Solved GameCube portable overheating?

[Dr._Mobo]

Hello everyone, I am currently working on a GameCube portable (might make a work log later). The portable is almost closed up, but after around 10 minutes to 15 minutes of gameplay, I get a disk read error.

When it happened yesterday I tried turning it off and back on again and it didn’t even show the boot up screen. After waiting for a couple minutes and trying again, the cube booted up fine. Tried just running it today and I got another error message after running for a while.

Questions:
1) I’m assuming this means that the GameCube is getting too hot, correct? I am not using a fan currently, but I am using an untrimmed game cube heat sink and it is exposed to the outside air. I am going to check to see if that heat sink is properly seated, but I’ll have to pretty much disassemble the bulk of my project.

2) should I be able to run the game cube without a fan if the heat sink is not enclosed? An old modretro post by Tchay implies that I should be able to..

3) should I use a different thermal paste than the stock GameCube heat sink putty?

See the attached photo to see the setup I believe could be overheating.

Any comments or suggestions are appreciated!

 

[Dr._Mobo]

Update, I took apart the whole project and tried using some different thermal paste. It seemed like it lasted longer, but still had an overheating issue. Does anyone know if a fan will fix this problem or do I have a bad cube?

 

[Stitches]

I can't say I have ever heard of a GC portable that didn't need a fan blowing air over the sink, it just pumps out too much heat. 10-15 mins sounds about right for thermal saturation though, so I'd attach a fan to the sink and see if that resolves the issue.

If it doesn't, it could be the system browning out under full load due to insufficient current supply.

 

[Dr._Mobo]

Thanks for your reply! I found a GC fan I had lying around and used it with a trimmed heat sink and that solved the issue.