Adding Heatsinks and cooling an A1200
 

Hello,

My Miggy has been crashing/freezing recently, usually when I'm streaming. It started with the Monkey Island games, which I thought was down to a OCS/Blizzard or Workbench 3.9 incompatibility. It then started freezing in Workbench, which concluded it was a hardware problem, and not a software one.

After some trial and error, I found the Amiga was over heating. So with some better internal cable management and raising the Amiga off the desk. The problem solved it self. I would like to make it more permanent though.

Anyway, I have a Blizzard Mk-III which runs super hot. To hot to touch. The trapdoor is off. Would it be beneficial to add a heat sink to it?

Additionally; I have an Indivision Mk-II which I'm sure is the culprit for the heat/crashing. I've found some pictures online of fitting a small 40mm fan to one. I would also like to add a heat sink to Alice, which is a problem due to the amount of space available.

I bought some heat-sink/fan kits for the raspberry pi from ebay, they seem small and cheap enough to experiment with.

If anyone has done this before, or has any advice - or 'DON'T DO IT'. I'm all ears!

Cheers,

Robin

Haven't heard of an Amiga overheating but perhaps its possible with all your internal mods. Back in my tech days we modified our graphics cards by attaching heat sinks to the ram etc used a thermal adhesive to attach heat sinks to get every last mhz out of an overclock.

I can't see it doing any harm to fit a heatsink and a fan if you can find room, just so long as the fan can breath. Just thinking out loud here but you can get fans designed to mounted into PCI slots to push air out sideways (if that makes sense). You might be able to mount something like that in the case in the space below the floppy drive to discharge air out the rear? Don't know, floppy drive might get in the way.

Out of interest has the machine been recapped?

Hi Robin

the 68030 has a thermal limit of 70 degrees (in ceramic) that's way hotter than you can comfortably touch. The 030 on one of my ACA cards has a small heatsink on it, taken from a Southbridge on a dead motherboard, and it worked quite well, although you will need something only a few mm high, or put the Amiga on stilts.

As for your random crashing, you are very probably right when you say the Indivision MK2 is causing your instabilities. I dont use one myself, still using SCART and a 1084, but i have had friends use them, and have the same issues, they where solved the means of a small RAM heatsink put ontop with a little fan, from a floppy splitter cable. it did indeed help with stability and artifacts etc.

Oh thankyou guys for replying!

@Glen M

I'm not sure if the Amiga has been re-capped. The previous owner did say he did re-do the capacitor for the floppy drive, but I'm not sure if that's for the motherboard or the floppy itself (which I don't use anymore).

I'm considering adding heat sinks to all the custom chips if I can. They cost pennies, and it would seem to be help it out a little.

@Pollock

I think your right with the Indivision. I couldn't live without it now, and there would be no way to stream without a good picture on it. Besides it's really clamped down to the Lisa chip.

What I did do - was move the CF-Card which was sitting on it, out of the way. And Amikit put a sticker over the holes of it. Being naughty, I removed the sticker. :D

I think adding a fan to it is a way to go. I have a little USB fan controller, I can use - which then i can power via a USB hub, so I don't have to steal the floppy power which may stress the system a bit.

Anyway, thankyou guys. Gotta stream now.

Cheers,

Robin :D

Little update.

I added a fan to the Invidision Mk-II. It's a simple 40mm ebay nothing special fan. I mounted it using plastic hexagonal bolt things - which I bought from banggood years ago.

I had to file down the mounting holes of the fan to wedge the plastic bolts in. I did it for all four holes, and then one hole which has a little screw thread. I then very carefully screwed it through the earth hole of the Invidision with a plastic nut. It's sits a few mm above the board, and apart from being noisey, I assume keeps the invidision cool.

It's not powered by the Amiga - but a USB laptop cooling pad I took apart. It was modular enough, that I could just put the fan on, and I just power it via the nearby USB hub. It has an on/off switch and even a wheel to adjust the speed.

Simple :D

I had the same problem - Indivision getting hot resulting in flickering pixels. I used a few zip ties, one to anchor the corner through the hole in the card, the other by looping around the card and tightening it. It makes for a sturdy solution that is very quick to remove if I needed it to. The wires I had to shorten a bit and the remaining bits are neatly pushed against the board.

https://i.imgur.com/nWCS1Gz.jpg

Nice job, but always try a stick-on heat sink (try element 14) before a noisy fan. A lot of the time you will find the fan not needed. Remember the fresh thermal adhesive and a clean processor to attach it to matter.

From what I understand, the card has 4 holes especially designed so you can blow cool air through them, cooling down the chips underneath the Indivision card. With a heatsink you'd only affect the Indivision card itself. Also: the top of the card is not suited for a headsink since there's no flat area - you get the solder points from the chip below.

I have a Heat Sink + Fan (and a second fan just laying on the Mobo) on my 040

It originally came with a slim side blowing fan but that fell off :)