Attack of the jigsaw..psu ventillation

g0fvt · Post by **g0fvt** » Sat Mar 29, 2003 1:10 pm

My BP6 suffered the usual dying capacitors syndrome so I took the opportunity to strip it all out and do some daft stuff to it...

One easy mod was to cut a large round hole in the lower side of the psu (400w Macron) and to pop rivet a finger guard over it (from a 120mm fan)

This seems to have been well worthwhile, on my mini-tower the cpus sit very close to the psu and I got the impression that the cpu fans were just recycling the same air much of the time.... with the powersupply vent the powersupply draws air from around the cpu area of the motherboard.

I did take digital pictures of all the mods but can't remember where I put the data... (modern hard-drives are too big)!

One thing I have noticed is that since doing the latest round of mods to the BP6 is that it overclocks better than ever... I am trying to find the maximum stable speed, as I type this the BP6 is running 82Mhz fsb cpus at 2.2v ... it is playing a divx movie (Pink Floyd The Wall) ... AGP 1/1.

The machine was watercooled and peltiered in the past, now back to stock heatsink fans and standard heatsink compound... and it is going faster!

I am sorry to repeat information posted elsewhere, but I will anyway...
ALL electrolytics on the board have been replaced...all 1000uF+ capacitors are now 4700uF low esr types, EC10 was originally 100uF on my board, now 4700uF. All smaller electrolytics have been replaced with standard values. All voltage regulators original.

Any questions about the modifications please message me or post here, still love my BP.

g0fvt · Post by **g0fvt** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 7:24 am

Hi, I mentioned the replacement caps a while back, I think some people doubted I had done it. So far a pair of BP6s have been done and my VP6.

http://www.g0fvt-hamradio.dsl.pipex.com/bp6caps.htm

Stability is better than ever on all of these machines... sorry for the delay in posting the pics, couldn't find the files!

http://www.g0fvt-hamradio.dsl.pipex.com/index.htm are pics of the BP6 in it's previous life... no longer watercooled or peltiered.

hyperspace · Post by **hyperspace** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 7:45 am

Better late, than never.

I can see now, I will have to get some different heatsinks and fans for the larger, taller capacitors when I do this modification. Don't want to do any more grinding on the GOrbs.

g0fvt · Post by **g0fvt** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 3:12 pm

Yes you are right, the taller capacitors will get in the way with the more exotic coolers, if you leave a bit more lead length on the capacitors, perhaps 1cm and sleeve them you should be able to tilt them out of the way.

The BP6 is still in continuous use though I must admit I use the VP6 more, I wish I had modded the BP6 more a long time ago.. to it's credit the BP6 with aircooling has been soldiering away running UD at 78Mhz fsb for weeks without a reboot. (546Mhz) despite ambient of over 30c.

RRLedford · Post by **RRLedford** » Thu Jul 17, 2003 1:48 am

You should check out the EverCool 715/725 series HSFs which stay small at the level of the caps & then expand to the 70mm fan size as they go higher up from the board.

g0fvt · Post by **g0fvt** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 12:37 pm

Hi, good point regarding the heatsinks, sorry the URL I posted some years ago has changed, the BP6 stuff is now at www.lisney.org.uk

The BP6 is still running and still pleased with it, it has been joined by another overclocked BP running Openbsd with Apache, Samba and a DNS on it.

The power supply needed replacing last week but I guess the years of 24/7 running the PC AND the peltiers took it's toll!

BP6.Com

Attack of the jigsaw..psu ventillation

Attack of the jigsaw..psu ventillation

Pictures of BP6 with larger capacitors