Fan Testing and Planning- N64 Overclock Part 3

I'll be honest, this post most likely won't have very much useful information in it. The only technical information provided here is what to solder to if you are interested in wiring up a case fan or anything that you want to run off 12v. 

So, without further adieu, I'll kick this thing off. 

Something to keep in mind- you are probably going to want to be able to open the N64 in the future (and this may be common sense to some of you) but that means you can't just solder up the fan to the 64, if you plan on having the fan be attached to anything you plan on detaching from the mobo. I just mention this, because I get excited easily and would probably screw that up if I didn't think this through beforehand. 

Shown here is my case fan and large heatsink. We are going to be focusing primarily on the fan in this post, so here are it's specs: 60 x 60 x 15mm / 2.4" x 2.4" x 0.6"(L*W*H), Cable Length22cm. I am unsure of the amps, CFM (cubic ft/minute), RPM, wattage etc, because I bought it cheap. So, sorry I couldn't be of more help there.

parts shown here

 So, I decided to open the N64 up and wire in the fan, and just run it for a while (normal clock and overclocked) to ensure that the extra power draw on the 12v line would not cause any problems. "What problems?" you may be asking. Well, here are some theoretical (because none of this is documented) problems I came up with - 1. Because the 12v line powers the audio/video out, extra draw could cause loss of signal strength resulting in picture/sound distortion, etc 2. The extra draw on the 12v could cause extra stress on the stock N64 power supply, eventually leading to an overheat. Those are what I came up with.

Top shell off.

Instead of taking all of the heatsink and shielding off of the mobo, I was pretty sure I could just solder to the bottom of the mobo, so I just lifted the whole board (sans bottom shielding) out of the case.

like this.

 So, then I began examining the bottom of the mobo. Previously, I had marked the ground going to the power supply with a black sharpie, as you can see on the top right corner of the board (right where the plastic connector is)

Those 3 pins

Any of those three pins should work as ground. Now, the 12v line should be labeled. There are little white stamps on the 64 that tell you what is what for a little bit. It can be a little hard to trace that line through the circuitry, so I'll just give you a tip- you want to solder to pin 7 of the power switch.

On the right side of the board, right under the power switch

So, right under the power switch there are 8 pins, numbered 1-8. you want pin 7. You can solder right to it, and it will provide 12v. You could probably grab ground right there too, just figure out which pin it is. I didn't do this, but I had wire to spare, you might not.

 At this point, I began trying to see how the wires would fit under the bottom shielding and wrap around to the top, where it could be connected to the fan.

I ended up not doing it this way.

You can take creative liberty on how you do this. There ended up being enough clearance to pass the wires under the shielding at either end of the side, so I just did that. 

 I then started seeing how the wires would be situated. Total waste of time. I eventually ended up wiring in a switch for the fan, so I left wires long. You can always shorten wires pretty easily, adding to them is more difficult.

In the end, things looked a little different from this.

Anyways, back to the (hopefully) useful information. I soldered my ground to 2 of the 3 ground pins, just for added strength, and also because I'm not sure if all of those ground go to the same thing (I'd think they would).

more is better?

 And then I soldered to pin 7. That's really it. I tried to put on some heatshrink (I do whenever I can), but it got hot enough that it shrunk prematurely.

keeping it petite.

 When I was done, it looked like this.

Not too shabby. 

 Okay, now something I forgot. The shielding on the bottom actually extends a decent way onto the board from the sides. So if you could keep the wires further from the edge of the board, that would be better. I had no problems, but getting the shielding on without smashing/crimping the wires was a little tighter than I would have liked.

Once that was dealt with, I set the mobo back in the shell, and attached parts necessary for a trial run.

first without the fan attached

After testing it without the fan connected, I attached the fan and fired it back up.

It looks cool already.

 I checked out everything. There was absolutely 0 (zero) change to picture/sound quality, and after playing for a while, there was no exceptionally bad heat build up in the power supply.

blah blah blah.

So, some closing thoughts. First off, I ended up wiring in a switch to turn the fan on/off because I wasn't sure how loud it was going to be. That's covered later. Another though, I left the fan blowing on the Expansion Pack's heatsink (seen here), and it stayed chilly chill. It had almost zero noticeable heat buildup after even some overclocked playing, where it used to get hot to the touch after just about 15 minutes. What I'm getting at is simply thus: you could have a great time with your overclocked N64 as long as you perform the before-mentioned Expansion Pack mod and mounted a case fan somewhere to keep the air moving well.

Even so, I decided to go through the grueling process of putting in a more effective heatsink. It is probably massively overkill, but in the end it worked. That post however, will be covered tomorrow hopefully.