BOLT Stock Cooling SUCKS

Advertisements

No, that's not the problem. The cooling in the Bolt is adequate. There are quite a few posts that show that the extra cooling doesn't help hard drive longevity in the Bolts. There is no need to modify the cooling unless you have one that is noisy, and then all you need is a capacitor since it is electrical noise not mechanical.

Your cell phone and TV get hotter internally than your Tivo does, yet I don't see anybody strapping laptop coolers to them.

 

Absent a study with a substantial number of Bolt boxes in it, I'm not quite sure how the stated proposition could be established. There also are posts where users swear the opposite, i.e. that the extra cooling has helped (although that hasn't been limited to the hard drive, typically). Just as a facial matter, it seems that less heat often is beneficial for electronics.

 

The sample size isn't great. But if it worked, I'd expect the number of failures would drop a lot.

Also, heat doesn't kill electronics like we thought it did. We in the embedded design industry are rethinking how we design and test things. We've stopped "burning in" components before shipping because it just doesn't help with anything. We've noticed that large temperature changes play a much bigger role.

 

Just think how much higher it would have been, otherwise.

That's ~kinda-sorta the position that TiVo_Ted stated here: that the reported ODT temperatures is not an issue.

 

Advertisements

Pictures:

 

I can confirm that this does make a difference. After setting my Bolt up like this, the OBT decreased about 10 degrees.

 

The ODT can easily run at 110 C. I suspect the rest of the box is in the 40's. Plenty cold enough.

The solder joints fail because:

1. It's 2020 and still nobody knows how to correctly flow lead-free solder.
2. As I said above, drastic and frequent temperature changes will expand and contract the lead-free solder, causing cracks. Lead-free solder, as you know, has a higher melting point so high temperatures aren't the problem except when you're trying to get the solder to flow.

I also have not had a Bolt failure and I use stock cooling. I suspect most people stick with the stock cooling. Failures can be caused by lots of different things, you can't just blame operational heat.