Airing Out The Space

Raised Up With New Legs

Based on the amount of heat being generated from the motherboard during a full load of the CPUs cores, I knew that I would need to move some air through the system to dispense of it and ultimately cool it down.

The NES has some rubber pads on the bottom which act as stubby feet. They only lift the case an 1/8 of an inch up. The original NES motherboard didn't generate much heat and thus didn't require any extra air to flow through it for cooling. Because I had the motherboard mounted upside down in the case, this meant that the intake fan was sitting right at the bottom. Without proper space under the NES the fan would not be able to generate a  proper vortex in order to move enough air through it.

The NES case needed to be raised further up to allow proper airflow under it. To accomplish this, I recycled some of the pieces that I cut out from the inside. The original mounting posts for the NES motherboard were the perfect height. I cleaned them up a bit and leveled them out with a razor blade. The existing NES feet are positioned in optimal locations, so I drilled a small hole in the center of each and mounted  my new legs with some NES case screws. Turned out quite nice, I really like the raised look.

40mm Exhaust Fan Mounted on the Right

I also picked up a 40mm fan to exhaust the heat out the top of the enclosure. The vent I cut in the lid earlier was a perfect match to the size of the fan. The fan on the motherboard heatsink pulls cool air in from the bottom, and this new fan vents the hot air out the top.

After running a few more tests, the average temperature of the case dropped by another 10 degrees Celsius.