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***Mystery 200A Pentium ESC Water Cooled, Heatsink & Fan Conversion Walk Through***
Thought I would share...
As some of you might be aware I decided to give one of these nasty ESC a go. For the money I would have to say they are bang for your buck. On my first outing with this ESC I ran 45mph, 9XL, 4S1P, X445 and still trying to fine tune the cats hull. Not fast to some of you but very happy on my first real run on the lake.
As these ESC's are somewhat poorly made and have a tendency to overheat as I discovered, I decided that I would make some modifications to mine and add a water cooler and a much larger heatsink and fan to aid in the removal of heat generated by the IC's. The fan and heatsink come courtesy of an old Intel pc motherboard.
The first step was to remove the original heatsink which imho is not big enough to handle the amount of heatsoak in needs to take in especially when running over 100amp constant in a confined area with no air flow. To achieve this was quite easy using a surgeons scalpal, as I found the original thermal conductive tape was bearly holding the heatsink on, no suprises there.
I then peeled back the thermal tape from the heatsink that was removed and cleaned it up as it might come in handy someday for another project.
The next step was to clean any residue still remaining ontop of the IC's as you can see in the next image. This was done with the scalpal again and cleaned back with methylated spirits. The image that follows is what it should look like after its cleaned.
The next step was to prepare the new heatsink and fan for the installation on the ESC. Most Intel CPU heatsinks and fans are a two piece assembly and genarally require 12v to operate. When picking out a fan and heatsink ensure you chose one that has the lowest current draw you can find. This particular one has an amp draw of only 0.1amps, is brushless, but ive seen them as high as 1.6amps. This one I had also clips together which makes it a good choice and gives you two options to either run the heatsink on its own or utilize the fan as well while running or when its just come out of the water, which is what im planning to do with mine. As they are quite old they have accumulated some serious dust and needed a good clean. I unclipped the heatsink and washed it in warm soapy water. The fan was sprayed with methylated spirits and wipes down.
As some of you might be aware I decided to give one of these nasty ESC a go. For the money I would have to say they are bang for your buck. On my first outing with this ESC I ran 45mph, 9XL, 4S1P, X445 and still trying to fine tune the cats hull. Not fast to some of you but very happy on my first real run on the lake.
As these ESC's are somewhat poorly made and have a tendency to overheat as I discovered, I decided that I would make some modifications to mine and add a water cooler and a much larger heatsink and fan to aid in the removal of heat generated by the IC's. The fan and heatsink come courtesy of an old Intel pc motherboard.
The first step was to remove the original heatsink which imho is not big enough to handle the amount of heatsoak in needs to take in especially when running over 100amp constant in a confined area with no air flow. To achieve this was quite easy using a surgeons scalpal, as I found the original thermal conductive tape was bearly holding the heatsink on, no suprises there.
I then peeled back the thermal tape from the heatsink that was removed and cleaned it up as it might come in handy someday for another project.
The next step was to clean any residue still remaining ontop of the IC's as you can see in the next image. This was done with the scalpal again and cleaned back with methylated spirits. The image that follows is what it should look like after its cleaned.
The next step was to prepare the new heatsink and fan for the installation on the ESC. Most Intel CPU heatsinks and fans are a two piece assembly and genarally require 12v to operate. When picking out a fan and heatsink ensure you chose one that has the lowest current draw you can find. This particular one has an amp draw of only 0.1amps, is brushless, but ive seen them as high as 1.6amps. This one I had also clips together which makes it a good choice and gives you two options to either run the heatsink on its own or utilize the fan as well while running or when its just come out of the water, which is what im planning to do with mine. As they are quite old they have accumulated some serious dust and needed a good clean. I unclipped the heatsink and washed it in warm soapy water. The fan was sprayed with methylated spirits and wipes down.
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