Airport Extreme Dissected! (2/3)

Once that screw is undone, the whole inner enclosure can be lifted out. Here is a shot of the antenna port board mounted to the underside of the metal enclosure.

This wiring harness is what supplies the antenna board with power and logic.

The MC-Card antenna connector is plainly visible in this picture. The card it plugs into is barely visible underneath the metal shell of the enclosure.

Once the antenna connections on the outside are undone, you can open the inner shell by undoing a number of screws. Inside, you can see the new Airport Extreme mini-PCI card and a rather large Aluminum heat sink.

The Inner Shell pieces. Note the large thermal transfer tape on the upper piece that corresponds to the mini-PCI card below.

Note how short the mini-PCI card is and how Apple is using the metal shell of the inner enclosure as a heat sink.

Here is the mini-PCI card that acts as a transmitter for the AEBS. The MC-Card antenna jack is visible over my index finger. The metal casing not only cuts down on interference, it also acts as a thermal conductor.

Here is the motherboard without the mini-PCI card. Note the large thermal pad that the card uses. It must get pretty hot!

Now without the heat sink. Note the AMD MIPS processor in the middle and the two low-power LC48 Micron SDRAM chips north of it. Just to the left are a number of Broadcom chips that control the ethernet ports. At the left edge of the circuit board, you can see a number of components that help deal with the jacks and ports there.