Hot USB Wireless Adapter

voyagerfan99

voyagerfan99

Master of Turning Things Off and Back On Again
Staff member
I have a D-Link DWA-130 USB wireless adapter that i use to connect to the internet. It gets extremely hot after a very hot time and doesn't keep the connection up and the pages don't load. Right now, I have it out of the plastic and in the open air hoping it'll cool better, (see pic) but it really doesn't. I doesn't get hot enough to burn you.

I don't have the money to throw on a router (to put the DD-WRT firmware on) so I was hoping you guys had any ideas for cooling this puppy down. Maybe a small heatsink on the chip would be good?

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you could get a small heatsink and put it on with adhesive heat paste (i believe zalman and arctic sell this). Is it just the chip that is getting hot?
 
put it on ice maybe? :P
i'd try to put on 1 or 2 heatsinks on the chip and the steel part above.
or maybe place it in front of a fan of some sort.
 
Right now my case doesn't blow any real hot air out, so I have it sitting behind one of ym exhaust fans. I didn't see any heatsinks that would work with the chip.
 
I think the heatsinks may be a little big. Would it be possible for me to trim them down?
 
my sister bought a d-link wireless usb adaptor (not sure if it's the same one but it was 5 bucks a year ago) and had the exact same problem. once it gets hot the connection is lost until a reboot.

her situation appeared to be solved when she used the usb adaptor cable that came with the stick and had a small fan blowing it. however, we're not sure if this was the long term solution as i installed a wifi pc card a couple of days later
 
I think what I'll end up doing is getting a $30 Linksys router and installing the DD-WRT frimware on it like we did for the 360. I stole that one for now :D
 
At first it looked like the red cathode to the left was the antenna that was glowing red hot, haha.
 
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