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Monday, June 4. 2001
Miniature Air Conditioner (2/5)
I certainly wouldn't try the experiment again on my T-bird Athlon in my Portable Athlon unit for two main reasons, and that has to do with the TEC I have in question. Its power rating is 72W. A TEC can only pump heat up to about half of the power rating effectively, meaning the cold side has to have a load of less than 36W. A T-bird easily tops 50W in maximum power consumption, and that's one of the reason why it's not fit for use here. The other reason is that I have 150W power supply unit in the system, and it is already pretty much maxed out. You don't see a T-bird running on a 150W PSU every day anyhow. It has nowhere near the 72W power left to power the TEC.
Therefore, I decided to use the TEC to cool the air itself, in a fashion not so differently from an air conditioner. Thus was born the TEC air conditioning project. The parts I needed now: two massive heatsinks, some fans to blow air over the heatsinks, and a power supply to power both the TEC and the fans. I bought yet another 150W PSU to use for this project as you can see below. I did not want those big, conventional units, and I didn't want a long one like last time. So I got a microATX version. If you see closely, I attached a small switch on the motherboard connector so I could turn it on and off.
As for heatsinks and fan, I needed not look further than Zalman Tech's heatsink laboratory. The people there are quite eager to help me out, so I asked if I could have some heatsinks for the air conditioning project. They told me that I could not use a conventional flower heatsink they make, because the end of the fins does not cover the 40x40(mm) surface area of the TEC fully and would not effectively cool it. They suggested making a modified cooler that would cover all that. Of course, it would need far more fins than usual. Two to three times more, in fact.
In the end, two massive heatsinks resulted, one in copper, one in aluminium. The fins spread out in near half-circle; the copper one has 135 fins, and aluminium, 145. The only downside to this is that the fins are too tightly packed together and might block good airflow. Nevertheless, it seemed good enough for the project, not to mention it's very eye-catching.
Miniature Air Conditioner (1/5)
Seasonal changes can be an annoyance to overclockers. Winter can provide exceptional overclocking environment, then summer comes up and you can't overclock so much anymore. Korea has vastly distinct seasonal characteristics, and while it may be easily -10C in winter, 30C or higher is common in a summer day. The day I'm writing this article was no exception.
It is quite important to keep room temperature(a.k.a. ambient temperature) low in cooling and overclocking, because a normal cooler is directly dependent on it. It uses air to exchange heat, so it cannot cool down to something below the air's temperature. However, the room temperature is easily affected by the season, especially if you're living in a place where there is no direct means of temperature control. So a hotter season will have detrimental effects on an overclocked computer.
One may resort to opening the computer case and direct a huge fan towards it, but alas, that is out of option for me, as I have this Portable Athlon which cannot be opened while in use. I might be able to cool myself down, but it would have no affect on my unit. Furthermore, I currently reside in a dorm room, so I cannot place an air conditioner. So my system has to take the summer heat directly... unless I do something about it.
Then it came to my mind that I had a TEC(Thermo-Electric Cooler) lying around in my toolbox. TEC is a small block of ceramic which has two types of semiconductors sandwiched in it so that it transfers heat from one side to the other side very quickly when electricity is supplied to it. This heat transfer effect is known as 'Peltier effect', and so you may have seen the TEC commonly referred to as a 'Peltier'. I had once tried to use it on an overclocking experiment, but it failed due to insufficient cooling on the hot side. The CPU involved in the experiment almost burned out in the process, and the TEC, along with the project, was abandoned. You can see the photo from that experiment below.
If that experiment taught me anything, modern day CPUs are too hot for a TEC-on-cooler to cool sufficiently. So now what?
Friday, April 6. 2001
Carrying the Portable Athlon (2/2)
Of course there is! The backpack features additional storage space on the front and I can put the keyboard into this area easily. The earphone case would rattle if I placed it in the main compartment, so it's put in with the keyboard to prevent noise.
The system is fully in the backpack now!
That's me with the backpack. Now I can go anywhere with my system in the back. Due to the concealing nature of the backpack, though, most people thinks I'm going camping or something.
Yet another thing to consider. How much does it really weigh, anyway? I didn't know this exactly myself, as I didn't have a chance to do an accurate measurement. I just felt that carrying around this was a bit heavy, but bearable. Fortunately, I encountered a digital bathroom scale accurate up to 50g which was deemed suitable for answering the big question.
| Component | kg | Lbs. |
| System Case | 4.60 | 10.14 |
| LCD Panel | 2.90 | 6.39 |
| Keyboard | 0.45 | 0.99 |
| Mouse | 0.15 | 0.33 |
| USB LAN + Earphones | 0.05 | 0.11 |
| Cables | 0.90 | 1.98 |
| Backpack | 0.65 | 1.43 |
| TOTAL | 9.70 | 21.4 |
|---|
While modern notebook computers weigh in at around 2 to 4kg, my portable system isn't throwing around extremely lot of weight either. In fact, it's lighter than world's first portable computer, 'Osbourne 1' from 1981, which weighed 24 pounds(11kg) and came in a luggage. So, I hope your questions are answered now. I'm off to study for some exams next week.
Carrying the Portable Athlon (1/2)
Here's a short followup on how my Portable Athlon System is supposed to be carried. I've shown you how it looks like when it's in fully assembled manner, but you might have wondered or questioned if it was really that 'portable', not just a novelty item meant to impress people and just sit pretty. I had the occasion to bring my system to a certain magazine company for showing, and I took some time to take some photos on how my system is packed and carried.
Here you see my system fully disassembled and be ready to move. Notice I have a backpack prepared for the sole purpose of carrying my system around. Instead of carrying the bulky speakers, though, I bring a pair of Philips earphones instead in order to take some load off the whole thing. You can see the earphones on the left of the mini-keyboard, in its carrying case. Other things to note are the AC/DC converter for the flat panel and some cables. With this, I can use my computer anywhere with an AC power outlet after unpacking and reassembling.
The flat panel sits on the back side of the bag, so that the cushion protects the delicate LCD. The system case is slid in front of the panel, and I usually place a foam sheet in between so that the hook and other stuff don't scratch each other off. The cables are stuff into the vacant space at the each side of the bag. To top off, the trackball and the converter gets the upper level. But there doesn't seem to be enough room for the keyboard...?
Thursday, April 5. 2001
Making of the Portable Athlon (10/10)
You would have noticed that the innards of the system has indeed changed since the initial photo shoot. To show you this more closely, I've taken a more close up picture.
You can see how the copper flower cooler for the video card is attached, as well as the new fan that's cooling the CPU. Also, to prevent overheating of the PSU, a hole has been made over the vent holes. Some of the careful observers may point out that the wirings are a bit more organized, too.
Here's how the RICOH burner gets attached to the system when I need to access optical discs or do some burning. The rolled IDE cable can easily extend out to accomodate the drive, and the drive has a power cable extension so that it can get powered.
Well, that's it for now. I may update this with pictures of me actually carrying the system in a bag or doing other stuff with it. But it's already close to 4AM as I'm finishing this up and I need some sleep. Yawn... Why is it that I always finish my articles when it's past my bed time? Argh...
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