Friday thermal measurements: the space behind aifoundry2's card, rebuilt from your photos

AI Foundry. Covers Fri 9 Oct 2026 (week 41), your visit to the lab, mainly 14:55–15:40 PDT. Written Wed 14 Oct 2026 (week 42), 11:00–12:30 PDT, on the Intel (~/git0/gyroscope), on your ask: summarise Friday, rebuild the dimensions from the photos you took for the thermal camera, and link the page from the other thermal pages. Built from your 45 phone photos of 14:55–15:37, read at full resolution, your check-ins, the lab repo's fan-swap record, the dev card's drawing, the board's manual and the camera's manual. Part of the thermal camera hub.

The numbers

On Friday you swapped aifoundry2's failing card fan for a two-fan bracket, then spent 15:34–15:37 measuring the space behind the card with a Stanley measure and photographing the machine from every side. Ten of those 32 photos show the measure. Six can be read to a millimetre or two, and the camera itself is the check on the method.

What it means for the camera:

• The P3 fits behind the card with room to spare. It is 17.2 mm deep, so in the 89 mm gap its lens can sit anywhere from touching the board to about 70 mm away, where its back would touch the fins.
• The 7–8 cm design point from the 9 Oct research does not fit. The hub's 60–65 mm does, with 7–12 mm of air left between the camera and the fins.
• At 60 mm the P3 sees 40 × 30 mm. That holds the die's 26 × 22 mm footprint with a margin. The whole 45 mm package never fits from inside the gap: at the farthest point, 70 mm, the view is 47 × 35 mm. That costs little, since the board blurs the heat over centimetres anyway.
• Aim about 42 mm above the motherboard and about 86 mm in from the rear wall. If the board is low profile, its 45 mm package can only be centred 34–49 mm up, most likely about 42. A full-height dev card would put it at 57 mm.
• Anchor it on the rear wall's open slot positions. A blank bracket screwed into position 2 puts the camera's centre on that slot's line, with the lens about 52 mm from the board. An arm offset 8–13 mm toward the cooler brings it to 60–65 mm. Position 1 leaves the camera touching the fins. Position 3 gives 31 mm and a 19 × 14 mm view, and position 4 is too close to the card.

How far the lens can sit, by the thin-lens model the hub uses:

Friday, in order

The photos, one by one

What Friday settled

From the 26 Sep plan's blocking questions:

• Which labelled rig is which? aifoundry2's frame reads mv-swpcie50.
• Which face is reachable, and how far? The back, facing the CPU cooler, 89 mm. The plan called this the single fact that decides the mount.
• Is a fan fitted? Yes, since 15:17: a two-fan 92 mm slot bracket on the heatsink side. Whether the heatsink covers the DRAM can't be seen.
• Which board revision? Most likely the low-profile production board (the 15:37:48 photo above). That moves the chip's centre to about 42 mm above the motherboard.
• Chassis or open frame? An open frame. Since the swap it stands on the floor, with nothing above the gap.

From the 9 Oct research's day-one list: item 3 is half done. The card's back to the cooler is measured. There is no shelf above, since the frame sits on the floor. The bracket screw to the chip's centre is not taped; it is estimated here at about 86 mm, from the dev card's drawing and the capacitor field's place in the 15:34:33 photo. The other seven items, from the ruler in the camera's view to the warm-up drift, need the camera running in place.

From the rear-cooling page's on-site list: there is no backplate. Behind the chip itself the photos show only small capacitors, the cold dots of the 15:35 live view. Two brass screw heads show on the back; their spacing, the board's thickness and the lid's height were not measured.

An ad hoc mount for Fri 16 Oct

Added Wed 14 Oct 2026, about 15:15, on your ask for something cheap, adjustable, and arriving before Friday noon.

The idea: hold the P3 on a bendable arm that reaches into the gap from above, or in from the board's front edge, with the lens facing the card's back. Hold it at two points, the body and the cable, so it can't swing or hang from its plug. Keep all bare metal away from the board and the card.

1. Order today: a helping-hands stand (a soldering "third hand"). It has a weighted steel base, four metal gooseneck arms and alligator clips. The KOTTO 4-arm set is $29.99 at Target, and Amazon has many like it. Versions whose arms have magnetic feet (QuadHands, Weller WLACCHHM-02, about $55–80) stick straight onto the steel frame, so the camera moves with the card.

• One clip holds the P3's body at the end away from the lens. Sleeve its teeth with heat-shrink or a dab of putty so they don't mark it.
• A second clip holds the cable 3–5 cm behind the plug, which takes the strain off the plug and stops the swing.
• The base sits on the floor beside the frame. The arms come in from above, or from the board's front edge past the card's tail.
• With the Weller WLACCHHM-02 (6 × 9 in steel base, about 1.5 kg; arms 2 × 8.5 in and 2 × 12.5 in; coated clips), the two 12.5-inch arms do the work, one on the camera and one on the cable.
  • Set the base at the board's front edge, raised on a box or a book so its plate sits about level with the motherboard. The camera point is then about 16 cm in and 4 cm up: about 20–23 cm of arm, so a 12.5-inch arm has about 10 cm to spare. Turn the base so the long arms' roots are on the side nearest the rig; 6–9 inches of base between them and the rig would use up that spare.
  • The arms never have to come off the base. If they do lift off and a magnet sticks to the frame's rear wall, an 8.5-inch arm stuck there reaches the same point from behind: about 9 cm in and 8 cm down.
  • The way in, from the board's front edge: over the chipset cover and the SATA ports, then between the card and the cooler, about 7 cm from the card's back. Keep the arm above the memory sticks, which stand about 4.5 cm tall.

2. From any hardware store: your coat hanger, made safe.

• Use insulated solid copper house wire (10 or 12 gauge, sold by the foot) or a plastic-coated hanger. A bare steel hanger can short the board if it slips, so sleeve one first. Two strands twisted together hold their shape better.
• Anchor it to the frame: zip-tie it through two of the open slot positions in the rear wall (1–4 are open), or hook it over the wall's top edge.
• Run it in along the card at the camera's height and bend the last few centimetres toward the card. Fix the P3 with a hook-and-loop dot plus a zip tie around its body, clear of the lens.
• Putty only fills gaps and damps vibration. On its own it creeps, more so in warm air.

3. The stiffest: Loc-Line 1/4-inch hose (kit 40413, about $12–22). Its plastic segments snap together, hold their shape, and can't short anything. Zip-tie the base to the frame, keep the arm under 15 cm, and zip-tie the P3 to the end.

Where to set it (the drawings above, and the focus simulator to drag it around): lens 55–65 mm from the card's back and square to it, its axis about 42 mm above the motherboard (57 if the board turns out to be full height), about 86 mm in from the rear wall. Centre the hot patch in the live view, focus, then lock the ring with a strip of Kapton. Tap the frame: if the picture jumps, add the second hold.

Also bring: zip ties, hook-and-loop dots, mounting putty (Fun-Tak or Blu-Tack), heat-shrink for any bare metal, the P3's 50 cm USB-C extension and the 1-mil Kapton. For the calibration: a roll of black electrical vinyl, a square of aluminium foil on cardboard, and the contact sensor if it arrives. It's the lab's frame, so tell Roman before fixing anything to it.

Next visit: ten minutes with the measure

1. The board's height at the tail, from the motherboard. About 72 mm means low profile and about 114 mm full height. Everything about the aim follows from it.
2. The centre of the capacitor field behind the chip: its distance in from the rear wall and its height above the motherboard. This is the aim point.
3. The two brass screws: centre to centre, and whether they hold the heatsink.
4. The lowest fin of the CPU cooler above the motherboard, to see whether the camera can tuck under the fins.
5. A ruler in the P3's view at 5 and 6 cm, square to the lens, and its close-focus stop. That checks the table above against the real lens.
6. One square-on photo of the card's back with the measure in the board's plane. It turns the photo into a map of the parts behind the chip.

Total life satisfaction: the thermal model is one of the three goals at the top of your Project doc. Friday turned "will the camera fit?" into a drawing with numbers on it. What's left is a ten-minute check with the measure and a printed bracket in slot 2.