Question Wooden case psu heating question

[nitroboy720]

Hi my project is somewhat questionnable because there is no real benefit in doing so but I am doing it anyway so here it goes:

I'm making a custum wooden case for the Wii without trimming the board, only removing the disc drive and I want to include the psu in the case. I'm also going to relocate pretty much every ports and buttons. I plan on laying all flat, with the wooden box being approximately 15cm x 28cm x 6cm.

Is the psu going to cause overheating issues or not? Should I leave the plastic case on it or not for highest chance of it working?

I got the US wii with gamecube controller ports.

I'm a bit of a noob, thank you in advance!

 

[GingerOfOz]

Wood should be perfectly safe to use as a Wii rehousing. Wood takes a decent amount of heat to deform or cumbust, and a Wii isn't going to putt off that much heat. The PSU doesnt actually get super warm, it's the CPU and GPU that need to be cooled. Just make sure you either keep the cooling system the Wii has, or put on a different one that's sufficient.

Good luck with this! Impractical projects are the best projects, so I'm interested in seeing what the final product looks like.

 

[nitroboy720]

Thank you for your quick reply!

Just to make sure, my question was not really about the wood, but more about the power supply and main board being confined in a single box with only the stock fan! And also part of my question was if i should leave the psu in its plastic case or not, is it even safe to remove that plastic case? Also it would be a bit more work but maybe I could install a second fan? what do you suggest? Thanks again!

 

[GingerOfOz]

EDIT: I'm dumb, as always.

 

[cheese]

Thank you for your quick reply!

Just to make sure, my question was not really about the wood, but more about the power supply and main board being confined in a single box with only the stock fan! And also part of my question was if i should leave the psu in its plastic case or not, is it even safe to remove that plastic case? Also it would be a bit more work but maybe I could install a second fan? what do you suggest? Thanks again!

The power supply can be confined inside a box without issue. If you leave the psu inside the plastic it will be safer (since there won't be a risk of the higher voltage AC wiring touching on the wii), but it will definitely take up less room if you were to open it. Depending on which revision wii you have, you may want to include a second fan for safety, a 6 layer I would suggest two fans and a 4 layer should be fine with one.

Do you have much electronics experience, or is it mainly woodwork/shop? If you don't have much experience I would definitely make sure to be extra careful with the power supply, 120VAC can be deadly.

 

[nitroboy720]

I have just a bit of experience with woodworking and a bit with electronics so I will be careful, and also my wii is a 6 layer.
What pins can I use to power on the second fan?

 

[cheese]

I have just a bit of experience with woodworking and a bit with electronics so I will be careful, and also my wii is a 6 layer.
What pins can I use to power on the second fan?

It depends on the fan, most fans are 5v or 12v, 12v comes from the power brick and 5v is used for USB (and also the normal fan connector)

 

[nitroboy720]

Alright i managed to swap my wii for a rev 40 one so now i'm good i'll just use the normal fan as you said.

I will update this when some progress is made, thank you guys!

 

[nitroboy720]

I think I may have fried my wii, I desoldered the gc memory card port and a few pins on the video out and now the red LED won't even turn on when plugged. I have no idea what caused this, if something similar happened to anynone maybe you can help?

 

[cheese]

I think I may have fried my wii, I desoldered the gc memory card port and a few pins on the video out and now the red LED won't even turn on when plugged. I have no idea what caused this, if something similar happened to anynone maybe you can help?

Got pictures? Seeing the problem is usually an easy way to solve it

 

[nitroboy720]

Yes I didn't want to post a hundred pictures so here are the parts I worked on and if you need a close up picture of anything else feel free to ask thank you!

 

[MasterNate]

You definitely need to clean that back part of the gamecube memory card slot. Messy ports can definitely be the reason why it does not work.

Also, there is some other stuff by the usb and video audio ports that should be cleaned up.

 

[nitroboy720]

Thanks for that I didn't knew flux could be conductive, so I cleaned these ports the best I could but it still doesn't work. Also, before cleaning I noticed that the 12v sensor pin was most likely shorted by flux with the ground pin on its left, could that have caused permanent damage?

Also when testing Ω between these two pins I get like 10 mΩ but that number just kept on going down up to 200 kΩ and it just isn't stable but shouldn't that number be 0.L ?

 

[GingerOfOz]

Shorting 12v to GND would have almost certainly killed your console unfortunately. Wiis are resilient, but they do have their limits.

Could you be more specific as to which two pins you were questioning?

 

[nitroboy720]

Here I attached a picture, I believe one pin to be the sensor bar and the other to be ground, there was solidified flux between those two.

 

[nitroboy720]

When I thought it was over, it is back on guys!! I read on a post on jefflongo's portable he said that he was having problems because of a reset wire not connected to anything so it made me remember I had one too on the eject button (wich I didn't think was relevant to say) so i just went ahead and desoldered that and now it works!

 

[jefflongo]

When I thought it was over, it is back on guys!! I read on a post on jefflongo's portable he said that he was having problems because of a reset wire not connected to anything so it made me remember I had one too on the eject button (wich I didn't think was relevant to say) so i just went ahead and desoldered that and now it works!

Glad you found your issue! It's best to clean up flux, but I would be very surprised if some flux residue shorted your 12v to gnd. That's pretty unlikely.

 

[BocuD]

@GingerOfOz 12v to GND on a wii shouldn't kill it if you're using the original regs AND 12v in pins. They have short protection using a self healing fuse, which "blows" when shorting 5v to gnd. If I remember correctly these are the pins you need to measure for continuity:

The blue pins are the sides of the self healing SMD fuse. If you don't get a light when applying 12v to the board measure these for continuity. If the pins aren't shorted (and none of the voltage lines are) try shorting them (blue pins) manually. If it works if you short the pins just wait a day or two and it should work perfectly again.

 

[nitroboy720]

Alright I'm finally done rewiring everything, I used a Wii2hdmi because I wanted a hdmi port and I also added 2 ir leds powered from the memory card slot, now it's time to make the case!

 

[nitroboy720]

Hello guys I forgot to post those pics I had tacken of the "final product" ( it could use a bit more finition). As you see can there is an integrated power supply, a wii2hdmi and two IR led behind the glass so I don't always need the sensor bar. Everything on that wii is still fully functional, appart from the disc drive wich I removed because I use a usb drive.

Software side, every game has channel on the base wii menu, I got wii, gc and lots of virtual console games. I also removed homebrew channel to maintain a official look on the menu but I can still mod the wii by loading postloader using the reset button on boot up.

Hope you like it!