Router Mod Update
I originally overclocked the old E2500 from 300mhz to 400mhz, then last night I overclocked to 533mhz since it was stalling my VPN speeds when torrenting. I noticed it getting pretty warm so I did what any good tinkerer would do and added a fan and a lower profile heatsink to the cpu. After cutting a hole in the top of the router case and installing the fan, I telneted into the router to check ambient temps with this command:
I've been currently sitting at ~35c from the usual ~50c. Downloading an Ubuntu torrent while connected to the VPN, I issued the top command to check cpu usage and I went from using 80-90% cpu @ 400mhz to ~60% @ 533mhz which let me download at my full uncapped speed.
Here's a pic of the final product:
Isn't she a beaut? Maybe the outside anyway. The inside's a mess because I'm pretty liberal with the hotglue. My soldering work's not the greatest either. The fan you see is a heatsink/fan from an old GPU I had in the parts box. I didn't have a resistor to keep the fan from spinning too fast or drawing too much power away from the critical components so what does any electronics tinkerer in a small town do? Rob one or a few from the electronics junk box you keep in the closet just for times like this. Since you can't count on any place around here having those components, that's the most expedient option at the risk of having a closet full of electronic junk.
I'm still not totally satisfied with vertical reception, for one, because the e2500 doesn't have hardware amps for the 2.4ghz nor 5ghz radios and another reason, the antennas I added are more directional. My horizontal reception increased a worthy amount but the field of transmission/reception narrowed. Think of it like this picture. Antenna quality does play a good role but without increasing transmission power, one way to improve transmission quality is to narrow the field, sort of like when you used to use a magnifying glass to burn your old action figures or for those who were more diabolical, you'd roast ants. I never did that though, I was a perfect angel. Okay, I wasn't but that's neither here nor there. By the way, have you studied the way ants function? They're totally fascinating and socially complex creatures, at least for insects. But I think Attenburough could narrate the growth of my lawn and I'd be fascinated. But back on track, this so far seems to be a good, stable router and with a few homemade mods, you can have it perform a lot of internal functions equivalent to more expensive routers.
Also, the rare case anyone wonders, modding a router like this by just installing aftermarket firmware is pretty useful and worth it to a lot of people but adding a heatsink to the cpu and case fan is pretty useless for 99% of people's use. The only reason I need it is because built-in VPN usage on the Tomato firmware would drive the cpu up to 90%+ usage when downloading at full speed and it would really get hot. I also did this partly because I love to tinker and I'm sure it would pay off in the life of the router. If I was richer, I wouldn't bother and would just buy this bad boy. Ok, so I probably would bother. I can't seem to tolerate good enough when it comes to electronics so I'd find some excuse to break out the soldering iron. But that's life, ain't it? It's not necessarily about what you have but what you do with what you have.
echo eth1=$((`wl -i eth1 phy_tempsense|awk {' print $1 '}`/2+20))C
I've been currently sitting at ~35c from the usual ~50c. Downloading an Ubuntu torrent while connected to the VPN, I issued the top command to check cpu usage and I went from using 80-90% cpu @ 400mhz to ~60% @ 533mhz which let me download at my full uncapped speed.
Here's a pic of the final product:
 |
| E2500 Fan/Antenna Mod |
Isn't she a beaut? Maybe the outside anyway. The inside's a mess because I'm pretty liberal with the hotglue. My soldering work's not the greatest either. The fan you see is a heatsink/fan from an old GPU I had in the parts box. I didn't have a resistor to keep the fan from spinning too fast or drawing too much power away from the critical components so what does any electronics tinkerer in a small town do? Rob one or a few from the electronics junk box you keep in the closet just for times like this. Since you can't count on any place around here having those components, that's the most expedient option at the risk of having a closet full of electronic junk.
I'm still not totally satisfied with vertical reception, for one, because the e2500 doesn't have hardware amps for the 2.4ghz nor 5ghz radios and another reason, the antennas I added are more directional. My horizontal reception increased a worthy amount but the field of transmission/reception narrowed. Think of it like this picture. Antenna quality does play a good role but without increasing transmission power, one way to improve transmission quality is to narrow the field, sort of like when you used to use a magnifying glass to burn your old action figures or for those who were more diabolical, you'd roast ants. I never did that though, I was a perfect angel. Okay, I wasn't but that's neither here nor there. By the way, have you studied the way ants function? They're totally fascinating and socially complex creatures, at least for insects. But I think Attenburough could narrate the growth of my lawn and I'd be fascinated. But back on track, this so far seems to be a good, stable router and with a few homemade mods, you can have it perform a lot of internal functions equivalent to more expensive routers.
Also, the rare case anyone wonders, modding a router like this by just installing aftermarket firmware is pretty useful and worth it to a lot of people but adding a heatsink to the cpu and case fan is pretty useless for 99% of people's use. The only reason I need it is because built-in VPN usage on the Tomato firmware would drive the cpu up to 90%+ usage when downloading at full speed and it would really get hot. I also did this partly because I love to tinker and I'm sure it would pay off in the life of the router. If I was richer, I wouldn't bother and would just buy this bad boy. Ok, so I probably would bother. I can't seem to tolerate good enough when it comes to electronics so I'd find some excuse to break out the soldering iron. But that's life, ain't it? It's not necessarily about what you have but what you do with what you have.
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