Finally got sick of my DSL modem...
My DSL modem has always been somewhat flaky. I suspect it's temperature related, as some of the chips in it hit as much as 70*C and are not heatsinked or cooled in any way other than just convection through small vents in the case.
I've tried to fix this problem once in the past by heatsinking some of the chips. I wrote an article about it for Short-Media; the article is here:
http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=244
That worked for about a year, but lately it's been getting flaky again. I'm pretty sure it's line-related this time, but when it went down last night, I took the opportunity to, ah, improve the cooling further.
Turns out that the heatsinks weren't doing a whole lot... I never measured it when I wrote the article, I simply assumed they'd help since I opened up the vents at the same time, and there was more area for the heat to radiate from. But I measured the temps again with my wireless thermometer last night, and i got about 73*C on the line driver (the heatsinked chip in the bottom right corner if the front of the modem is facing you) unheatsinked, and about 68*C with the heatsink. So it was helping, but not a lot.
With the fan, the temp. on that chip (which is easily the hottest-running chip in the device) dropped to 38*C. Not bad... Then I taped over the vent in the top of the case (there are also vents on the bottom and both sides) to make sure that any air the fan was getting was passing over the circuit board. That shaved another 1*C off the temperature of the line driver, bringing it down to 37*C.
I'd say a 31*c temperature drop is pretty impressive.
And I even installed the fan the *right* way... by drilling the PCB and adding a fan header and everything!
I've tried to fix this problem once in the past by heatsinking some of the chips. I wrote an article about it for Short-Media; the article is here:
http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=244
That worked for about a year, but lately it's been getting flaky again. I'm pretty sure it's line-related this time, but when it went down last night, I took the opportunity to, ah, improve the cooling further.
Turns out that the heatsinks weren't doing a whole lot... I never measured it when I wrote the article, I simply assumed they'd help since I opened up the vents at the same time, and there was more area for the heat to radiate from. But I measured the temps again with my wireless thermometer last night, and i got about 73*C on the line driver (the heatsinked chip in the bottom right corner if the front of the modem is facing you) unheatsinked, and about 68*C with the heatsink. So it was helping, but not a lot.
With the fan, the temp. on that chip (which is easily the hottest-running chip in the device) dropped to 38*C. Not bad... Then I taped over the vent in the top of the case (there are also vents on the bottom and both sides) to make sure that any air the fan was getting was passing over the circuit board. That shaved another 1*C off the temperature of the line driver, bringing it down to 37*C.
I'd say a 31*c temperature drop is pretty impressive.
And I even installed the fan the *right* way... by drilling the PCB and adding a fan header and everything!
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What modem is that by the way?