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Cuzza's Sega SC-3000H Nano-ITX Mod

dr emulator (madmax) said:
dam shame your not in my country as sir_real gave me an old ati fan very similar to the one in that pic
never mind ya projects coming along well :)
Click to expand...

Looks like I've found someone locally (in NZ that is) who's sending me one for free. It's off a 4850 reference cooler.
 
Can use the 4850 cooler -and- heatsink? If you could cram the whole thing in there shroud and all I bet work great. I can send you this one too if you need it.

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too big. thanks anyway
 
D: I threw away a heatpipe cooler from a laptop that would of been handy for this.

Might see if I can salvage some more laptops and if I find any more decent ones I'll let you know!
 
Lazzer408 said:
:confused: It's smaller then a 4850 fan.
Click to expand...

Well, the casing is too big. The chap who's sending me a 4850 fan said it was 60mm across, which is the most I can deal with. Unless I got my inches-mm conversion wrong...

EDIT: He's sending me the fan only, no casing, no heatsink.
 
Cuzza said:
Well, the casing is too big. The chap who's sending me a 4850 fan said it was 60mm across, which is the most I can deal with. Unless I got my inches-mm conversion wrong...

EDIT: He's sending me the fan only, no casing, no heatsink.
Click to expand...

Cool. Those little fans blow like crazy for their size. Hope it works out for you.
 
When it gets here I'll be back on sketchup seeing how to make it fit.

Until then, here's what I've done. Made up a model showing the case and clearances involved around the back of the heatsink. There are other parts not shown in the model (yet) which dictate the heatsink can't be made any bigger.

You can see at the back of the case where I am considering putting an air duct. I could cut the duct upwards, make it taller, but I don't want to do that because that would mean cutting two separate sections of the case, and would make it rather obvious detracting more from originality which I don't want to do. Second pic shows the opening of the duct at the rear (it won't be blue when/if I make one. I realised that if the air is coming in (or maybe out) a duct at the back then I can extend the heatsink upwards into the few mm of free space. You'll see this extension marked.

heatsink mk3.png

heatsink mk3 2040.png
 
Do you have room back there to pull this off? Have the duct open on top as well. I figured if you ever go through the trouble then any little bit helps.

EDIT - or better yet. (image updated)

Are you putting holes in the top of the case for the air intake? If not you can't add your "extension" on top because you need the sides open for air inlet.

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No holes in top. And I want to leave a gap in that top corner to route cables.

:facepalm: ! I had forgotten to leave space for the keyboard! duh... updated pic...

heatsink mk3 4272.png


So the plan is to embed the fan within the heatsink. It will draw air from above and below and exhaust out the rear.
 
here's the fan I scored:

SV402961.jpg

SV402962.jpg
 
Turns out the fan is just not as narrow as I had hoped. Embedding it in the heatsink will just be too tricky. But by mangling the case a bit more I can put it on top, and those cables will just have to go somewhere else. Here's the latest design showing the fan ducting and airflow:
heatsink mk3 with fan duct right airflow.png


The fan cannot intake from across all the fins so I figured cut some holes to allow some of the air to flow back down along them. Warm air better than no air.
heatsink mk3 with fan duct top airflow.png
 
Today I made up a cardboard model (thanks old cereal box) of the heatsink, just to check for size/fit.

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hs model4.jpg


It seems that somehow my measurements have actually proved correct; it fits!!
 
The fan I already have will be fine, thnx!
 
I had another idea to save space: pull apart the USB wifi dongle. The thing doesn't get very good signal inside the case so question: Is it worth extending the aerial on it?

SV402976.jpg


Is this the antenna? Can I attach a long wire to that to get a better signal?
 
I seem to remember a post (somewhere on the internets) where some guy took apart one of those after-market range boosting router antennas, and all that was inside it was a coil of wire. He tested soldering a coil of wire (wrapped some insulated wire around a screw, left a section straight on each end) onto his old antenna and it worked just as well as the store-bought rangebooster antenna.... forgive my MS-paint skills.
antenna.png


I'll see if I can find that article I was talking about. For now this'll have to do.

Edit
It was an instructable! here: Linky

Hope that helped. I'm pretty sure (guessing, that is) that the PCB trace you pointed out IS the antenna there on that dongle (anyone who knows what they're talking about care to chime in?). You should be able to (Carefully) scrape the sealant off of the top of part of that trace to expose the bare copper, and (again, CAREFULLY) solder right onto it.
 
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Cuzza said:
I had another idea to save space: pull apart the USB wifi dongle. The thing doesn't get very good signal inside the case so question: Is it worth extending the aerial on it?

http://img.techpowerup.org/091113/SV402976.jpg

Is this the antenna? Can I attach a long wire to that to get a better signal?
Click to expand...

Yes it is but you can't just attach a longer wire to get a stronger signal. The antenna has to be a proper length to avoid standing waves aka. SWR. If you follow that trace back you'll see a loop to ground. You need to cut that loop and use those two point to connect a coax cable. The loop will then need to be placed on the other end of the coax as well as the antenna segment. Need a drawing? I'm going to sleep now but I can doodle it up tomorrow if you didn't follow.

One of these would work well.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Pair-Laptop-Wir...emQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item518def1ec4
They are antennas from laptops and found in the LCD panel. Cut off the tiny connector and solder it to the usb adaptor and you can locate the antenna inside the computer away from noise sources. I need to see a close-up of the usb adaptor to suggest what to cut/remove.

Get me a close-up of this area.

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Cuzza. I must say this is an EPIC mod :toast:
 
ur famous:respect: do we need to refer to you as "ur Majesty" now?:laugh:
 
On your knees, peasant!
 
That gets the internal antenna out of the way.

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