Evercool's 'Dr. Cool' - The Ultimate... Router Cooler?

[Tharic-Nar]

That's right. I said router cooler, so don't go all pretending like you've never once said, "Geez, I wish I could throw a fan in that thing!", because I'm confident enough to say that most of us have been there. Even if a router isn't giving us signs of failure, no one wants to feel like their hardware is running hot all the time, and thanks to no router I've ever seen including a fan, they're a peripheral that tends to bask in their own heat all day.

You can read the rest of our post and discuss here.

[DarkStarr]

My router has a fan.... Not even close to factory, it really helps with wifi, no more dropouts and the network runs better.

[Greg King]

Ugh... I don't know how I feel about this.

On one hand, your home router can run hot and more than likely does more so often than not. That said, these devices are designed to run underneath a certain temperature threshold and I'm guessing that whatever number they design the router's internals to run under is far higher than you would consider comfortable.

I do like having the peice of mind in knowing that my device, any device, is running cooler but man, this is a hard sell. Not to mention that the newer routers coming out of Cisco (Linksys), Netgear, D-Link and Belkin all look fantastic. Would you want to sacrifice the aesthetics with that ugly ass fan? I would menting TRENDnet but their product designs are uninspired, old and ugly. I am a big fan of theirs but man, let's get a redesign already.

[DarkStarr]

Eh, my router is hidden, I rarely see it. AFAIK, most people dont look at their routers for looks.... If it was up to me, I would build/buy a larger case to mount the fan basically inside it so it would be invisible for the most part.

[Greg King]

Oh Christ. I just watched the videos. It looks like a giant white crab is humping their router and I might have seen a nipple when the dude that's not Bolo Yeung was looking up porn. Also, I guess routers in Second Life get hot too. That's unfortunate.

I don't know which is better between the two videos. "Does your Internet have Fever? or Dr. Cool is coming". One of those have been used by your dear editor recently. I will let you decide which one.

[Greg King]

Originally Posted by DarkStarr

Eh, my router is hidden, I rarely see it. AFAIK, most people dont look at their routers for looks.... If it was up to me, I would build/buy a larger case to mount the fan basically inside it so it would be invisible for the most part.

I'm rocking a WNDR3700 and it sits on my desk. I like the way it looks but given it's location, it might not see the temps that you see on yours.

[Tharic-Nar]

This reminded me of one of the stunts pulled at DEFCON 2007, someone created a honeypot stack of 8 Linksys routers to cover different channel ranges. They had the routers stacked on-top of each other, but they kept failing due to heat, so they had to put fans in-between to keep it all cool. It was on an old TG-Daily post, but the images are gone (or i just can't see them), it just shows you that routers do indeed get hot.

One of my old routers, I had to wire in a fan to the 12v inlet to keep it working - wasn't the best idea in the world as it was a high powered fan, eventually overloaded the power brick.

I keep my routers upright now with plenty of space around them. My main is on-top of a Tower PC with a gentle breeze from the back of the PC flowing up and over it. Hiding them in a cupboard is just a bad idea. As a result, had the same router work near flawlessly for over 5 years now - whether it's due to airflow or the fact i have this ability to keep equipment going long past it used by date; is beyond me.

Would I buy a dedicated piece of molded crab-like plastic shroud for my router? Not a chance - pretty much for the same reason as hard drive cooling enclosures.... if the fan fails, you end up trapping heat instead of removing it.

[Optix]

So with an aftermarket heatsink, can I overclock it?

[Greg King]

Yes .