HDR-Fox T2 upgrade - expert advice would be appreciated

[everthewatcher]

...any body remember the dreaded click of death, from perfectly working to completely knackered in one click?

Never had the CoD but I did have a drive with the firmware fix for it - an annoyingly noisy full disk seek every so often.

 

[TonyC]

I've had issues on my 'Fox in the past with the tuners getting hot and then the signal quality dropping right off. The back panel by the aerial socket got almost painfully hot. Adding additional cooling to the tuners solved the problem.

 

[Trev]

Adding additional cooling to the tuners solved the problem.

What and How?

 

[TonyC]

In the first instance, I fixed up a PC case fan on the shelf the 'Fox lives on, behind it, blowing at the case on the hot spot. Now I have a hole cut in the lid above the tuners with a PC fan mounted in there, sucking air out of the box. In both cases the fan was powered by an old phone charger not from the 'Fox itself

 

[Black Hole]

I've had issues on my 'Fox in the past with the tuners getting hot and then the signal quality dropping right off.

That's interesting.

 

[BarryJV]

I finally got around to getting the lid off the device and finding the heat source and the only hot part was the device under the heatsink, which I assume is the processor, I've been a little busy so I didn't get it done as soon as I hoped.

(All those that bet that I put my finger on the HV side of the AC - DC convertor, you lost, I'm still here!)

I think I'll try cleaning and replacing the thermal paste, I assume there's a guide to removing the heatsink on this site somewhere, if that doesn't solve the problem, my only other theory is a regulator fault, as running processors at higher voltages will cause them to consume more power.

 

[Black Hole]

I assume there's a guide to removing the heatsink on this site somewhere

There isn't, but I seem to recall the subject coming up recently.

my only other theory is a regulator fault, as running processors at higher voltages will cause them to consume more power

The margins of supply voltage over which the unit would remain functional are likely to be so small that any drift could hardly be described as a fault.

 

[Luke]

There isn't, but I seem to recall the subject coming up recently.

https://hummy.tv/forum/threads/hdr-fox-t2-stability.8950/#post-126303

 

[everthewatcher]

All the HDDs I've had fail in service have been Seagates.

Seems they could be better than they used to be.

I've just pulled a couple of ST3500312CS 500GB STX/Pipepline drives from scrapped Sky boxes. One has 2090 days on it with a 180 power on count, the other 2700 days with a 110 POC. Both appear to be fine.