Worklog The Slimboii - Passively Cooled Wii Portable

Ekterm

.
Joined
Dec 13, 2018
Messages
75
Likes
50
Location
Danville, USA
Portables
Wii Laptop, PCii mk A
So I really like modifying cooling systems and I am convinced enough that this is possible to go full steam ahead and build it!
I honestly have a LOT of other stuff going on though so I may not finish it for a couple years even, just wanted to get a discussion going and maybe solve some issues so that other people can try it too.

The benifits, naturally, are that without a fan it would be slimmer and have slightly less power consumption.

I realize this is right on the edge of being able to be cooled passively, but here is my thermal design:
- De-lid the chips
- Backplate for the chips to increase mounting pressure
- Replace 1.8v LDO with a switching power supply
- good quality thermal compound
- Back of the portable machined out of aluminum/copper (might need to integrate heatpipes) and ridged for more surface area
- Tablet/Switch design for maximum size of the back

This would give it the entire surface area of the exposed back to act as a heatsink, on the size I'm planning that might be like 30 square inches. The board itself uses around 6W, plus a couple for the screen and regulators, and this should be about the amount of heat this is able to dissipate, I would do some more calculations once I get closer. One issue I thought of is the adverse effects the temperature would have on the batteries, maybe a way to protect them...

For reference, the Intel Core i7-7Y75 has a max TDP of 7W (although typical of 4.5 watts cubed, whatever that means, source:cpubenchmark.net), and looking up some laptops that have it, you can get an idea of the type of cooling system those need, although they do have the ability to throttle.

This is an Acer Swift 7 with the aforementioned i7:
IMG_20160919_170809-1.jpg

Another example is the Acer Switch 7 Black Edition, it houses the i7-8550U (max TDP of 25W) AND an Nvidia MX150 (either 25W or 10W apparently, source:notebookcheck.net), so thats a combined maximum passive heat dissipation of at least 35 Watts!!! It utilizes a big loop heatpipe on the back, and has a larger area than the Wii portable would.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Apr 27, 2018
Messages
160
Likes
68
Location
Kentucky
Portables
Wii Laptop V2.0, GameCube SPITE
Interested to see how this progresses. Passive cooling for portable would be amazing. I personally would prefer a portable with a larger surface area to allow for adequate cooling if you gain a thinner portable in the process.
 

Ekterm

.
Joined
Dec 13, 2018
Messages
75
Likes
50
Location
Danville, USA
Portables
Wii Laptop, PCii mk A
Interested to see how this progresses. Passive cooling for portable would be amazing. I personally would prefer a portable with a larger surface area to allow for adequate cooling if you gain a thinner portable in the process.
Exactly! Yeah I was planning a tablet/Switch-like design

EDIT: I'll add that to my first post, that's kind of important for max surface area lol
 
Last edited:

Shank

Moderator
Staff member
.
.
Joined
Jan 31, 2016
Messages
1,286
Likes
2,723
Portables
6
Keep in mind those processors aren't running at those thermal levels all the time and are capable of thermal throttling to maintain a safe cooling level.

4 layer wiis use about 6 watts of power. This is the board itself, not counting inefficiencies like regulators and whatnot. You can shave another .5 watts of heat by replacing the LDO on the board with a switch mode power supply.
 

Ekterm

.
Joined
Dec 13, 2018
Messages
75
Likes
50
Location
Danville, USA
Portables
Wii Laptop, PCii mk A
Keep in mind those processors aren't running at those thermal levels all the time and are capable of thermal throttling to maintain a safe cooling level.

4 layer wiis use about 6 watts of power. This is the board itself, not counting inefficiencies like regulators and whatnot. You can shave another .5 watts of heat by replacing the LDO on the board with a switch mode power supply.
Aha thank you! Yes replacing that LDO would be important, first for the power consumption but also because it is taller than the chip dies and would need extra spacing to be mounted flush to an aluminum back. I have added that to my first post.

Also good point, I hadn't researched how much those systems throttle at full load.
 

Ekterm

.
Joined
Dec 13, 2018
Messages
75
Likes
50
Location
Danville, USA
Portables
Wii Laptop, PCii mk A
Ok finally got around to trimming this thing, I'll probably wait for the delidding until I do the LDO and U10 and stuff.
IMG_20190519_190449.jpg
 

Ekterm

.
Joined
Dec 13, 2018
Messages
75
Likes
50
Location
Danville, USA
Portables
Wii Laptop, PCii mk A
Any tips on desoldering the 1.8v LDO? I had hot air at 370C on it for at least five minutes and it wasn't budging. And yes I do need to practice more on junk boards, I've been having problems with big components.
 

GingerOfOz

no wario
Staff member
.
.
2020 2nd Place Winner
2022 3rd Place Winner
Joined
Dec 16, 2016
Messages
1,121
Likes
2,689
Location
The Oregon Wildlands
Portables
just so many i am so cool
LDO is a pain to get off. Ramp up your heat to 420 (wiid), try for several minutes, and if that won't work then bump it up to 450. Make sure your flow is at least moderate and that you are using the largest nozzle so that the heat doesn't break the hot air station.
 

Ekterm

.
Joined
Dec 13, 2018
Messages
75
Likes
50
Location
Danville, USA
Portables
Wii Laptop, PCii mk A
LDO is a pain to get off. Ramp up your heat to 420 (wiid), try for several minutes, and if that won't work then bump it up to 450. Make sure your flow is at least moderate and that you are using the largest nozzle so that the heat doesn't break the hot air station.
what's wiid?
 

Ekterm

.
Joined
Dec 13, 2018
Messages
75
Likes
50
Location
Danville, USA
Portables
Wii Laptop, PCii mk A
LDO is a pain to get off. Ramp up your heat to 420 (wiid), try for several minutes, and if that won't work then bump it up to 450. Make sure your flow is at least moderate and that you are using the largest nozzle so that the heat doesn't break the hot air station.
Hahaha got it! Worked like a charm!
 

Ekterm

.
Joined
Dec 13, 2018
Messages
75
Likes
50
Location
Danville, USA
Portables
Wii Laptop, PCii mk A
I've solidified my design goals and decided on a name - the "Slimboii"

I will be making this as painfully simple as possible, no extra featurydoos, won't really try to look pretty either. This will make it easier to design, build, and fix (especially since its my first real portable), and as slim as possible. I'm a simple man and can build it to my specific playing needs.

There will be no speakers, just a headphone jack, no external display ports, wifi, MX chip, IR leds, or external controller ports, and hopefully two Li-ion battery cells, but I may want to do just one. I'm hoping with the wide case I've got that I can stack nothing thicker than the battery cells. If there are any more ideas of how to slim this, let me know!
 
Last edited:

Ekterm

.
Joined
Dec 13, 2018
Messages
75
Likes
50
Location
Danville, USA
Portables
Wii Laptop, PCii mk A
Got my screen a couple days ago and got it running off 5v. Didn't have a wii component cable so I just threw one together and the screen is displaying 480p perfectly!
IMG_20190702_172747.jpg
 

BocuD

.
Joined
Jul 21, 2016
Messages
468
Likes
605
Location
The Netherlands
Portables
3
Oh neat! L7009? I remember using that as well lol
This portable is looking very interesting.. I wonder how the passive cooling turns out in the end! Be careful though, if your cooling solution works in open air this is no guarantee that it works inside a case. Sadly I have some experience with that.
Make sure to properly shield your video wiring in your final case as well btw; not doing that will result in a lot of noise and kinda defeat the purpose of component video.
 

Ekterm

.
Joined
Dec 13, 2018
Messages
75
Likes
50
Location
Danville, USA
Portables
Wii Laptop, PCii mk A
Oh neat! L7009? I remember using that as well lol
This portable is looking very interesting.. I wonder how the passive cooling turns out in the end! Be careful though, if your cooling solution works in open air this is no guarantee that it works inside a case. Sadly I have some experience with that.
Make sure to properly shield your video wiring in your final case as well btw; not doing that will result in a lot of noise and kinda defeat the purpose of component video.
What was your experience? My solution will be in open air though, the entire back (and sides) of the case will be aluminum, and everything that could get hot like the Wii and power regulators and display controller will have good thermal contact with it. I'm really not testing anything, just designing it as well as I possibly can. If it does get too hot a little fan shouldn't be too hard to add.

And good shielding is just grounding both ends of the video cables' shields right? Anything extra I should do, like make sure its not close to power regulators or something?
 
Top