Fix TV Streaming and Networking - Ethernet or Wifi

Hello everyone, it has been a very long time since I have posted about fixing networking appliance issues.  The last post I can remember was about making a hole in your router so you could put heat sinks and a fan on it.  I thought those reliability problems were gone, but it seems I was mistaken. This post is about fixing your TV's networking and streaming issues, with additional specific advice for LG OLED TV owners.

 

Before we get into any hackery we'll deal with some basics truths:

•  Ethernet (cable network) is always going to be more reliable than Wifi.  Not just for your TV side but for your router as well. Wifi routers DO overheat, and signals degrade. 
• Wifi routers are usually not set up correctly.  In an apartment complex it's often hard to find an unused channel so you are competing with your neighbors for Wifi bandwidth, even so we have ways to help. 
• It seems LG TV's networking can overheat no matter the type of networking, we have a solution for that too. 
  

Tip 1: Switch to Ethernet

This will always give you the most reliable signal, and reduce the chances of your router overheating, in large part due to the overhead of encryption. This is not a guaranteed solution though, but it's often the most frustration solving. 

Tip 2:Examine your WiFi Neighborhood

You can find Wifi analyzer programs for almost every type of device. PC, Mac, Android, iPhone.  If it has a WiFi connection you can probably find an equivalent tool. The goal is to get your home WiFi on an unused channel.Take your analyzer to your TV's location to see the quality of your WiFi signal from the TV's perspective.  For whatever reason, even in the 21st century, the auto-channel selection of most WiFi routers is useless. You need to pick your own channel and stick to it, even if it means channel hopping a couple of times a year. Routers all tend to go to the same channels, so they always get congested.

 

Let me show you an example from MS-Windows 10, WiFi Analyzer. The Analyze view shows all the channels available on the 5GHz band.  Each colored hump or hill below represents a router's wifi signal.  Mine is on the for right, labelled MiWiFi.  As you can see, my signal is all alone, no other routers overlap.  On the other hand, if you look at the channels on the left (36, 40, 44) they are all pretty congested. Channel 40 especially looks like it may have 4 or more routers competing for bandwidth.

 

This is a frustrating situation because the quality of your signal streaming will vary a lot based on how busy those users are right now, and has nothing to do with you. The solution of course is to go into your home router's admin page and change your router to use a signal that is as clear as possible. 

Typically the newest signal bands are the most clear.  That is, 5GHz tends to have more open channels than 2GHz, but this has changed as the older, single band routers have started to age out of the population.  It is however worth while to try this experiment on 2GHz as well, just in case. :) 

Of course, you want your signal to be as strong as possible. If you can't get a better signal than -60dBm and you can only do WiFi, try to orient your router and TV for the best reception. Remember that routers transmit horizontally and down. If you live in a 2 story home you probably want your router on the top floor. If you still can't get a decent signal at all because your home is too big consider a mesh router. They are fresh on the scene, but I hear great things about the TP-Link offering, which is less expensive and less expensive to expand than others:

 

Tip 3:  Cool Off Your Router

Too often the TV's get blamed for what is actually a router problem. Before you blame it, see if the real problem isn't your router.  When you next have a problem, reset it and put a fan of some sort onto it. Does this solve your problem?  Are you also having problems with other devices at the same time?

Streaming 4K television takes a lot of processing power, maybe 60-80% of this processing power is due to encryption.  The higher the level of encryption, the more power, the more likely to overheat. Sometimes the overheating issue creep up on you.  Doing a marathon watching of Star Trek : Discovery and when you hit season 2, bam, down it goes.  Since most routers also have USB connectors it may be useful to see my USB fan ideas, below.

Tip 4:  Cool Off Your LG

Honestly I shouldn't even have to say this, but the reality is that so many embedded CPU and WiFi products are woefully under-cooled. Even if you maintain your TV room at a comfortable 74 degrees at all times I have seen evidence of these televisions getting too hot, and after several hours being unable to connect to anything, even with Ethernet.  The solution is to shut the TV down, wait a minute, and start again.

To understand the following hacks we need to find out where the CPU and network controller chips live, and for that we can rely on Youtube channel Tips and Tricks which posted a disassembly video from which I captured this key frame, below.

 

There are three important landmarks here: 

• The Ethernet jack (below the yellow jack)
  
• USB connectors to the right of the Ethernet Jack
• The big silver heat spreader, and black heat sink poking out inside of it. 

 The reason you need to know all of this is that you are probably going to want to take the next steps without actually taking the whole rear panel off. I recommend you attempt the following hacks in stages as the first one involves no tools.  

Hack 1: USB Fan

There are a lot of these, and you may need to experiment due to noise issues, but here's an idea I really like, a USB fan on a microphone like extender:  

 

 

You just plug it in, and point it in the general area of the heat spreader. It may take you several days of not having a problem before you can say everything is fixed. 

 

 

Hack 2: USB Fan + Ventilation

First, you are responsible for any damage you may cause if you attempt this.  If you are not familiar with using power tools to cut through thin plastic do not attempt this! If your power tools touch anything inside you can ruin your TV. This being America, you are free to ruin your TV if you want to, just don't come crying to me that you didn't know what you were getting into.

 

This is basically the same idea as the hack, above but use a hole saw or Dremel or just drill bits to ventilate the back panel directly over that heat spreader. You can see why I'm not suggesting this as your first step, right?? 

If you really want to do this, but really are afraid, follow the instructions on the video, above, to take the panel off, and drill the panel off the TV. The good news is that losing plastic dust inside your TV won't hurt anything, but accidentally drilling the printed circuit board sure can. If you use a drill I strongly encourage this approach. The heat spreader is a little sturdier than most components, so maybe try a very small drill bit to ensure you are in the right area before using a bigger bit. If you lay it out nicely it may even look like it was made that way.

Personally I'd attempt this with a Dremel abrasive wheel and friend to hold a vacuum hose while cutting.  

If you go this route, consider getting a fan with a speed control instead of the one listed above. You don't need a lot of air movement to substantially cool this beast down.  This little beauty here would work, but you'll have to figure out how to best attach it.

One last thing:  You don't need a huge amount of air here.  A couple of slots, or a few 3/8" holes should be enough with a fan.  

Tip 5: What about non-LG TV? 

The same principles apply.  Look for the Ethernet jack, then find the heat sinks or heat spreaders near it, and try to cool them off.  You may even be able to tell by putting your hand on the back panel and feeling for the warmest area.

Aftermarket fans for Sapphire RX 580 GPU

The Sapphire Nitro 580 is pretty much getting to be end of life, as we are about 2 months away from the AMD 6000 release dates, but I decided to do some mods and learned quite a bit about the tools and software you'll need. Let me share the story.


Sapphire Nitro 580

In it's day this was a pretty inexpensive and solid card for 1080p gaming.  The card comes overclocked out of the factory at about 1.4 GHz vs. 1.3 GHz stock, and comes with the Sapphire Trix OC utility which will help you watch the entire card, including the fan speeds from one convenient point of view. Solid behaving software too.  Sapphire uses PWM controlled, easy to replace fans.  Takes 1 set screw for each fan, and you can pull the whole thing out.  They measure to
be 90mm each.  At maximum load this card pulls down about 180W, so you can imagine the heat it generates.  

In terms of noise and temps, the cards at full load were honestly pretty noisy.  I could just hear them with my headphones on.  The question is, can I do better??


The Contenders

 
The GPU fan specs are rated for 3,000 RPM so I decided to try to match this with Noctua NF-F12 heavy duty fans.  About $25 each.  I swear to god, Noctua is the only fan maker who has never caused me a problem.  Cooler Master, Corsair, Thermaltake, Gigabyte, I have had issues with every single vendor except Noctua.
Rather than use cable ties I'm using a neat little bracket from Maxmoral. 

Hard to see, but on the left is a bracket that slides into the back of your case, turning your two 120mm fans into one tidy assembly.

The Sapphire card uses a rare 5-pin PWM connector. Your average PWM splitter will be too large to fit, so you can order a neat little adapter from ModDIY which is in Hong Kong, or you can connect to an empty fan slot on your Motherboard.  Here is where things get tricky.  AFAIK the motherboards will only spin up fans based on onboard (i.e. CPU or MB sensor) temps. They don't look at GPU temps, unless you have this great software package, the Argus Monitor toolkit.  For $10 I highly recommend it.  Not only is it clean, it's effing reliable. Again, I'm so sick of fancy light/fan controls that are broken.  Argus is completely solid.   

OK, but why do you need this?  Argus will take control over ALL  your motherboard fans and allow you to select a temp source! That's right, now you can use the GPU, or hard disk or whatever temp you want to control your fans!  Please get it and register it, totally worthwhile.

I got impatient and used Argus, and it works fine, but I just got the cable, with the extra cost sleeving, and it looks great, and has the exact came connector as the Sapphire shroud. 5-Pin VGA PWM Mini PH Connector to Dual PWM 4-Pin Fan Cable Splitter

Even if you get the ModDIY cables, there's another good reason for Argus:  You can control your case fans based on the GPU temp.  In my case with an AIO CPU cooler, there's really not much for the case fans to do based on CPU temp, but by letting the GPU set the case fan speed via Argus I can really increase the air movement when gaming.

 
The Installation

Sapphire accomplishes their Nitro street cred by adding not just easy to replace and clean fans but a really beefy cooler.  Take a look.  By removing the shroud and placing the 120mm fans right next to it we'll accomplish nearly 100% surface area coverage.  That is, almost all of those cooling fins will have air pushed onto it. Installation in this case was super simple.  Remove the 5 screws on the back holding the shroud, unplug the LED and fan connectors and bam, you are left with the naked radiator.

 

 

This brings me to another subject:  What about 140mm fans?  Honestly not needed, but the increased dead space at the hub the fan becomes an issue.  With 120 being near ideal coverage, 140s would waste space in the center and edges. Based on my testing, if you decide to get other fans, make sure they will do at least 2,000 RPM, this will let you hit the sweet spot of 1,500 to 1,800 without stressing them.  I'd caution  you against 1,700 RPM fans, you'll be using them at their max often.

 

 

Above you can see how tight the fans are to the GPU without any need for additional cable ties.

The Results
The success or failure of this project is in the fan speed tweaking.  At full GPU load if you are comfortable with hovering around 65 degrees you can set the fan speeds to go from 40-50% at 60 to 70 degrees. This is quiet.  Not dead quiet, but very quiet and with headphones unnoticeable. If you want quieter you can trade a little more heat for a little less fan speed.

A nice side-benefit of this project is that the graphics card fans no longer just cool the card but the motherboard mounted M.2 storage cards as well.  I use two Samsung 970 drives.  One is directly underneath the GPU radiator and the other between the PSU and the fan array.  I put  inexpensive heat sinks on my M.2 and they idle at about 30 degrees.  With the GPU temp rising the drive directly underneath the radiator would idle significantly hotter, around 45 or more.  Now it stays pretty frosty even when game playing. If you run your drives and your GPU hot, this is a huge win.

 

ZeroSurge - The Unexpected Interview

ZeroSurge

[Note: This post is a follow up to an earlier post ]

I'm happy to report that I was able to have a short telephone chat with Jim Manadeo of ZeroSurge.

He wasn't expecting to be interviewed, and I was not taking notes but I came away with it with some important and interesting tidbits.  I've been a fan of series mode surge protection for a very long time and this is the first time I had person to person contact with an industry insider.

Here's the important parts:

• The only current licensee is SurgeX.  I confirmed that Furman was not a licensee.
• Non-licensees who appropriate the technology use iron core inductors which are cheaper, and saturate faster.
• Their biggest markets include the military and Wendy's restaurants.
• My impression is they are not really that interested in the audiophile market, subject to change, of course. They love customers, this just isn't where they try to sell to.

From a technology point of view, Jim pointed out that these usurpers probably do not incorporate all of the circuit innovations, and they use an iron core inductor instead of air core, and this can lead to premature saturation of the magnetic field, reducing surge and noise performance.

SurgeX
Unfortunately, while SurgeX is a licensee the brand seems to have gone through some turmoil.  I won't write about their troubles here because I wasn't taking notes and I can't verify what I heard.  The SurgeX brand has been popular among HT installers and pro musicians but unfortunately I can no longer find a SurgeX web site and it's possible that the products that are at retailers are the only one's left. If you are an official rep, reach out to me for correction.

Purchasing
You can buy SurgeX and ZeroSurge products via Amazon via this (sponsored) link.