Good idea. In fact, if they made the heatplate thicker, and made it integral to a die cast aluminum case that had radiating fins on the outside, it might work with no fan. There's still too much thermal resistance from the IC case to the heat dissipating sink. There's just bic pen springs holding the heatplate and heat tape to the ICs. They need better thermal bonding than they have, and a thermal path to ambient air outside the case.

Has anyone made any power dissipation measurements (input power) when this thing is going full tilt with 2x Gig-E, WIFI, CPU  maxed, eSATA and USB all going? I'll bet it's at least 10 watts, maybe more. Well over what they advertise.

Doug

I agree. The guruPlug Server Plus is a defective product design. There is no way that this device will ever operate for more than a few minutes without major operational issues.

Never having owned a Sheeva plug,  I'm not familiar with that design. However, my guess is that the Sheeva plug had a very marginal thermal design as well. When additional heat generating components were added to create the guruplug server plus, it pushed the thermal profile way over the top.

I own three NSLU2 Slugs running Debian Linux and have had them run for years without a reboot.  There are only a few parts on that board, so the ICs run just warm to the touch.

Hopefully, GlobalScale will redesign the cooling properly. The best way to do that would be to add volume to the package, add individual IC heat sinks with better thermal bonds than the heat tape used currently and add a 40mm fan to get heat out of the box.  Reduce theta j-a by 75%!

Doug

Thanks to Olivia's pointer to ImageShack, I've now posted photos.

Here's the hot board with the heat plate removed.



Here's a blurry photo of the 10" strip attached to the existing heat plate with 4 screws and thermal compound.



Here's the completed unit with a 2"x10"x1/8" passive cooling system.  I've had no reboots in 48 hours of continuous running.

Doug

The only way to get the GuruPlug Server Plus to work is to add heatsinks to the components. You may try a high speed fan blowing directly on the existing case, but that may be dicey. There are two ways to cool this device.
1. Remove the boards from the case and add a large aluminum or copper heat plate/heat sink to the existing heat sink. My extra cooling is done by a 2"x10"x1/8" aluminum strip. It's massive, but it allows passive cooling with no fan. Sorry, didn't have time to build a web site for pictures.
2. Or - remove the heat plate and add small heatsinks to each individual device. There are 7 devices that need cooling. Swiftech has some nice individual coolers that can be stuck onto each device. Their partnumber MC14 will work for the CPU, gigE phy and Samsung chip. Add 2 MC21s to the 4 memory chips. Remember to blow lots of air across the heatsinks.

All of this means you must build your own case, or run with the case partially open. It's not pretty, but there's just too much power being dissipated in the existing case. The existing thermal design is so poor that within 30 minutes, a majority  of the ICs will have junction temps well beyond manufacturer's specs. Thus rebooting, etc, etc. Sound familiar on this message board?

Doug

Well, it appears I need to have my own site to post images. I'll get images of my heatsink up tonite (in 11hrs). As posted, a 2" wide strip of aluminum will fit on the existing heatplate. More details tonight.

My GuruPlug Server Plus arrived Friday. BIG PROBLEM! No one was responsible for the thermal design. The part runs so hot that you can't touch the metal parts without getting burned (Just a slight exaggeration). This will lead to a very short life if you run this device continuously. A number of people have already reported reboot issues, etc. The device will not be stable until we solve the thermal problems. There is a 2"x3" internal heat plate attached to the high power devices, but there is no place for the heat to go. I have mounting a 2"x10" piece of 1/8" aluminum to the internal heat plate with screws and thermal compound and modified the case in an attempt to lower the temperatures. So far, I have run the device for over 24 hours with no issues with the huge heat sink attached. The heatsink is a kluge, but at least I can run my device continuously. I'll provide photos if requested.