Monthly Archives: January 2011

Adding Heatsinks to a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950Q

This weekend I finally bought a membership for the QC Co-Lab, and took the opportunity to work on the TV Tuner modification I talked about previously.

Again, it’s a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950Q that I got from Newegg, and while I was using it, I noticed the main chip was getting hot.  While I can’t claim it had any noticable impact on image quality or performance, I just wasn’t comfortable with the casing becoming too hot to touch.  So I removed the casing and started watching TV to see which chip heated up.  That chip is pointed out here:

TV Tuner - Case Removed

TV Tuner - Case Removed

Looking up the chip, it’s an Auvitek AU8522AA, the ATSC / NTSC decoder for the incoming signal. It makes sense that it would get so hot.  So the next step is to order the heatsinks, I chose these from Newegg. Once I had those, I tested them on the bare TV Tuner, and found I actually needed two:

Heatsinks on TV Bare Tuner

While the larger chip was generating the majority of the heat, the smaller one heated up pretty well too.  Also, ideally I would’ve bought two sets of heatsinks, a larger set for the main chip, and then used the ones I have for the smaller chip.  But at $15 for these heatsinks, I wasn’t willing to spend more.

Next up was marking the casing for the holes.  Originally I had planned on using a stamp ink pad to mark the pins, and press that against the casing to determine where the holes should go.  I forgot to buy one, so I had to improvise on site with some thermal grease.

While I was discussing this with my friend Ben, he enthusiastically volunteered to start the drilling, so I took the chance for another picture:

Case being drilled.

Unfortunately that drill has a bit of vibration on it.  So the holes didn’t line up with the precision we were hoping for:

Holes in casing

Not a problem, I just cleared out a larger hole to fit the entire heatsink through.

Larger hole in casing.

On the second set of holes, I marked through the thermal grease with some marker to help line things up.  The drill still had a lot of give though, so it wasn’t going to line up properly.  I had to re-drill the same holes several times before the entire heatsink would fit through.

Both heatsinks through their openings - Note the per-rod holes for the second heatsink.Closeup of Heatsink with individual rod openings.

I’m so happy that I got this shot, when I was mentally picturing this project, this is what I wanted.  Individual openings for each heatsink rod, with space inbetween to keep it inside and pressed onto the chip.

Unfortunately, the bases on the heatsink were taller than I expected, and I couldn’t fit the entire casing back on with the openings done this way.  So the second heatsink has a full opening like the first one.  Here is the final result, after I swapped the marked heat sinks for fresh ones:

Finished mod, with both heat sinks.

While this definitely looks home made, I think it still looks clean and presentable.

As for the results of the mod:  Over time, the entire casing can still get pretty hot, the heatsinks themselves get too hot to touch after about an hour of watching or so.  Performance is effectively unchanged, since it was working correctly before this modification, but I’m much more comfortable with it knowing the heatsinks are pulling away a lot of that heat.

And also, if you want to see some other QC Co-Lab pictures, they are available in this Picasa album: http://goo.gl/USaNb

Thanks for reading!

Macbook Air!

Since I could only get the Hackintosh on my Laptop half-working (and that’s after a fully failed attempt on the Desktop) I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the real deal:

Macbook Air

While this will be filling the role of my “netbook” from this point on, its real purpose is to help me become familiar with OSX.  I’ve been talking to a lot of friends for application recommendations, along with reading Lifehacker’s recommended apps.

Also, the reason for this purchase is because of some things that have happened to the Netbook, I’ll post more about that later though.  Until then!

Configuring LDAP with TWiki

I’m currently trying to get a knowledge base set up at my place of work.  Initially, I had used 68kb to set it up.  It was fantastic to work with (especially after installing TinyMCE as a plug in) but it had no access control or authentication, so management asked I look into alternatives with those features.  I found TWiki and set it up with LDAP / AD (Active Directory) authentication.  Since the documentation wasn’t helping me, I wrote some of my own in case anyone else needs some help, or if I would need to do it again.

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