a 40mm graphics card fan (slim), and my system ran for nearly 7 hours straight before the batteries died; this is good evidence the fan system works well, as the system remained cool on the casing.

hailrazer · Post by **hailrazer** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 6:03 pm

I just trimmed the original heatsink metal and left it on. It's really not that heavy. And my N64 portable never feels warm to the touch.

Unless you were to mount the metal to the case I don't think you would notice any heat.

Mario · Post by **Mario** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 7:10 pm

For extra clarity, I meant I wanted to keep the heatsinks on the actual chips, not the huge piece of metal. If I keep the heatsinks, will a simple fan be enough?

Hailraizer: Good suggestion, but this portable is going to be super-thin but still complete (meaning with internal batteries). Therefore, I can't keep the original metal.

collinE · Post by **collinE** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 8:38 pm

Has anyone criss-crossed lines down the original heat sinks so that they'd have more surface area? since surface area seems to be the biggest hurdle with using them?

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 1:16 am

collinE wrote:Has anyone criss-crossed lines down the original heat sinks so that they'd have more surface area? since surface area seems to be the biggest hurdle with using them?

It is hard enough to cut through the metal (see hailrazer's pic), let alone the extra thick metal you refer to! Sure, possible definitely, if you have the tools.

Mario · Post by **Mario** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 11:41 am

So that's why people get new heatsinks? For more surface area? That makes sense. So if I get new heatsinks, will a small fan be sufficient?

collinE · Post by **collinE** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 1:50 pm

you got it. Also think about small and loud or large and quiet. Those really little fans whir loud if you run them fast enough to move any air.

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 4:20 pm

That's why I used the fan from an old graphics card - slim, also very quiet; 40mm too.

Mario · Post by **Mario** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 8:10 pm

I've got tons of fans; been taking apart computers for years.

Where can I get the heatsinks?

Valium · Post by **Valium** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 8:20 pm

Mario wrote:I've got tons of fans; been taking apart computers for years.

Where can I get the heatsinks?

Take a second look at some of those computers.

grossaffe · Post by **grossaffe** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 8:34 pm

Valium wrote:
Mario wrote:I've got tons of fans; been taking apart computers for years.

Where can I get the heatsinks?
Take a second look at some of those computers.

hehe, yup. I rip heatsinks off of old graphics cards.

just curious, though, what do you guys use to attach a keep a heatsink in place?

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 8:43 pm

collinE wrote:Has anyone criss-crossed lines down the original heat sinks so that they'd have more surface area? since surface area seems to be the biggest hurdle with using them?

It would work to some degree but they dont have much height to them. The heatsinks people are putting on are generally something like 2-4 times taller than the original square spacer pieces. This will limit the amount of surface area you can get with basic tools. You would be better off ripping some old chipset/GPU heatsinks out of something, the ones that are incredibly slim and have "criss-crosses" on them already.

http://m2.sourcingmap.com/smap/images/i ... 8_ux_n.jpg

Something like that maybe. It costs $5, probably not worth trying to make yourself.

Also the stock heatsink squares dont have a very smooth finish on them IIRC. If you want to get picky.

Mario · Post by **Mario** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 9:25 pm

Valium wrote:
Mario wrote:I've got tons of fans; been taking apart computers for years.

Where can I get the heatsinks?
Take a second look at some of those computers.

Well, yeah, those have heatsinks, but they're huge! I never had any graphics cards, I have fans that were used for the CPU.

As for the heatsinks, I need some that are no taller that the original ones. Can anybody point me to a website selling those?

EDIT: I just found this ebay auction:
http://cgi.ebay.com/5VDC-Fans-Super-Thi ... =72%3A1210

These look perfect! It is a lot of 4 fans, each with a heatsink. Will those work?