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Dreal

417 posts

Ultimate Geek


#185367 19-Nov-2015 16:29
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I only found out about people doing this recently. But here is what I know people have done:

Add a USB port, or a flash drive internally to a tablet, using a spare USB connections on the mainboard (I've heard of people doing this with the venue 8 for example).
I saw someone also used this method to add bluetooth to a device. 

Add cooling mods, heatsinks, copper plates

Change the mSata SSD on a tablet with SSD.

So I got to thinking, has anyone here done this sort of thing? Seems pretty cool. I mean you could take a little 8 inch, and add 256 or 512GB of storage, or a full USB port (for use as a hybrid desktop). For windows tablet PCs especially storage is a rather big deal. And would be nice to have something more substantial and laptop like. You could write a start-up script to make it recognise as a permenent drive. 

Obviously if you have one of those oversized hybrids like a surface there is no real need. But I am talking the size of tablet you can hold sustainably in one hand, and are as likely to actually use as a tablet, rather than mostly as a laptop - those sizes of tablet do not tend to have decent internal storage, and the smallest with SSD atm, so far as I am aware is 9.7. 

And a lot of tablets have cooling issues, its the constant battle - especially when gaming. Liquid cooling on a tablet? hahaha!

Keen to learn more about this, as I want more of 3 in 1 hybrid in eight to 8.9 inches - and I think, pretty soon we will see the sort of core-m or cherry trail 4gb tablets in this size that would be as capable as I want it. But I doubt they'll have the heatsinking for games, or the storage I want. 

I guess I could wait three years, and pay a thousand dollars for a surface mini, but no thanks. And I could settle for some of the rather dope 10.1s - that's an option that I would consider, because they are semi-one handable, if weirdly long for the task. 

Still, I geek on this idea, tablet mods.  Anyone tried? Anyone heard of any other interesting tablet mods?




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Dreal

417 posts

Ultimate Geek


  #1456536 24-Dec-2015 15:03
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I know this is a little necro, and maybe this is rare as hens teeth - but I am so curious about it. Another thing I thought of, was modifying laptop liquid cooling. Could power from a spare USB on the mainboard. 

The new surface uses liquid cooling. IDK how practical that is, but, I'm still geeking out on all these ideas.




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Rikkitic
Awrrr
18660 posts

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  #1456632 24-Dec-2015 17:06
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I haven't done tablets as such but I was forced to mod a mini-pc in order to make it usable. One of it's selling points was the absence of fans but in practice this caused the CPU to throttle every time it was loaded. The only way I could get it to work for streaming was to add heat sinks everywhere I could and even that wasn't enough when I wanted to record something so I finally had to stick a laptop CPU fan on the top as well. Ugly, but at least it worked normally after that.





Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

 


 


Dreal

417 posts

Ultimate Geek


  #1456638 24-Dec-2015 17:18
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Rikkitic: I haven't done tablets as such but I was forced to mod a mini-pc in order to make it usable. One of it's selling points was the absence of fans but in practice this caused the CPU to throttle every time it was loaded. The only way I could get it to work for streaming was to add heat sinks everywhere I could and even that wasn't enough when I wanted to record something so I finally had to stick a laptop CPU fan on the top as well. Ugly, but at least it worked normally after that.



Interesting, and related. I wondered about fans as well. A lot of people with tablets do copper plates and thermal past heat spreading - but I bet it still throttles with gaming. 

Do you record music? (Amateur musician myself)




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Rikkitic
Awrrr
18660 posts

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  #1456664 24-Dec-2015 17:55
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No, sorry. I used to a little but nothing serious and it was a long time ago. Then I switched to video but that was also a long time ago. These days all I do is is stream off the Internet. My hobby is searching out all the free stuff I can find that interests me. I record a little with my Hauppauge HD PVR and HDCP stripper, but not much because it is all so accessible anyway. I don't torrent but I also don't pay for anything. It is amazing how much good free stuff is out there as long as you bypass the geo-blocks.






Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

 


 


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