Heat Sink ODDITY and Questions - Seeking Solutions

[optmusprimenumber]

My Situation:
no one seems to have the same n64 i have. of the 3 chips that have heat sinks, two of mine don't have the standard set up. instead, the metal plate that goes directly on the motherboard has 2 holes which sit over those 2 chips. the top plate, has two recessions that go through the holes and touches the top of those 2 chips (w/ a thermal pad in between them) and makes it so that the top plate is the heat sink.

when i got the n64, it was extremely dirty so i took it apart, blew it off with an air compressor and scrubbed every non electric part. during this, one of the thermal pads fell on my garage floor. i ended up getting most of the crap off, i guess it could be worse, but i don't know. so anyway, i heard about arctic silver 5, got some of that, applied it, and found out the heat sink plate doesn't actually go down enough to not require the pads for contact.

so, i got to thinking... why not just put some heat sinks from a pc, or anywhere really (possibly one's that have the prongs, i for some reason guess that they are better). but to do that, i would have to leave out at least the top plate, but maybe both top plates.

My Questions:
1) do i need those plates?
2) is there a better way to handle this?

*currently, i have the arctic silver and the thermal pads in the mix... good? not good?

thanks in advance. cheers.

[CRTGAMER]

Welcome to racketboy, New members have fresh ideas and experiences to share. Agree, plates are needed, Heat sinks have to be making good contact in order to work. Adding additional Heat sinks not really necessary, but definitely helps keeping console cooler longer with good thermal paste. Be careful that the Heat Sink doesn't short the chip pins.

[gtmtnbiker]

I'm not sure that additional heat sinks are really necessary for the N64. My unit never really gets that warm.

[optmusprimenumber]

thank you sirs. though just so i'm clear about everything, if were to put larger heat sinks from a pc on the chips and leave out the plates, that would be bad? do the plates serve another purpose? basically, my logic behind putting the other heat sinks in is if i can get the thing to run even cooler, then it should last longer (especially during some extensive resident evil 2 sessions, which i'm anticipating many of once it arrives in the mail).

on top of all that, pretty much just to make more of a project out of it, (maybe this is going to far, but...) i was thinking about adding a fan and having the coolest running n64 ever, but i'm pretty much completely clueless as to where i solder it. any input on that would be cool.

but thanks again. happy gaming

[Hobie-wan]

I cleaned out the first N64 I got and used thermal paste too. When you put in those sets of 4 screws the RF shield and the aluminum fin will bend enough to touch the metal bits on the chips since the gap isn't very big. If you're still concerned, put the RF shield and aluminum fin back on with those screws, then open back up and make sure that the thermal paste is now spread on the chip and the bottom of the RF shield.

[Hobie-wan]

thank you sirs. though just so i'm clear about everything, if were to put larger heat sinks from a pc on the chips and leave out the plates, that would be bad? do the plates serve another purpose? basically, my logic behind putting the other heat sinks in is if i can get the thing to run even cooler, then it should last longer (especially during some extensive resident evil 2 sessions, which i'm anticipating many of once it arrives in the mail).

The metal plate that covers everything helps block out interference. It is also transferring the heat to the flattened aluminum taco which is the actual heat sink. If you leave out the RF shield and you have a bunch of consoles and wireless stuff crammed into an entertainment center, you might get a noisy picture or whatnot.

As for adding a fan, see Bacteria's N64 modding stuff in the Mod section. I haven't looked over all of it, but I'm sure somewhere in his information for conversion to handheld there will be information where you can tap into some power for a fan.

[optmusprimenumber]

cool man. thanks. i do have multiple systems and devices which live very near each other... i have heard of this "rf shield" thing, figured that's what they where, but didn't really understand what it meant, much thanks to explaining that. i will check out that bacteria64 action. cheers