[Ouya General] ddelamareuk:
Hey bwild... I just received my Ouya a few days ago and this was one of the many initial issues which i've noticed, especially when you launch a game and leave it sitting at the title screen for about 15 minutes. It heats up pretty well and if the ambient temp is 25c or higher then the little thing struggles to cool itself.

After opening mine up, i can see several points which cause me concern heat wise, and obviously the long term issues are potentially reducing the lifespan of the device as a whole.

1. Due to the size of the device internally, and the amount of air that the small fan can shift per minute and the lack of escape points for heat, the device warms up pretty quick as essentially the small cooler is just reusing warm air internally to try and cool the heatsink. There is no heat shielding on the inside of the case to isolate the board from the surrounding case so the entire device heats up but the only effective cooling part is the small heatsink. Its a REALLY bad design.

2. The mobo inside is mounted on its side, this forces the fan and heatsink to fire out warm air towards the vents at the top and the bottom of the case, well at least im sure they are 'Vents' :P. Im quite sure that this kind of heat build up and pressure makes it almost impossible to draw any kind of reasonably cooler air from the outside, inside. Any air being drawn in is already warm before it even hits the cooler. My Ouya does get noticeably warmer underneath the device but i also believe that this is due to the 4 small metal weights which sit right at the bottom of the case heating up as warm air is expelled downward from the heatsink... I'm thinking of removing these as they are acting as a small heater with cool air trying to enter the underside of the case. But i can test and let you know if theres any difference.

3. The unique shape of the Ouya doesnt help either i believe... Warm air being expelled downwards towards the bottom of the case, will naturally try and rise and move up the curved side of the case internally and then get drawn in by the cooler again, im no expert when it comes to these types of things but im pretty sure thats whats happening.

4. I've replaced the standard 40mm fan with an Akasa 40mm fan with slightly higher airflow rating (and a little more noise), Not sure if this again helps much due to the design but it should help to at least cool the device a little quicker once your return to the Ouya dashboard.

5. Something else that i noticed was that the heatsink is actually spread across what looks like the GPU and (What looks like) Memory Modules, i cant confirm this as it was a side on look and havent removed the heatsink (Yet). Again i noticed that the GPU sits on one half of the heatsink (the side which is closed to the bottom of the case actually) so im wandering if this heatsink is doing anything at all :P I'll see about removing this at some point and probably putting a highly polished copper shim on it with some better heat compound, silver or ceramic and see if this helps.

6. The underside of the motherboard, has no cooling or anything on there despite a memory module being present on the back but i dont think that this will cause any issues.

So will all of that in mind... i've set of to find a suitable cooler of some kind that wont require ear plugs or make the device levitate 2 inches from the surface its supposed to be sitting on.... :) Space is a real killer inside this so i think we are going to be limited to what can can do however i'll need to see if theres any way that i can change the airflow in the device to allow for cool air being drawn from underneath and the warm air being expelled from the top. Sounds simple but i dont think its going to be anything easy... Just by looking at the Ouya, i had the crazy idea of trying to mount a 80mm fan (Low Profile if such a thing exists) which has a low rpm which sits between the top of the case and the top lid where the power button is. There may be much pressure between the fan and top lid though so there would need to be some mods and see if i can get enough power.....

All of this sounds extreme for what it is but i hate warm devices :)

I came across this : http://www.ninjalane.com/reviews/motherboards/rampage3extreme/page4.aspx : which shows a small chipset cooler. This would allow you to mount is side ways with the fan obviously pointing towards the top of the case and flip the fan over so its draws air from underneath and out through the top. Its either something like that, or we start a watercooling ouya project LOL :highfive:

Well thats my 2c :D