I have my ViP622 HDD mounted externally

Supercharged_Z06

SatelliteGuys Family
Original poster
May 6, 2006
37
0
Well, kinda... :)

With the summer here and my 622's temps rising, I decided to make a little modification to my unit to make up for the poor thermal design the engineers settled on - I decided to mount my 622's hard drive on the outside of the case.

I did this for two reasons:

#1) The inside of the 622 gets HOT! This is primarily due to the hard drive and to a lesser extent the processing chips inside the case. Air flow through the 622 is crap basically. One very small 50mm fan is used and it just doesn't cut it in my opinion. By mounting the 622's hard drive outside of the case it not only runs much cooler, it also frees up space inside for better air flow and doesn't contribute any of its own heat to the already sweltering internal case temps.

#2) Heat kills hard drives - or at least considerably shortens their lifespans. By running the drive on the outside, it runs much cooler. My 622 is mounted fairly high on my audio rack, so there is very little danger of it getting disturbed or bumped or touched. I've also mounted a small 90mm Panaflow PC Case fan behind the hard drive to make sure it stays nice and cool. This fan is whisper quiet and provides great air flow over the drive. I'm powering it via a small external transformer that spits out 12V @ 500ma.

In addition to mounting the drive externally, I also slapped some small, fanless heatsinks with some artic silver 5 heatsink compound on the three largest/hottest chips on the 622's board while I had the case open - so that should also help it shed the heat much better.

Please realize that taking the 622's hard drive and mounting it outside the case probably voids your warranty - but if you've had the unit for more than a year, there isn't really any warranty to worry about, is there? :)

When and if true USB 2.0 support for external drives is made available by Dish, I'll simply place another drive alongside my externally mounted internal drive.

Some pics:

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Cheers!
--Supercharged_Z06
 
I had mine A/V setup with all the wires neatly tied away in wire loom tubes and all but I kept changing stuff...got lazy...and haven't put the stuff back because I keep changing stuff around.
 
Nice idea. What's your HDD's average temp now?

I bought a 3-fan notebook cooler about 6-7 months ago and set my 622 on it and plugged the power cable for into the USB port on the back of the 622. It dropped the average temp by about 12 degrees. I figured that was worth the $28 I paid for it. It still runs hotter than I'd like, but hey, 12 degrees cooler has to help some...
 
Hell, this way you could get another drive and hook it up, and let it initialize, and there's your additional external storage right there :)
 
Wonder if swapping drives back and forth in that manner would cause it to re-init the drive each time it's reconnected?

Not sure about the 622, but the 625 will just format a new drive to be used with the unit, if the drive is in the "approved" drive table. After that you can swap them as needed. 622 might be the same (WILD SPECULATION).

By the way, grammer and punctuation police, when you put a parenthetical phrase at the end of a sentence, does the period go before or after the phrase?
 
Not sure about the 622, but the 625 will just format a new drive to be used with the unit, if the drive is in the "approved" drive table. After that you can swap them as needed. 622 might be the same (WILD SPECULATION).
I used to do that with two 522s and three drives (they didn't care which drive was in which machine either), haven't tried yet with the 622.
By the way, grammer and punctuation police, when you put a parenthetical phrase at the end of a sentence, does the period go before or after the phrase?
After (like this).
 
Is there any type of warranty-tape on the 622? I'm looking at getting a leased 622 in a few weeks, and I could possibly try a different drive, but not if it requires breaking some seal that could cause problems with a return. (If the seal is only on the hard drive casing, then just substituting a drive would work.) I would also wonder if giving it a larger drive would do anything helpful, but that hasn't been the case in the past.
 
Not sure about the 622, but the 625 will just format a new drive to be used with the unit, if the drive is in the "approved" drive table. After that you can swap them as needed. 622 might be the same (WILD SPECULATION).

By the way, grammer and punctuation police, when you put a parenthetical phrase at the end of a sentence, does the period go before or after the phrase?

Any parentheses enclose other grammar. IE: "xxxxxx." Not "xxxxx". :D
 
Is there any type of warranty-tape on the 622? I'm looking at getting a leased 622 in a few weeks, and I could possibly try a different drive, but not if it requires breaking some seal that could cause problems with a return. (If the seal is only on the hard drive casing, then just substituting a drive would work.)...
Yes. It's covers the right-hand most screw that attaches the L-shaped metal piece that mounts the HDD and the fan.
 

Receiver question

Any advantage to renew 18 month contract

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