(WIP) Dell Latitude E6410 to Small-Form-Factor Desktop (Project L2D)

el01

King of Cable Management
Original poster
Jun 4, 2018
770
588
CONTEXT:
The Dell Latitude E6410 was a good business laptop for its time, but was severely hindered by battery life and thermals in its day. Coupled with the increasing intensity of modern workloads and the advent of Windows 10, the E6410 is essentially unusable as a laptop. My personal E6410 finally could not be used as a laptop after a screen hinge crack. Additionally, given the tendency to have fans spin up to 100% under normal load, it was deemed necessary to add a new (or improved) cooling solution. These reasons led me to start Project L2D.

GOALS/REQUIREMENTS:
  • Improve cooling of the processor
  • Improve aesthetic and "desk-appeal" (features such as a white frame [hopefully] and white LEDs to replace the blue ones.)
  • Must be fairly small and very durable
  • Must be designed for component accessibility by me and others.
  • Must have better cooling performance
  • Must be fairly quiet
  • Must use off-the-shelf hardware and fabrication materials.
  • Must be able to use original laptop monitor for diagnostics and dual-screen configurations
AGENDA:
  • Disassemble laptop
  • Do board changes for desired effect
  • Design and build chassis
  • Assemble chassis
  • Durability check
Updates will be posted roughly weekly.
 
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el01

King of Cable Management
Original poster
Jun 4, 2018
770
588
UPDATE 1:
Day One/two: Disassembly and planning

Teardown:
The teardown went fairly well, but the ExpressCard would not come out due to a jam. Tweezers and finesse solved this problem. I disconnected the IEEE1394 port, the keyboard, the modem, the trackpad and the card reader to fit my requirements. Fortunately (to my relief), the power button is on its own PCB, making it a prime target for modding. However, the cable is not long enough to fit my design. Therefore, it was deemed necessary to desolder the power button and LED at a later time. It was late, however, and after a quick "boot" to confirm a working condition, I went to bed.
End of Day One:


Planning:
My family was over for a bit of summer break, and we decided to go hiking. Thankfully, my father was driving, so I had time to do some sketching and planning for this project. Here is my sketch:

If you can't see it, it is essentially a Mac Mini shaped chassis with a mesh front. The mesh front has a bar at the bottom for the power button, LEDs, USB, and audio.

After I got home, I got onto desoldering the power button. However, I was an ignoramus and did not use a heatgun. A hairdryer will have to do later. After much trying to desolder the power button, I decided to run wires to the power button to mitigate this issue.
Wires:


On the chopping block:

Completed:


After that, I happily booted the system up again. Now I got beeping and error codes. As it turns out, the BIOS complained about the various things I detached and did not boot into Windows. After freaking out and plugging in the original screen, I finally got it to boot. One error seemed particularly bad: "Power button PCB missing." I immediately removed the wires I soldered and later discovered that I didn't plug the PCB in. :p Then, Windows decided it needed repair, and after more freaking out, I rebooted the system and got into Windows successfully. However, the WiFi adapter did not function, and after a reboot and a tapedown, WiFi functionality was recovered.

The next step will be to measure the dimensions of the board and find a way to start making the case. Here is the final result:


The heatsink is for additional cooling. Yes, it works. ;)

Update later will hopefully include some case SVGs and other jazz.
 

el01

King of Cable Management
Original poster
Jun 4, 2018
770
588
OK... Either way here is a shared Google Drive folder with the images. If that doesn't work, I have no idea...
 

BrotherStein

Cable-Tie Ninja
Nov 11, 2017
168
136
OK... Either way here is a shared Google Drive folder with the images. If that doesn't work, I have no idea...

I'm not sure about Google Drive, but to get it to work with Google Photos I had to open the photo and then right click and copy address. Not sure what's different about the URLs
 

thewizzard1

Airflow Optimizer
Jan 27, 2017
333
248
Drive doesn't allow image linking, perhaps.

Looks like a neat project, but why use such an old system?
 

el01

King of Cable Management
Original poster
Jun 4, 2018
770
588
Drive doesn't allow image linking, perhaps.

Looks like a neat project, but why use such an old system?
My ethos for computing is "if it still works, well, use it somehow!" This laptop has served me well since my parents bought it for me at the end of elementary school, and it has sentimental value. Also, it's the only laptop I had on hand that was not portable, as described in the original post. I use a ideaPad 110s for school, and that works for most of my daily tasks. This Latitude handles my InkScape, my LEGO stuff (yes, as an "adult"), my home gaming (.io games :p), and more. I wanted to give it new life.
 

el01

King of Cable Management
Original poster
Jun 4, 2018
770
588
This is a blunder... Did I actually forget to link the folder? Here:

Sorry about that! If that doesn't work, then I might as well give you the binaries of the images and have your computers construct them ;)
 

el01

King of Cable Management
Original poster
Jun 4, 2018
770
588
Today's update: Thermal Discussion, Materials Shopping and LED discussion
Given the inability for photos to appear here, if you want photos, I will upload them. If not, I don't want them to be a problem, if that's fine with you guys.

THERMALS:
So, I decided to test the thermal capacities of the heatsink today. Temperatures are Delta Over Idle (the worst idea possible, but I don't have a way to get an accurate ambient temperature reading.) There are results for:
  • No additional cooling support
  • Old AMD K6 OEM heatsink only
  • K6 heatsink+80mm fan
I originally did not think this through and this ended up taking forever. Either way, victorious, here are the results after 3 minutes of Intel XTU [neither extreme nor tunable for me] CPU benchmarking (in Celsius). Yes, I know, it is not the customary 20 minutes, but still good enough for me.
No cooling support: 79-48=31 degrees(!!!) over ambient)
Heatsink only (keep in mind no thermal compound except for the little bit caked on there:) 75-45=30 degrees
Heatsink+80mm fan: 72-44=28 degrees
I bet that with some thermal compound and proper (not me shoving it against the board) mounting pressure, the heatsink will perform just fine in the final revision. For now, it should do. I then scrounged up a 40 mm fan that was super loud, but seemed to push a ton of air. I oiled that thing and it still didn't quiet down, but I probably should add fan control (my next subsegment)

Fan Control
Given the high decibel level of the fans and the requirement of the system to be quiet (no, shut up all you Dark Base owners), I decided that a fan controller of some basic degree was required. In the final version, the fans will either be powered from a DC in jack or the internal power connector (what I used for testing) and will be attached to a basic PCB with a trimpot that will be used to control the fan speeds. This solution isn't perfect, but is much more reliable than hijacking (no pun intended) the internal fan header. I will control the trimpot (which is too ugly to stick out the front and will not match my aesthetic no matter how I mod it) using a hole in the chassis through which I stick a flat-headed screwdriver. Rudimentary, but great for some late-night Surviv.io sessions while the neighbors are away ;)

Oh, by the way, I'm looking into getting one of these to cool the thing off: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16835186070
LED DISCUSSION
Being the haphazard person I am, I decided to test voltages on the power button PCB's LED using completely the wrong probe size. Either way, it came out to be 3.10V. I then took a red LED from my collection and tested it on the leads of the power PCB. Surprisingly, the LED turned on, but deactivated the blue one in the process (probably due to excess power draw or weak voltage in parallel). At least I didn't fry the board...
So, I will find some 3V white LEDs and we will be golden (hopefully the LEDs don't have a yellow tinge...)

MATERIAL(S?) DISCUSSION
Before eating some tasty food for dinner (which is like right now), I drove my car (my dad's old 2003 Honda Accord that still runs like a dream lol why am I revealing this to yall jk its actually what I drive) out to go look at some materials. First stops were the local Lowe's and the Home Depot, literally across the street from each other. I entered the Lowe's first. The screw section and rivet section didn't turn up anything interesting, and aluminium L-beams were much too expensive for my tastes. MDF, on the other hand, was cheap and seemed good enough. I then went to Home Depot to compare prices. About the same. For the rounded edges of my case, I was looking at some PVC couplers for that purpose, and I am still considering that an option. On my way out, though, I did ask to see PVC board, but there was none. Eh. I did see a Tesla PowerWall first-hand, though :). Finally, to the Micheal's craft store! There was nothing there interesting but maybe some acrylic stickers and balsa wood when I was looking for acrylic itself. RIP. At least I knew I had MDF at home. And here I am right now...

FEEDBACK/SUGGESTIONS NEEDED!

I need help with the following:
  • Cheap fan control options?
  • Free fans???
  • Material suggestions for case???
  • Fan power options???
  • Ideas for the direction of this project???
  • Design ideas???
  • Free Sprite/Cheese/other food??? ;)
Thanks as always for following me and my ranting piles of messes around! See you in the next update!
 
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owliwar

Master of Cramming
Lazer3D
Apr 7, 2017
586
1,082
I cant see images either, don't use google drive for this, its very unreliable to share images in forums. I'd recommend imgur.

do you happen to find some mesh material? I believe its easier than punching holes in the mdf. it can get a bit messy. or simply work with some open areas on the bottom, so it can be hidden
 

el01

King of Cable Management
Original poster
Jun 4, 2018
770
588
I cant see images either, don't use google drive for this, its very unreliable to share images in forums. I'd recommend imgur.

do you happen to find some mesh material? I believe its easier than punching holes in the mdf. it can get a bit messy. or simply work with some open areas on the bottom, so it can be hidden
For the mesh, I aim to buy a cheap case front panel off of eBay or something and hack the mesh off. If not, the hardware store has plenty.

I may laser cut the pieces for the final revision (the nearby library, as it turns out, has a laser cutter for free use, given you have the materials)

Given that my landlord has kids, however, he has this weird firewall that blocks off imgur and all those sites that could "scar young minds", but I will ask him to see if I can get some accommodation.
 
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el01

King of Cable Management
Original poster
Jun 4, 2018
770
588
For the mesh, I aim to buy a cheap case front panel off of eBay or something and hack the mesh off. If not, the hardware store has plenty.

I may laser cut the pieces for the final revision (the nearby library, as it turns out, has a laser cutter for free use, given you have the materials)

Given that my landlord has kids, however, he has this weird firewall that blocks off imgur and all those sites that could "scar young minds", but I will ask him to see if I can get some accommodation.
YEET! I got a Flickr account :)

https://www.flickr.com/gp/165204374@N04/2P1VWW

YOLO!!!!

(lol if it doesn't work...)
 

el01

King of Cable Management
Original poster
Jun 4, 2018
770
588
Did Flickr work? I see a few more views than I should from me...
 

el01

King of Cable Management
Original poster
Jun 4, 2018
770
588
I can open the flicker link and view the images. I couldn't right click the image to find it, but I was able to see it in the html source for the page:


OK! Sir yes sir! Expect a yuge post tomorrow with a ton of photos and not a lot of text...

I have plans for cooling now, by the way...
https://www.flickr.com/gp/165204374@N04/5FU7Tj
From a Pentium 4 PowerEdge server...
 
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el01

King of Cable Management
Original poster
Jun 4, 2018
770
588
OK... Something craptastic happened today...

Over the past few weeks, I have noticed that I am occasionally losing WiFi signal. So, being the person I am, I tried to tape down the WiFi card, thinking that it was a "plugging in" issue. However, this morning, the same thing happened, and I duct taped the WiFi card together to "remedy" this issue. Then, I smelled some burning... I noticed that the card was emitting smoke! I immediately shut the computer down and noticed that the sticker at the bottom was peeled, and it took SMT components with it, potentially causing a short. Fortunately, after a few desperate hours at work, my friend told me that he has a Dell Latitude E6420 with a similar WiFi card in it, and that he would loan the WiFi card to me (he's a good friend though, so I think he wouldn't care if I kept it longer...;)) After heading to his apartment and picking the WiFi card up, I am here typing this report up to you guys. Sadly, I have a feeling that my WiFi card will not survive... Either way, my friend has a hot air station at work, and he will try to resolder the card tomorrow. Updates will be behind a bit because of this... Sorry about that...

Either way, on a happier note, here are things I need help with:
  • Feedback on how I should do airflow now that case art is available
  • Suggestions on adding cooling capacity (I kinda wanna use the Dell PowerEdge that the giant slab of copper is from as a primitive computer, so... something that I could buy?)
Finally, this is huge, but if someone has a Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6200 WiFi card they could mail me, I would be super happy! If you don't, help out a poor and undersocialized college student by giving feedback and adding suggestions (and answering the questions)!

Thanks for your support!