Soldam Polo R + Shuttle PH4
Introduction
The Soldam Polo R is a great little machine; however, it does not come with any sort of special cooler which would seem almost necessary since it’s such a small form factor. Soldam essentially recommends using a standard stock Intel heatsink and cooler which isn’t too bad but it doesn’t do the greatest job of cooling the CPU especially given the design and airflow characteristics of the case.
The Shuttle PH4 is a great cooler however it doesn’t fit inside of the Polo R because it’s too tall. It installs fine however, the heatpipes protrude out of the case and you are unable to put the top of the case back on.
So, the basic trick is to “shorten” the heatsink so that you can close the computer back up. Please note that there is a chance of irreparably damaging the PH4 if you’re not careful so don’t go blaming me if you don’t successfully perform this modification. With that in mind, you’ll need a few tools before you start.
Basic Materials
You will need only a few basic tools to complete the operation. The following are the tools I used:
- Needle nose plyers
- Metal cutters
- exact-o cutting knife
- electrical tape
You can improvise on some of the parts once you see how I modified the PH4.
Directions
First, you will need to remove at least 4 fins from the heatsink. You can remove more if you want but it should be perfect with 4 fins removed. The fins are affixed to the pipes with some sort of black thermal conductive tape. You may need the exact-o knife to cut the tape to loosen the pipes. It also may require a small amount of force to remove the fins intact. If you don’t really care, you can cut them off. Upon removing the fins, you will have some “naked” pipes.
Now, the next part is not as easy. You basically have to carefully bend the pipes about 90 degrees so that they no longer protrude past the top of the case. The pipes bend relatively easily but you’ll still want to work them slowly. Additionally, you’ll want to flatten out the top pipes so that they no longer allow gas/fluid (or whatever’s inside) to get into the bent pipes. The reason why is that it may affect cooling performance if the cooling agent doesn’t go back down the pipes.
As you can see, you don’t really need to bend them that much but you’ll have to guesstimate how much is appropriate since I didn’t measure the exact point where I started the bend.
The next part will also take some estimation on your part. Now that the pipes are bent, you’ll need to make the fan hood fit inside the case. The problem here is the that bent pipes keep the fan hood from sliding down enough to align with the screw holes. I figured that the best solution was to simply cut out part of the metal in the fan hood so that the pipes could poke through.
Check out the photos above to see what it should look like. I know you may be thinking that stray air may get through. That’s true and you can fix that by simply taping a piece of electrical or similar kind of tape over the hole to force all of the air out. I like the eletrical tape since it gives a little.
Conclusion
You will need to play around with modification to get it just right. I’m sorry it wasn’t too scientific but I wasn’t documenting the modification at the time. Installed correctly, the PH4 works like a charm and really does help lower the Polo R acoustics leaving only the PSU as the final noise culprit. You’ll also want to re-use the Windy Panaflo fan instead of the piece of crap Sunon 80mm fan that comes with the PH4. I’m sure Shuttle saves a few dollars shipping that fan but it’s such an odd combination since the PH4 was designed for low noise operation. I hope this helps all those Soldam Polo R users. As always, comments, queries, and criticisms are welcome.
