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Building Linux Appliances - Dealing with Heat Issues?

Posted by Cliff on from the how-hot-is-too-hot dept.

wyrfel asks: "I'm going to build a router & switch based on LRP on the software side and on a FIC PA-2005 with Pentium 200 on the hardware side. Having read some discussions and wanting to make the system as quiet as possible I've remove everything except the floppy (which will be removed once the system is up an running), CPU and RAM from the board, lowered the boards speed from 66MHz to 50MHz which brought down CPU speed to 150MHz, did cut of the power supplys fan and lowered voltage of the CPU fan to 5V instead of 12V. So far everything seems to work fine. The power supply gets a bit warm on the top but it seems to be ok. I didn't add any PCI / ISA cards yet, so I wonder if doing so would bring problems through higher power consumption. What I really worry about is the heatsink that is placed directly beneath the CPU heatsink and that gets a bit hot when running the CPU fan with 5V. With 12V it's fine because of the extra airflow that comes from the fan located near that heatsink. BTW it is attached to some tiny piece labelled 'LINFINITY LX8382A'. Can someone tell me if I have to worry about it becoming too hot and if so what means 'too hot'? Any hints or further suggestions?"

1 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Ditch the old hardware by Brownian+Motion · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I'm doing the same thing right now, and the junk PC I'm using is loud, at least next to my other machines that I've spent the time/$ quieting.

    When I get everything configured, I plan to replace the hardware. Via just released the EPIA 5000 and 800 boards. The Epia 5000 has on board LAN, sound, and video. The CPU is not speedy, it's about the speed of a P233, but requires no active cooling. The total is $98. You can't upgrade anything (CPU is surface mounted) and you only get one PCI Slot. But, depending on what you're doing, it can fit the bill. If you need more speed, $10 more gets you the Epia 800 (though it needs a small fan). If you need more power/PCI slots, you can upgrade to using a Micro-ATX board and use a VIA C3 (also needs minimal cooling)

    You can get a Mini-ITX case w/ the power supply external (so no heat inside the case, and still no fan) for $72 (of course there are other neat cases). Toss in some memory, a network card, and some disk and you're done. I'm just going to put in a normal HD, it shouldn't be used much. If it makes too much noise I'll replace it with a laptop drive or a baracuda.

    I'm going to add a USB-Ethernet adaptor ($5) so I can segment off my wireless base station. It should be more than fast enough to keep up (I'll know next week). I'm still looking for a working OS X VPN solution. I want to firewall off the wireless and use a VPN to get though the firewall. I might have to wait for Jaguar for that. Then I could use IPSec (hopefully the Epia 5000 is fast enough to handle IPSec over wireless.).

    While this costs more than what you've got lying around, it's more than fast enough for a router and it'll be totally silent.