Dreambox Overheating

far2many

Hello All,Well i bought my second dreambox from Ebay in the summer and it worked perfectly. I attached a hard drive 80gb 7200 and a 512mb usb stick to store the epg. I moved the var to the hard disk and loaded an ambitious channel list. I placed the working box under the telly (not in a cabinet) but on top of my sk* box and it worked for days. One day it went off suddenly in the middle of a program. I could not recover it using the remote - it had went into deep standby. I powered off the box but it woudl not start straight away it was obvioulsy too hot. I removed the hd and transfered the var back to internal flash and removed the usb stick. The problem has not gone away. The box goes to deep standby after 20 mins or so (enough time to heat up). The box works perfectly if the lid is left off (cold air circulates and heat escapes). Obviously with having a small child i could not leave it this way and so installed mini heatsinks on all major chips. This still did not improve the boxes performance. I put in a SMALL fan and it works great - totally perfect - never goes off. The noise from the fan is offputting though. Although not loud (i have since bought a quieter one) its still audible. I have reinstalled a small laptop hd (less heat from them) and the usb stick and now have a diablo cam. The box still works perfectly with that small fan.My question is this and is probably only for the really technical. Clearly i have damaged a component in the box due to overheating. I would like to be able to replace this and to remove my fan which is noisy. Is there any capacitors or resistors that may be at fault that could be replaced. Any other ways to coll the box without being so loud?Kind RegardsPeter

RedDevil_UK

First of all, welcome to the forum

hard drives in PVRs are best when they are 5600rpm.. 7200 just runs hotter. the extra speed can be seen in a PC, but in a PVR the improvement to performance is nil. Not alot you can do about that now though

i would recommend taking it off your sky box too, and move your VAR folder to the USB stick and avoid multibooting images using the HDD

if you use an image on the hard drive, then even when your watching TV (not recording) your drive is spinning up all the time, reading the image.... this causes a lot of heat.

so i recommend using just a flash image and storing all your cams,plugins and keys on the usb stick

lastly, when turning off the Dreambox press and hold standbye (on the remote) and choose shutdown, to completely turn it off.... giving it a chance to cool properly

BonceChops

Add a cooling fan inside your box.

I put mine on the right hand side of the case lid. Is it fastened to the inside of the lid using very small cable ties through the vent slots. Fit it so it blows the heat out of you box not so it pulls cool air in. Pulling cold air in will cool the psu but will heat up the rest of the box. By blowing air out of the box, cool air is drawn in through the other case vents and is pulled across the PSU which cools it. You only need a ver slow running fan with only a small air movement. I current have a 80mm PC cooling fan with a manual speed control fitted. It is set very slow so makes no noticeable noise at all. Here is a link to a similar fan to mine _http://www.ebuyer.com/product/92795 mine does not have coloured LEDS but I think you could remove them if you don't like the idea. You could either hot glue the speed controller inside the case or if you don't mind putting a hole in the back of you box it would be nice to have the speed control knob on the outside to make it easy to adjust for speed/noise when the box is in position.

I intend to fit one to my new 7025+ soon so I will post a picture when I do it. Make sure the fan you buy will fit inside your box though. The first one I fitted was in my 7000 and there is plenty of room inside it.

Several people have said before on here that there boxes don't run too hot as standard. I like to think that the cooler it runs the longer it will last. Heat is a big killer of electronics. The capacitors in the PSU especially don't like to run hot.

One last thought about heat. I have all my boxes on a glass shelved open TV stand. The closed cupboard type will always make you box run warmer. I have known people fit large 120mm fans running slowly in the back of them to pull the heat out.

BonceChops

Ok then here is how I fitted a couple of cooling fans to a 7000 and 7025+

Dreambox 7000

In the 7000 I fitted a fan like this one _http://www.ebuyer.com/product/92795 I removed the LED's and shortened the leads to suit. As my 7000 has an extra PSU (left hand aide of the box) to run the hard disk, I have used the original hard disk connector to power the fan. As you can see in the picture I have stuck the speed control knob to the bottom of the case with double sided tape in the bottom left of the picture. I am looking into fitting an RF modulator into the box, when I do I will drill another hole for the fan speed knob and mount it on the rear of the case.



The next picture shows the fan mounted on the inside of the case lid with small clear cable ties through the vent slots. It is a standard 80mm PC case fan. It just fits without touching the extra PSU in my box. In a standard 7000 there is enough room for a family of mice to move in (and keep warm).



Dreambox 7025+

In the 7025, shown below, there is less space over the PSU so I went for a smaller 60mm slim fan that I took from a PC CPU cooler. The first picture shows inside the 7025.




The next picture shows a fan speed controller stuck to the side of the hard disk caddy, again with double sided tape. This gets its power from a standard male-female hard disk connector as used my many PC cooling fans. Again the fan is fastened to the side of the case with small clear cable ties. As nothing is fastened permanently if I need to send the 7025 back under warranty it will all remove without a trace.



The fan speed's are set very slow so there is no noticeable noise from them. Both boxes are now nice and cool.

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john_graydon

Nice One B/C

Mine never overheats and have it stored on top of other receivers. I usuall time the dreambox to switch off after recording. In saying that I havent being doing much recording lately. But nice job on your dreambox.

Happy Dreaming