Design and development of thermal-mechanical solutions for a community personal computer

This paper describes the thermal-mechanical solutions for a community personal computer (PC), which is developed for rural Indian communities where the harsh living environment always poses the reliability challenge to maintain a conventional personal computer. The thermal-mechanical solution for micro-flip chip ball grid array (FCBGA) packaged CPU is presented and followed by the system level thermal, acoustic, dust-sand-insect protected solutions at 45 degC external ambient and dusty-sandy environment. To achieve better system acoustic performance, the system fan speed control (FSC) scheme is developed. Additionally, a dust-sand-insect filter is developed for the system which can protect dust, sand or insect no smaller than 1 mm from the inside chassis. The thermal simulation and structural analysis results agree well with the corresponding validation data. Also, the acoustic measurement data indicates the system acoustic targets can be met with the FSC scheme