Warning: This might be one possible cause of my Wii's death

[RTSDaddy2]

We decided to put our Wii in the arcade cabinet, mainly for lack of space. Putting it in the cabinet, however, was not the problem...it may have been caused by letting the Wii lay flat (horizontally) on the floor of the cab.  I thought it was getting enough air - the fan was in the back and uncovered, and of course there is no vent on either flat side.  With our first Wii, I thought nothing of this arrangement, it seemed fine.

YET today when I lifted our new Wii up, I realized the flat side closest to the cabinet was very warm - not hot, but definitely warm.  I have since decided to place the Wii in it's little stand - this appears to have stopped the potential overheating (just checked it - whole unit is nice and cool now).

I post this here just as a heads up to the rest of us with Wiis.  There may be a definite reason those things come with the little stand!

[AtomSmasher]

Theres four small rubber feet on the one side of the wii, so they intended for some people to lay it down.  Mines actually been laying flat since the first day I fired it up and I haven't had a problem   

[thennomeking]

Turn off wiiconnect24, then it wont go into standby when the fans are off, it fixed my problem of similar nature. 

I prefer mine sideways, I dislike putting disc in any system vertically.

[stephenp1983]

I agree I like mine better on its side. Never cared for the ps2 on its side like alot of people did.  Heard to many stories of it messing the system or disc up.

[tommy]

I can't imagine they flawed their design for it not to last on it's flat side.... i never had a problem. 

[RTSDaddy2]

Thanks to all for your input - like I said, never have claimed to be a genius at this. 

The only thing I can figure is the little rubber feet didn't allow much airspace on ours - and it might just be the 24 hour WiiConnect thing.

I suppose the ultimate bottom line here is the thing shouldn't have quit working in just 3 months to begin with. We are on our second Wii now...I'm just praying we don't have the same problem again in two months!

[ChadTower]

Don't forget that sometimes things just fail.  There doesn't always have to be a design flaw or user cause.

[thennomeking]

Well if you are worried, you can always add more fans to your case, or build a stand for the device: A couple scraps of wood and a mousepad.

[RTSDaddy2]

Very true (both Chad and King).  I think the first one just gave up the ghost, pure plain and simple....but I didn't know if anyone else had experienced the overheating issue and thought I'd throw it out as a heads up.

[shmokes]

I think that, unlike all the other systems capable of both standing vertical and laying horizontal, the Wii looks fabulous vertical and like an ugly piece of crap laying flat.  When it's in it's stand it's a masterpiece of industrial design.  Take off the base and it becomes the most generic-looking external CD-ROM drive ever made.  Without it's stand it literally looks exactly like the first generation of external optical drives for PCs.  I find this a little bit interesting, because prior to the Wii I always thought standing a game console on its side was a little bit retarded because it often looked goofy, made inserting discs more difficult, and made it much more difficult to incorporate it into the stack of other components in an entertainment center.

[ChadTower]

There is no place in my entertainment center I would want to put any vertical device.  It is designed around horizontal orientation as nearly all devices are horizontal.  I enjoy subtle devices that don't stand out in a rack of equipment.  I have enough things that blink, beep, flash, vibrate, rotate, etc.  No more.

[AlanS17]

My Wii stands vertically and my brother's PS3 lays horizontally... blowing hot air straight at my Wii. 

[ChadTower]

i stands vertically and my brother lays horizontally... blowing hot air straight at my Wii. 

[tommy]

  I have enough things that vibrate

 

[horseboy]

i stands vertically and my brother lays horizontally... blowing hot air straight at my Wii. 

You know i'm in.

[AlanS17]

i stands vertically and my brother lays horizontally... blowing hot air straight at my Wii. 

The fact that you noticed that says less about me, and much more about you...

[ChadTower]

I know you are but what am I?

[AlanS17]

I know you are but what am I?

Real mature... and it's not even a real quote... what a wannabe...

[ChadTower]

Uch... like, he's so immacherr... totally, omg

[Howard_Casto]

I hate to be the resident "troll" in this thread, but did anyone notice that "in my cab" bit?  Nobody gave him a hard time over that? 

Putting a wii in an arcade cabinet is like putting a Star Wars Yoke on your Grandma's head... it makes no sense what-so-ever!!!!

[RTSDaddy2]

It might make sense to you, Sir Howard, if you saw my house.  There is no more space on the bookshelves near the arcade cabinet to place units.  Yes, I can certainly take something down, but I have not had the time yet. We still play the N64 and with it up, and my kid's amazing (truly) collection of videos, there is just no other place to safely store the Wii right now.  As it is that our living room TV became our arcade monitor, that too factors in the decision. 

Now, of course what I'm going to get is the traditional message that says I've "over-reacted" to Howard's post and if I can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen, et. al.      If that's all you can add to the thread, don't bother.  Personally I like having the Wii hidden inside the cabinet door, but that's just my opinion...lord knows everyone's got one.

Sorry, it's late, and I was just very taken aback by the comment.  If that's trolling, I reckon he did a dang fine job of it!

[thennomeking]

As long as your not that fella that destroyed a Tempest for the wii...

[RTSDaddy2]

Nope, wasn't me

[Howard_Casto]

Well the thing is an arcade cabinet doesn't and shoudl never replace your living room tv.  I'd suggest you find a way to squeeze one in because playing the wii on an angled/enclosed monitor greatly dimishes the sensor bars accuracy. 

[shmokes]

Not to mention that the Wii needs ventilation and cool air -- things that are in short supply inside the typical arcade cabinet.  Heat sounds like quite a plausible cause of your Wii's death to me.

[Mattroid]

I actually noticed one time I had it lying flat that it didn't want to read the disc correctly. to be fair, though, it was in one of those G-Pak cases at the time which could account for the problem. The couple times I've tried it flat since has not shown any issue. Could have been a fluke, I suppose.

Besides, I prefer the system standing vertically anyway since it saves space. Not to mention it just looks better

I've seen a Wii in an arcade cab before. Was really quite depressing.

[AlanS17]

Well my Wii was making funky disc-reading noises the other night. Freaked me out. This is while I wasn't using it, but I left a disc in it. I hope this isn't the beginning of the end for my Wi. The Wii runs perfectly with nothing in it, but I'll have to do some extensive testing with a couple of games to see what the deal is.