Larkbox fan noise and temperatures

Well… I’ve just received my copper plates yesterday, at about same time @Cervantez posted… anyway I tried myself swapping the Gelid pad with a 1.5x1.5x 0.8mm copper sheet and… :poop:

I think that the real solution is that, print a new cover with room enough to fit a 60x60x1cm fan connected to the 5v vía usb or a silent 12v (Noctua, for example), to the mainboard pins, and disable that thing that CHUWI says that i’ts a fan. (that’s a nightmare CHUWI, not a fan! dammit)

The thing is that either the amount of copper is not enough, the fan is rubbish, and 55ºC is way low setting for this machine to ramp up the “fan”, if only could be changed to 65 ot 70…

Finally, CHUWI please! make a new bios with comprehensive-really working settings!

Cheers.

Cervantez MrUlla

its kinda hiden link, but Donut already invented basicaly ONLY one possible solution, how keep larkbox quiet and more less passive cooled

https://imgur.com/a/E00VvsP

you cant use thermal paste, bcz cpu and heat sink literally does NOT touch each other, you must use provided (shitty) tape, you also cant use passive heatsink directly to cpu, bcz there are small electronics parts, which you will break, over all, cooling part of larkbox is extremely bad design, and there is basicaly nothing, how you can fix it yourself

That’s not correct.

You can use an intermediate thin copper sheet and thermal compound between CPU-sheet-heatsink without any issues, it improves thermals slightly, but the real problem of the larkbox is the activation point of the fan, because Celeron J4115 has a Tjunction temperature of 105ºC, so CHUWI hardcoded on BIOS (actually on firmware because BIOS settings are useless), the activation of that f* annoying little piece of garbage of fan at half the maximun running temperature of the processor. This CPU can happily run at 80ºC its whole life, so, Why not to put at 80ºC the ramping point? (Clue: Chuwi’s “engineers” have absolutely no idea how to, because the larkbox is made by a third party challenger).

In the middle of all of this nonsense are we, trying to kill flies with shotguns.

Cheers!

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Beside the noisy fan also the bios settings are ridiculous. I also totally agree that threshold for fan activation should be around 80 degrees Celsius and for deactivation around 60.

Did someone try with a resistor to lower voltage at fan? Unfortunately the power cables are very thin and I have no proper tooling. But 100 Ohm should be sufficient.

Thank you ever so much parkerwb. The penny trick worked perfectly!
Before, the idle temperature was around 45 and the larkbox would incessantly oscilate between 45 and 55+ degrees. I thought I’d end up giving the LB away as I just can not tolerate such noise.

Now, it idles at 38 degc.
Only when I pushed all 4 cpus to 100% did the fan switch on. Strangely, it idled at 53-54 degC afterward. The fan isn’t cycling, so I’m happy. I guess the copper plate has warmed up and the heat has nowhere to go when the fan is off.

I did see a smaller chip; I didn’t give it the penny treatment, just a big dollop of thermal compound. ‘sensors’ (I run linux) shows the acpi chip at 60 degC.

Another defect in the fan controller code is a lack of hysteresis. The shutoff temperature is the same as the turnon temperature. When the fan turns off, it leaves the copper plate at 53-54 degc. It seems the fan is quieter now as well. Perhaps being clamped down reduces vibration as opposed to the old pad.

Yeah, bro, thats exactly what im thinkin about. Hope somebody create that hat. Well, server fan with radiator almost delivered from aliexpress. https://aliexpress.com/item/-/33023031982.html

Also i have 3pin mini reobas, and 3pin to usb cable.
Ill make same cooling as u did. After that start making 3d model of top cover for printing.

Still hopin that chuwi gonna do something, like upgrade or larkbox v2. I rly like that tiny cute pc… but so sad about bios and fan… whyyy… that could be truly amaizing gadget🥲

That sounds good to have a nice looking product at the end. I wish we could find a cheaper solution, though.

These guys make a nice looking product for cheap, which could probably make a cheaper solution. It looks like it could help, but I’m not super sure.

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/advanced-thermal-solutions-inc/ATS-FPX060060015-23-C2-R0/4753896

Anyone knows the name of the fan connector on the larkbox?

Hello,

Recently, I made this replacement top cover to fit a different Heatsink+Fan for my Larkbox Pro to limit the annoying noise. It needs that you have access to a 3D printer and the design is not perfect but I though it might interest some.
Files and documentation are available here (for free):
https://www.prusaprinters.org/prints/59693-chuwi-larkbox-pro-heatsink-top-cover-upgrade

Take care!
:¬)

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That looks pretty nice. Did you have to thermal paste the heatsink on there?

That looks great! But makes the thing too tall isn’t true?

I don’t have any skills on 3d printing, but I was wondering on a “hat” with an 6x6cm fan inside it (like a Noctua NF-A6x25), with wide openings on the top. Pull out the nasty fan of the larkbox and put this “hat” over.

I wish I have any skills for that…

Cheers.

dude, i literally invented exactly this solution too (just not 3D print, but made from metal) still i guess i will go sue you for stolen idea!

nah just kiding, my larkbox completely died long ago, so i dont need solve this anymore :confused:

I tried putting a better, larger fan on mine and it didn’t seem to help much. I think the crappy heatsink is a big part of the problem.

Did anyone see the Mele Quieter2? It’s a J4125 with 8 gigs of ram and NO FAN. ~$240, though.

Hello!

I’ve made my own gipsy solution BEHOLD! and cry:


So, problems so far, it’s still audible but waaaaay better than the high pitched sonofab** inside the larkbox. Also, is always powered on even with the larkbox off.

Pros, the larkbox fan only ramps up after several minutes at 100% CPU usage, and in normal operation never ramped up (watching movies, surfing, etc)

I kinda like it :laughing:… I’ll try to find a better fan, because this one, that I got from an ancient AMD k7 cooler, even at 5 volts spins fast, so as I said, it’s still audible. But damn, it’s hard to find a good 6x6 fan in black nowadays…

Cheers!

3 Likes

Use 40x40x20mm turbofan instead of 35x35x7mm turbofan.
The original air inlet and outlet holes were hollowed out to increase the heat dissipation effect.


image

The fan uses a 5V USB power supply, and the line is coupled with a 1/2W 150 ohm resistor, and the power consumption is reduced from 0.35A to 0.1A to control the fan speed to a silent level.

Prepare 0.8mm, 0.5mm and 0.3mm thermal conductive copper sheets to replace the thermal paste

Place 0.5mm and 0.8mm copper pads on the CPU and Northbridge chip

The original position of the cooling fan is replaced by a heat sink

100% cpu usage test

The first half is the case without a fan, the temperature rises to nearly 90 degrees, and the cpu clock drops to 800MHz

The second half is the case of using a fan, the temperature can be controlled close to 80, and the cpu clock returns to 2300MHz

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I also use a 12 volt fan connected to a 5V USB port on top - similar to MrUlla. I have the air flowing into the larkbox. But if i look at the picture of MrUlla it looks like the fan direction is pulling air out from the top… Anyone has an idea if we should blow air into the larkbox or pull it out? In my case i blow air into the larkbox and it is very cool and silent now - 48 degrees idle. I did replace the thermal pad with a copper coin and thermal paste - which also seems to knock of 2 degrees from avg

Hi.

Is not pulling, it’s pushing.

I’m planning something similar with the heatsink but without ripping the larkbox’s case.

Cheers!

Edited: reason typo.

Hi Jeff, could you let me know which heatsink that is?
Did it come with the right screw mounts?

Could we have the link for that fan? Thx much in advance!