Question Wii 6-layer heatsink question

[MasterNate]

I am creating a portable wii here soon and am stockpiling as much information as possible before I start. I have a 6 layer wii. I know that 6-layer boards create much more heat than a 4-layer board. But my question is, "How small can I cut my heatsink and not have a heating problem with my wii?"

 

[Shank]

Excellent question, but that really depends on your setup, but I can say that the Wii's stock heatsink setup is overkill, even for 6 layer boards.
For some perspective, you should expect to dissipate about 6 watts of heat on a 4 layer, and about 8.5 watts on a 6 layer. @Gman cools his wii micros (which use 6 layer boards) using a 70*35*10mm heatsink and a blower fan, in an air-tight duct system. I asked him and he said

...it runs alright. I'm not worried about it but it gets a little warm

 

[MasterNate]

I am using an isolated heat system. The cpu and gpu will have walls around them headed towards the vent. I will have a fan pushing air through the heatsink. The air will then go through that tunnel towards the top vent where the air comes out. How hard is it to dissipate 8.5 watts of heat?

 

[Shank]

How hard is it to dissipate 8.5 watts of heat?

Depends on how big your heatsink is, and how much air your fan is moving. Getting into more detail on exact numbers requires knowledge of thermodynamics that I don't have. The method most of us use is "buy a bunch of tiny heat sinks and fans and see what works well." I can't really give personal experience on custom cooling a 6 layer board because I have never tried. An unfortunate fact is most of those dedicated enough to run heatsink tests don't care enough about the 6 layer boards to test it.

Have a look at what people did on the gamecube. They create much more heat than 6 layer Wiis do, so anything that works well for a gamecube should be more than enough for a 6 layer Wii.