[safemode]

I was wondering if anyone happened to have their mini opened up and could tell me what the clearance is between the chips and the keyboard.
I was thinking of buying this : EverCool RHS-02 All Aluminum HeatSinks 8 PCs Heat Sinks for Motherboard Chipset DDR Chipset VGA Chipset-Best Computer Online Store Houston Buy Discount Prices Texas-Directron.com

They are 6mm high though. I could sand them down but i'd like to know for sure what kind of height i'd be dealing with.
The goal is to allow me to overclock the gpu and cpu. and possibly add a micro-blower.


edit: guess the html is back off and the formatting is working again.

[Offroadie]

I think it's only about 1.5mm. Besides, with the keyboard in the way and only passive cooling those wouldn't do anything.

[safemode]

there is convection and conduction occurring even without fans. However, i do plan on adding a micro-blower. I do think it is more than 1.5mm though. The copper heat spreader mods i've seen on the board show that a second sheet of copper cutout is needed under the main sheet to make contact with the chips. The sheets look at least 1mm thick, if not more.

[safemode]

in the absence of a micro-blower, i was thinking of these little guys. http://www.tetech.com/Peltier-Thermo...les/Micro.html

The only problem with them is that there is a chance that without increasing the ventillation, you could start to overheat the other parts of the motherboard by raising the ambient temp too much.

[Offroadie]

The thermal pads are only about 1.5mm thick so that's why I listed the clearance as that

A heat sink uses it's increased surface area for greater heat dissipation, having a sheet of aluminum on top restricts the heat sinks ability to dissipate any more heat without active cooling and/or better ventilation.

I've never heard of anyone doing a copper mod to these minis. Do you have a link to that?

[bsoplinger1]

Originally Posted by Offroadie

I've never heard of anyone doing a copper mod to these minis. Do you have a link to that?

This isn't much help, but when I first got here and started to read the board I remember a mod article and that person added small copper sheet shapes to act as a better heat sink. So the article would be from March or earlier and most likely in the mods forum.

[Offroadie]

I deal with electronics daily and heat is definitely the enemy of longevity. That being said I'm always looking for better ways to keep things cool. The problem with the Mini 9 is the keyboard is the heat spreader/heat sink. No matter what you do to better conduct heat away from the cpu and other chips, you're still limited by the unit used to dissipate the heat (keyboard). Better cool the keyboard and better cool the Mini.

[safemode]

or bypass the keyboard altogether. it'd have been nice if they were able to make the whole top cover around the keyboard aluminum. Then you could have two heatpipes go from the chips to either side of the keyboard and attach directly to the cover. Apart from doing something crazy like that though, i think a upgraded heat sink setup rather than a flat heat spreader and/or the micro-peltiers ought to work nicely if you had a nano sized blower setup pushing a little air around, leaving us with less heat to dissipate out of the keyboard.

maybe these guys. Small Mighty Mini cooling fans and blowers by Sunon, the best micro fan solutions

[safemode]

well, the msi wind has plenty of top clearance. with 3mm heatsinks like i linked to on top of the heat spreader. Guess i'll be measuring mine when i get it (whenever dell decides to ship it).

[Offroadie]

This is the one device that I own I can't come up with some kind of solution for. That would be great if you could come up with something.