Larkbox fan noise and temperatures

hmm, can you made a video of fan, under full load, how much noise it made ?? when you sit near, like few feet away ?? gues 12v fan runing on 5v is using like 1/3 of power, so i gues it is quite quiet, right ?

I can try. I’ll do that after I get done with work.

Yes, I put my ear 2 or 3 inches away from the fan and I can just barely hear it.

Anyone tried just splicing in a resistor to lower the 5V fan to like 2 or 3V? So what like 110R or 150R or something? It cycles SO much as is, but I think it would be way better to just be on much more often, but at a much lower voltage hence much quieter. I don’t know. There’s gotta be a cheaper hack than listed above… however awesome that is, which it is. I’m not prepared to spend so much additional just to keep this thing cool/quiet. So far my 1981 penny is all I’ve spent replacing the original thermal pad. Ha.

After going through a whole jar of pennies, I’ve managed to find 4 that are before the critical 1982 date, so I’ll give that a try :slight_smile:

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I agree, my solution is way too expensive. I wonder how much Jeff’s heatsink costs.

What we need to find is an inexpensive (maybe 25 mm tall) heatsink with 60 mm x 60 mm mounting holes. Then it should be easy to screw whatever kind of fan you want to the top of it.

Thanks Bio, I took it back apart and was able to get it connected and it’s working good now. I pushed it back on with needle nose pliers and it didn’t give me the click I saw in your video, but it went on.

actually you cant use 60x60mm fan, as you cant remove top part of box, bcz its part of mount system, what keep whole box together. So only what you can do (and what i plan to do), is cut hole thru top part (basicaly in dimension of fan+exhaust), remove it, and then replace it with some bigger piece of pasive cooler in shape of Y, where base is more less 40x50mm, about 1cm high, where top can be another 1cm 60x60mm with place for big fan. ofc this require drill holes in new passiv and srew it to original copper plate, as you cant actually mount new pasive part directly to cpu, you must use original heatsing as “reduction” to new one

some posible solution of this is, 3D print whole new top part with modified screw holes and place for fan, but this is beyond homemade and for sure not cheap :confused:

second idea what i have as someone mentioned here, add some resistor to fan, and reduce power voltage to less then 5v, but here i really dont have idea, how much have chuwi dimensioned the fan to keep cpu cooling (so if you lower voltage to 3v, if it will be sufficient to keep cpu low)

I guess you didn’t look at my cooling solution where I used some barrel hardware to hold mine together.

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@Donut it doesn’t look like that heatsink is making adequate contact with the CPU?

yep i saw it (and then forget about it :D) i am actually thinking about to modified top cover instead your solution, it looks like it make whole box too much bigger, i can understand, what you did, but just, how do you measure heigh of that copper pieces? did you just made it by eye or do you measure it excatly to 0,001mm ? i am afraid, that you can damage the cpu with too much presure you will apply…

I guess you didn’t look at my cooling solution!

Yeah, I had to thermal adhesive some copper to transfer the heat to my heatsink/fan.

Yeah, my kit had various sizes, I tried a couple and this was the one that seemed to work the best.

I tried a few solutions. I tried a slightly larger fan, I tried a 60mm x 60mm x 10mm fan with the barrels holding it together.

This was my first solution that cools it well. I do feel like this thing needs a significant cooling solution.

Hi, nice project , can you tell me where i can find that heatsink ?

Welcome to the forum. I linked it in my post above where I posted more pictures of how mine was put together. It isn’t cheap!

I also got myself a USB fan adapter. USB Fan Adapter: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JW73KVR/

Well, MrUlla, i feel the same bro!
Was really disappointed with that noisy cooler😰
Cant watch movies with such crazy background, while premium android tvbox totally silent and slightly warm, compared to larkbox… wtf? Crappy marketing… smallest pc? Who need this with that cooling system? Ingeneers ears desabled? Jeeez… lets calm…:laughing: but i just dont understand… i like larkbox, that could be awesome gadget for me, but cooling killed it totally.

Now to some fix attemps.
I tried Gelid GP-Extreme Thermalpad 120x20x1mm,
Temperature 45 after boot, goes to 55 then fan starts to bark)) lowers to 53 and off… so got same result as you.

The problem is that fan on and off every minute, omg, whyyyy i cant just turn it on constantly with 50% speed…

After that i changed gelid to copper plate .7mm and added Kryonaut thermal greese 12 wmk to both sides.
Now cpu temperature 38 after boot. And rest not changed. It slowly goes to 55, and fan turns on…

Now im searching for some bios thermal values, try different adjustments, but its kinda useless… fan always turns on ar 55 degrees😔

What else im gonna try… just buy reostatic usb fan on aliexpress, and place it on the top. So i can run it on low speed, and maybe chuwi fan will never turns on…

Also i can theoretically 3dprint new cover for larkbox, 20-40mm higher, and place there reostatic module with bigger fan. But honestly its weird… maybe i can just 3d print another minipc instead of lark…Chuwi, why you cant make a good product, and dont make ppl mad with larkbox experience(

Good luck, hope someday we will find solution🥶

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Welcome to the forum, nice effort.

Since several manufacturers are making mini pc’s with this pre-made case. It seems like someone could develop an optional “quiet cooling hat” for a reasonable price and make some money off it.

If all you need is something to watch movies, there are some descent tv boxes that use passive cooling.

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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