How I cool my Time Capsule

Glad that works for you. Mine seems to be fine sitting on the bookshelf at the end of our loft, next to the laser printer. Just a normal wooden shelf, the base station sits directly on it with no paper or anything else in the way. I imagine the fan goes on from time to time, but we can't really hear any noise coming from the Time Capsule.

If only they'd sell these aluminum bases to put under our Time Capsules. I'm thinking about having an indoor barbecue one of these days.

A couple of things you might want to consider... One is that, as a wireless router, Time Capsule radiates its radio signals from the top perimeter of the device. This is where the antenna elements are positioned. So, you might want to have it sitting in a more open space, where the iMac's aluminum enclosure is not hampering the radio signals. Second, the air cooling inlet space on an iMac is along the bottom edge of the enclosure, exhausted above. By placing your Time Capsule at the base, you're essentially feeding partially heated air from the device into your iMac.

If you want to provide a heat sink for Time Capsule, you might want to consider using something separate and apart from your computer. It might not look as good, but may work just a bit better.

Just some food for thought... 🙂

My TC fan was running non-stop after installation sitting on my wooden desk, so I put a stack of 5 pennies each under each corner and now the fan only kicks on when the backup occurs.

Finally, someone figured out what the heck to do with all those pennies...

😉

Knowing that the Time Capsule case itself is likely designed to act as the heatsink (similar to the Apple TV), I figured that it might make sense to exploit this a bit by adding external passive heatsinks to the top of the case:

1) Get some thermal tape (3M) or silicon gum pads and attach these to the bottom of any standard chipset/memory heatsink. I'm currently using some wild looking Northbridge aluminum heatsinks from Zalman:

http://www.zalman.co.kr/ENG/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=131

2) Going simply by touch temperature alone, I divided the top/back of the Time Capsule into 3 high-heat areas by which to place the heatsinks, somewhat evenly spaced apart. Now simply attach the heatsink...

For lack of a better scientific test, judging the temperature to touch before/after I can without a doubt claim that the passive heatsinks make a signifiant improvement to cooling the device. The entire device is now simply warm to the touch, rather than being hot.

Thats a great advice! I had the same problem, but did as you did.

Works perfectly!

wouldn't that interfere with the wifi signal? heat sinks being metallic, I would think that there is a tradeoff on your wifi signal.

Anyone tried removing (peeling) the rubber base? There is a whole bunch of holes.

I just put the Time Capsule on one of those laptop cooling base with 3 fans.