Hot Wii!

monkeyfudge

Has anyone else notice how hot the Wii seems to run when it is turned off? Even the discs are overly warm when you eject them out.

I taken to unplugging mine when it's not in use as it must be guzzling up the electricity to generate that sort of heat.

slade_x

monkeyfudge wrote:

it must be guzzling up the electricity to generate that sort of heat.

Actually the heat generated is mostly from the electricity thats not being used

Rhyme

slade_x wrote:

Actually the heat generated is mostly from the electricity thats not being used

Really?

Mine doesn't even get remotely hot even with an hour or two of solid play and i only plug mine out out at night. Ventilation an issue monkeyfudge?

Sandwich

slade_x wrote:

Actually the heat generated is mostly from the electricity thats not being used

Where's the heat thats not mostly from the electricity coming from?

slade_x

Sandwich wrote:

Where's the heat thats not mostly from the electricity coming from?

You completely misunderstood my statement; as opposed to the electricity that is being used of course.

From the electricity that is being used. Not all electricity that enters a device even after coming from the transformer is used for "work". some is for want of a better phrase, stepped down, for example voltage wise for some circuits and terminals. A device doesn't use the exact same amount of current/voltage throughout all its circuits for the device to function as intended.

As everyone knows Heat is an unwanted by product of conduction in electric circuits. As electrons flow they create a small amount of heat, the amount of heat is a correlation to the components/circuits own internal resistance. everything from bear wire to circuit paths have internal resistance as well as the other components that are intended to have more or less resistivity for obvious reason.

If you look at a space heater or even a toaster, all they are, are very large resistors created with elements that have extremely high resistances to current flow. when you try to pass current through a highly resistive material, it creates large amounts of heat. Resistors and transistors are used to control voltage and current flow through many different circuits in devices and create a lot of comparable heat doing so. As energy cant be created nor destroyed it is the only way of getting rid of/ or preparing another circuit with specific current flow that is already being used in the device. Basically energy you dont want at a specific point is blocked and is converted to heat. On much larger scales transformers/bridge rectifiers are used

The hotter a device gets the less efficient it also gets, until it eventually breaks down. Its fair to say Heat is the number one killer of electronic devices. No device fails for no reason. Such instances where devices do seem to fail out of the blue occur either because it has a specific manufacturing fault from the beginning or heat eventually gets to it.

Goodshape

slade_x wrote:

...

I came for the games, I stayed for the physics lessons.

Learn something new everyday I guess

monkeyfudge

Rhyme wrote:

Really?

Mine doesn't even get remotely hot even with an hour or two of solid play and i only plug mine out out at night. Ventilation an issue monkeyfudge?

It's sitting on an open table top with nothing around it. It is in the horizontal position though.

But it gets really hot just sitting there turned off and not being used.

Rhyme

monkeyfudge wrote:

It is in the horizontal position though.

That could be part of the problem.

I just noticed this today too when I picked the wii-mote which had been resting on top of the console during stand-by. Mine was not hot though, but moderately warm.

animaal

Great physics, nice description of the process.

But here's the economics... that heat is produced by electricity that you're paying for. I don't know how much it's costing, I'm sure somebody else can look up the stats and do the sums.

Placing the Wii horizontally or vertically might make it feel cooler, but that just helps the heat transfer from Wii to environment. It doesn't reduce the production of heat.

Of course, I'll leave mine plugged in anyway, there's no way I'll be pulling plugs in and out

Shred

The Wii was designed to use very little power in general but in particular when it's in standby (no more than a very small light bulb apparently). Nintendo went to great lengths to achieve this as they wanted the Wii to be connected to the interweb 24x7 (thus 'Wii connect24') and they don't want people to unplug the system at night! Have a read through the 'Volume 1: Wii Hardware' section from here for more info (it's quite interesting).

I was reading on digg that when wii-connect24 is active (yellow led) the wii consumes 10w in standby and 1w when in full stand-by (red led).

Gizzle

Is it still on Wiiconnect 24 in full standby?

koneko

Turn off Wiiconnect24, shouldn't use as much power then and shouldn't get as warm.

AceCard Jones

My Wii has never gotten remotely hot and I have played it for over 5 hours at a time.Although I do unplug mine when I'm not using it.It's not like you need to be informed through the Wii of new features being available.I'm on the internet enough anyway to know way before I get on my Wii.

Prime example being the weather channel.I found out it was ready on here and my Wii was unplugged so I couldn't of known via that.
And I got the message that it was ready after I updated...silly Nintendo:D

Anything that doesn't have an off switch in my house gets plugged out.
I honestly don't see why you can't have a choice between off and standby without having to plug the appliance out.That's the main thing I hated in the cross over from the original PS2 to the slim line.