Tonight, I decided to give my Topfield 5000PVRt a new lease on life. The first upgrade was to swap out the standard 120 GB Seagate hard drive with a 200 GB Western Digital. Now it can store approx 61 hours instead of ~38 GB. The swap was very straightforward but I read this FAQ just to get some pointers. Then I remembered that the WD in my desktop PC runs pretty hot. And the Toppy ran pretty hot even with the Seagate HDD.
So I thought, why not install a fan as well? I found another FAQ that shows just how to do it. I used cable ties instead of those rubber things though. I’m happy to report that the fan is hardly noticeable, especially while watching a show. On mute, or with the TV off, you can hear a faint whirring, but the disk is actually louder than the fan. The WD may be louder than the Seagate but it’s probably worth it. Anyway the fan of my aircon is way louder and I totally ignore that. Those with a closed cabinet for all their Hi-Fi stuff wouldn’t hear anything at all.
Next on the agenda is to get the serial interface and web interfaces for the Toppy working. Should be fun!
