The ghetto mod thread

[goodpsusearch]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Headphone amplifier (okay, maybe not ghetto but most of the materials it was made out of were just junk parts sitting around)
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...84&postcount=6

This actually looks amazing! I like it! Fuck apple, this is innovative design.

[momaka]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

There seems to be some clear plastic sheet between fan & heatsink, what's that for Momaka?

Hand made air diverter (plastic sheets from fruit packaging - all held together by a good amount of hot glue ). It forces the air from the fan to be pushed into the heat sink fins. Similar to this (my HP Pavilion 8756C):
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1353298522
^ Actually, that's an old picture. Now I have a bigger diverter that goes all the way to the heat sink.

Originally, HP had the fan (a dual ball bearing 0.30A Delta) mounted on a plastic duct and the fan was sitting about 3 cm above the CPU heat sink with no air diverter behind it. To make sure the heat sink was cooled, they had the fan blowing on full blast (12V). And like any other good Delta fan, this thing was pushing lots of air and making lost of noise. Even worse, the plastic duct was resonating and amplifying the noise, so the PC was very loud. Considering the CPU in this PC is a tame 850 MHz Pentium 3, the computer really doesn't need to be making all of that noise.

So, the first thing I did was eliminate the fan duct - I just hung the fan with wires from the top of the case. That alone cut the noise by half. Next, I turned down the fan speed with a cheap $0.99 fan controller. Of course, that lowered the air flow. Therefore I had to make sure that all of the air from the fan went to the CPU heat sink - and that's what this plastic diverter accomplished.

Right now I have the fan running at a very low speed - just enough for it to spin. And even so, the CPU heat sink still feels cold even under 100% CPU load, regardless of how hot my room is (usually 27-28C in the summer).

This actually looks amazing! I like it!

Thank you.
I have another plastic box like that. I'm thinking about making another amp. My uncle gave me an old box of chips and components he had collected over the years when he used to be interested in electronics (which was quite a while back). Among the stuff are some nice amplifier ICs. So I'll see what I'll do with that box .

[TELVM]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Hand made air diverter (plastic sheets from fruit packaging - all held together by a good amount of hot glue ). It forces the air from the fan to be pushed into the heat sink fins ... ...

I was suspecting it was some aerodynamic trick .


Let's continue terrorising your eyes .

That cardboard duct securing exclusive cool air from the front for the NH-D14, ontop the 960T X4 3.0 unlocked to X6 & OCed to 4.1, lowers CPU temps by ~4º C.

[momaka]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Let's continue terrorising your eyes .

I will fight terror with terror!

Here's a GeFoce 7600GS of mine I got for free:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1353381100
^ Custom heat sink is made from an Xbox 360 GPU heat sink. Had to do only minor trimming and cutting to make it fit.
Now the back side:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1353381100
^ we have a Xbox 360 heat sink retention bracket holding the heat sink via 2 screws. Since there were ceramic caps on the opposite side under the GPU, I had to raise the bracket. That's what the 2 wood pieces do. A piece of nail is placed on top of them and used by the retention bracket as a swivel so that the tension on each side of the heat sink is even. To make sure the wood pieces and the nail swivel do not move if there's a slightly loose tension (there shouldn't be, but just in case), I hot glued them to the video card.
Finally, note the lower MOSFET on the left - that's the reason why I got the card for free (the original 20A one was shorted). The replacement in that picture is a 85A MOSFET (a 85N02G) taken again *gasp* from a Xbox 360. Let's see the video card try to make this one go short
And finally, something to cool the heat sink with:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1353381100
^ Yup, that's half of a Xbox 360 fan set cut with a jig saw . The fan is a 70 mm Delta screamer. I only have it hooked up to 5V because anything more will make the video card fly away - that's how powerful those things are.

That cardboard duct securing exclusive cool air from the front for the NH-D14, ontop the 960T X4 3.0 unlocked to X6 & OCed to 4.1, lowers CPU temps by ~4º C.

I didn't know cardboard is UL 94V0 -approved .
How to know the CPU in your computer is overclocked too much...
- the ducts start catching fire

I must admit, if you never told us that duct was made from cardboard, I wouldn't have never guessed it. Looks very well cut and formed.

[TELVM]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

I will fight terror with terror!

That half-of-a-fan of yours has raised the bar a lot , but I'll try. Cavemen RAM sinks cut to shape from 60mm wide, 2mm thick aluminium strip.

Your move .

I must admit, if you never told us that duct was made from cardboard, I wouldn't have never guessed it. Looks very well cut and formed.

The relatively hard cardboard from photobooks makes great stuff for PC air ducts, flexible enough but also rigid enough, after a bit of origami .

[momaka]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

That half-of-a-fan of yours has raised the bar a lot , but I'll try.

Hehe, thanks, I do take that as a compliment
I think that 7600GS with the half-fan IS the most ghetto working computer mod I have right now. I do have one that is more ghetto but it isn't "working" quite yet (and probably won't be, but we will see ) - pictures for that one coming perhaps later this week.

But to keep the thread flowing, I'll post a few more pics of another video card I modded in a similar fashion...
A Radeon 9500 Pro / 9700.
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1353991011
^ the heat sink is again made from an Xbox 360 GPU heat sink, as is the retention bracket, lol:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1353991011
Another shot of the retention bracket:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1353991011
^ yes, that's a piece of a wooden block. It sits right under the center of the GPU die, so the force from the heat sink won't bend the PCB and crack the BGA joints on it.

Another shot:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1353991011
^ This one shows the half fan I used in the 7600GS above. Originally, I was going to use it with this Radeon card but decided it was too heavy and bent the PCB too much so I decided to use it in the 7600GS instead. I do have the other half of that fan, though, so I can always put 1 on this card too

And here's the whole setup:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1353991011

And the reason for this mod - I have 3 more of these Radeon 9700 cards that are working and only 1 heat sink that fits them (a Chinese replica of the 9800 Pro heat sink, that is - but it's well made). So that means I need at least 3 more heat sinks. And I say at least because I have 4 more 9700s that still need to be fixed/re-flowed so with some luck I can have up to 7 of these.

----
Another specialty of mine is custom power connectors for power adapters. This is the first one I did:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1353991011
I found this boombox in the trash many years ago. It worked fine on batteries but not on AC. The primary on the transformer inside it went open circuit. I can actually probably repair it now since i have a temp. controlled soldering station that can desolder the traffo (back when I did the ghetto connector mod, I didn't have that station, so that wasn't an option)... But I like making those plugs. The power adapter you see in the picture is (IIRC) 15V, 4A from a laptop. The bulk amp cap is rated for 16V (hence the "16VDC in max" note I put).

Since that mod, I have made quite a few other connectors. Even the camera that took all of these pictures uses one for the power converting cable . The tone controls for my headphone amplifier are another example. Up until last week or so, the tone controls were still on my breadboard and the way my computer connected to them was through some home-brew audio jacks made of wood and staples. I suppose words aren't much good in showing this. I'll try to take a few pictures of these things this week and post them.
...
I also have a non-computer ghetto mod that I just completed just last Friday - I converted an old 9.6V battery drill we had to use a Xbox 360 203W power supply. No pictures yet, but I'm sure you can imagine .

Cavemen RAM sinks cut to shape from 60mm wide, 2mm thick aluminium strip.
http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11451510.jpg

Planning on some crazy overclocking there?
Looks good, though. I like how you removed the sticker on the RAM and put it on top of the heat sink - that way you don't have to remove the heat sink to see what kind of RAM you had in there (plus, the RAM chips cool better).

[TELVM]

Re: The ghetto mod thread



The Mother of All Ghetto-Mods

Instructable

[lti]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

On my computer (the old Compaq from my earlier post), I made a heatsink for the clock generator chip from heatsinks from two old CD-ROM drives. I stacked the two heatsinks on top of each other and soldered them together.

I found this boombox in the trash many years ago. It worked fine on batteries but not on AC. The primary on the transformer inside it went open circuit. I can actually probably repair it now since i have a temp. controlled soldering station that can desolder the traffo (back when I did the ghetto connector mod, I didn't have that station, so that wasn't an option)... But I like making those plugs. The power adapter you see in the picture is (IIRC) 15V, 4A from a laptop. The bulk amp cap is rated for 16V (hence the "16VDC in max" note I put).

That transformer doesn't look big enough to power a boombox. Maybe you can ghetto mod a bigger transformer into it. If the transformer has a thermal fuse inside, you could do a ghetto mod to bypass it like I did to a Harbor Freight cordless drill battery charger.

[momaka]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

The Mother of All Ghetto-Mods

Instructable

Nice mod, but I don't know if you realize that 99.9% of the members on this forum are males

That transformer doesn't look big enough to power a boombox. Maybe you can ghetto mod a bigger transformer into it. If the transformer has a thermal fuse inside, you could do a ghetto mod to bypass it like I did to a Harbor Freight cordless drill battery charger.

Well, it's a small boombox anyways. I don't remember the exact rating of the speakers or the amp IC, but I think both were rated under 10W total. The traffo IMO looks big enough for 0.5A at 12V continuous and maybe 1A peak, so it should be good enough. Or maybe you're right, I don't know. The primary is open, though, so it likely has a blown thermal fuse as you suggested.

Funny you mention the cordless drill battery charger. The batteries for my 9.6V craftsman cordless drill still hold a little bit of charge but the charger blew the thermal fuse last time I tried to use it. Hence why I decided to mod the drill to use a power supply.

[TELVM]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Let's keep the party going. Ghetto-silencing of HDD:

--> LARGE --> LARGE

--> LARGE --> LARGE

Couple slices of Slot-A heatsink thermal-pasted and fixed with zip-ties to the windward side to keep heat at bay, then a jacket of EPS, then another jacket of corrugated box. Then enjoy the silence.



I was inspired by this masterpiece, crowning work of the ghetto-modding:

[c_hegge]

Re: The ghetto mod thread



Hahahahaha!! Love it

[kc8adu]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

all those cheap fans probably make more noise than the hdd.

[Shocker]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

all those cheap fans probably make more noise than the hdd.

I agree. The best it would do is drown out the HDD noise.

[Phaihn]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

does that hard drive really make that much noise my computer drowns out the noise of my hard drives i got a 500gb blue and 1tb black.

[TELVM]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

all those cheap fans probably make more noise than the hdd.

I agree that adding noisy fans would defeat the purpose. However they could be silent fans, or standard fans silenced with resistors or software control to lower rpm & noise.

does that hard drive really make that much noise my computer drowns out the noise of my hard drives i got a 500gb blue and 1tb black.

That's the problem, once you've silenced the rest of the comp the HDD/s emerge as the main source of noise/vibration .

Most people don't care much about comp noise, but I'm paranoid on the subject. As on the other hand I'm also paranoid on cooling, conciliating both makes an interesting challenge .

[Junk Parts]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

I need to add some fans or something to this Hp of mine. Its too quiet! Back in the day I had and OC'ed AMD k6 with four large fans in the box. It souned like a Helicopter taking off all the time.

[TELVM]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

I need to add some fans or something to this Hp of mine. Its too quiet! ...

How about a R&R Olympus in full AB?

[Shocker]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

As on the other hand I'm also paranoid on cooling, conciliating both makes an interesting challenge .

What parts are you worried about???

I don't think the HDD silencing rigs shown would work very well, because the heatsinks strapped to the HDDs are exposed to the outside world and transfer the vibrations, defeating the muffling - therefore, why bother with such a setup???

[TELVM]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

What parts are you worried about???

Not really worried now, after I finished fiddling it behaves. Idling @ 21C ambient:

I don't think the HDD silencing rigs shown would work very well, because the heatsinks strapped to the HDDs are exposed to the outside world and transfer the vibrations, defeating the muffling - therefore, why bother with such a setup???

As you well say the heatsinks are a weak spot in the sound-proofing, but I didn't want to fry the HDD in the process, so had to compromise. However after the guetto-mod noise from HDD is 25% or less of what it was, and vibrations are now zero. Fair enough.

[momaka]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Then enjoy the silence.

Unless you leave a few small fans in there, like in this picture .
http://img401.*************/img401/9...lent05bva3.jpg

Nice mod, though. I really need to try something similar for some of my HDDs as well. This old IBM Deskstar DTLA-305030 in my daily-use P3 computer drives me nuts sometimes. Actually, I don't think I'll be able to silence it, even if I used 3x the insulation you did. When it's reading/writing lots of random files, it sounds as if the heads are literally banging on the platters. I've never heard such loud heads in a hard drive before. Bearings are quite noisy too. And as a bonus, the HP case it's in has great acoustics, so all of that noise is amplified at least 10x.
Oh and that thing runs hot too. It's 20 to 21C in my house right now, and it still manages to run at 36 to 40C. In the summer when it's close to 27C in the house, this thing easily reaches 44+C. I can't even imagine how hot it would run in a tight insulated enclosure. (On a sidenote, my laptop is much worse, though. The hard drive in it - a 20 GB Hitachi Travelstar - goes to a whopping 55-58C in the summer. I think I saw it at 62C once or twice as well )

Hahahahaha!! Love it

Yeah, that egg carton is the icing of the cake .

I got some pics of some ghetto projects coming soon. Was busy this last week/weekend with some other DIY projects, so I still haven't taken the pictures out of my camera.