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Crashing and loss of signal solved by cooling

T

TonyC

Member
I just wanted to share my recent experiences in the hope they might help others.

I'd experienced a lot of issues with my 'Fox either crashing, or losing signal, several times a day. I noticed that the tuner module was getting very hot; so much so that it was uncomfortable to touch.

I did think about just using the Fan package in the Custom Firmware to increase the fan speed, but since this extracts air past the hard disc, I wasn't sure how much good it would do. So I fitted a PC case fan to my TV unit, arranged to blow cold air on the back of the 'Fox, and found that this significantly improved matters. But it still wasn't perfect, so (on the basis that it was out of warranty already) I cut a hole in the lid over the tuner module and fitted the fan to it, oriented to suck air out of the case. Two weeks on, no crashes or loss of signal - and as a bonus, the hard disc temperature has dropped 10 degrees even though the fan isn't near the disc.

The additional fan is powered by a 6V power supply I happened to have around, so it runs quite slowly and is almost inaudible. It's a 92mm unit (a Noctua NF-A9, to be precise)
 
HDD temperature was about 50 without any extra fan, 45 with the external fan and 35 with the fan in the lid.
It's an interesting question as to whether the standard fan was actually broken - I confess I didn't check. But even so it seems it was the tuner module that was specifically the problem, since often the issue was a loss of signal rather than anything else (ie, could watch old recordings but not live TV).
HDD at 50 is clearly bad for its life but I wouldn't have expected it to actually stop working when that hot.
 
Has anyone costed building a PVR with multiple tuners and HDD from scratch?
 
Black Hole said:
IMO the tuner itself shouldn't be particularly hot - if it is, there's something wrong with it.
Click to expand...
I tend to agree. But it's been like this since I got it, I believe. And indeed the very first 'Fox I got - which I returned under warranty after a few days - also used to suffer loss of signal after being on for some time. I wonder if the later units (mine are from late 2013) are worse in this regard?
 
Shoddy workmanship? Inferior hardware? Insufficient soak testing?
 
TonyC said:
I tend to agree. But it's been like this since I got it, I believe. And indeed the very first 'Fox I got - which I returned under warranty after a few days - also used to suffer loss of signal after being on for some time. I wonder if the later units (mine are from late 2013) are worse in this regard?
Click to expand...
You don't have the amplifier power turned on, but a short in the aerial feed by any chance? Not familiar with how the phantom power is supplied but i would have thought it would be a current limited supply that wouldn't allow the tuner to heat up.
 
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