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Introduction - Refrigeration
Unit - Assembly - Final Touches - Putting
it All Together - Testing |
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Pin Warming |
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I was
recently asked what I was going to do about "pin warming". I originally didn't
plan on doing anything, but after I've gone this far already, I figured why not?
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I decided to make a small
heater coil to keep the CPU pins warm to avoid condensation on the motherboard. I took a
piece of 2 x 4 and drew a 2" square with a 1" square in the center of it. I then
put pins around the edges where I wanted the coil to go. I used one strand from a length
of 22 gauge wire and wrapped it around the pins, painstakingly making the heater coil. I
soldered the ends to two pieces of wire to connect to 5VDC.
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I put some heat-shrink tube
over the connections for some added strength and insulation. I placed the coil carefully
into a laminant pouch, placed that into a laminant carrier, and heated it with an iron to
seal it. Then I cut a square out in the center to allow room for the CPU core.
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I hooked it up to the 5VDC from
the PSU to test it and it got hot! A litle TOO hot! It started to melt the laminant. I
decided I would need to tone this down a bit, so I added two .47 ohm, 5 watt resistors. I
set this all up on a small circuit board and added a connector for the 5VDC source.
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| Now it gets nice and toasty
without melting the laminant. I'll mount this on top of the case with the refrigeration
unit and put a heatsink on the resistors (they throw off quite a bit of heat too). |
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.The Shim |
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| I made a small shim to go
around the CPU core to protect it from getting chipped. This was made out of a piece of
gasket material, just slightly thinner than the height of the CPU core. |
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The Clamp |
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I messed with several designs
before I decided on this one. It's the simplest, lightest, and easiest of the ideas I had.
I used a piece of material similar to bakelite. It's very strong and durable, but
extremely light. It also seems to be an excellent insulator.
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| I used two pieces of 1/16"
Nickel 200 wire as the brackets to hold this unit down. The slot will slide over the
5/16" copper tubing. The spring will fit into the recess. The wires will clip under
the tabs on the CPU socket. Simple, yet very effective. |
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The Case |
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| In between doing all this work,
I've been painting the case. I also intend to put a plexiglass window in the side panel
and maybe a neon light inside. I also want to have the other side panel air-brushed, but
that can wait a while.
*Details and pix can be seen in the 'Case Mod'
section
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Insulation |
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| I removed the goop that was on
it before and replaced it with this pipe insulation. Everything is completely sealed now.
I ran the compressor for a while to test it and the evaporator frosts over, but nothing
else is affected. Now to put the PC in and start it up! |
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