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Yeah GMKTec is pretty bad when it comes to cooling solutions. Literally just had the K9 with the 125H delivered yesterday and while I was expecting the fan setu

Yeah GMKTec is pretty bad when it comes to cooling solutions. Literally just had the K9 with the 125H delivered yesterday and while I was expecting the fan setup to be meh, it's honestly like a bad case of tinnitus. Constant eeeeeeee at the most annoying frequencies possible. They put a tiny 40mm fan on top which resonates with the plastic box and screeches like an absolute banshee all_the_time. That one is a must-remove since it also blocks installation of any heatsinks on the nvme/ram, and a mesh top results in roughly the same temps. But they gotta put their logo on top, priorities. The second problem is the main cpu cooling, which is actually a really well made bottom intake blower side exhaust setup... but it's set up to run at like half speed even when you're at 30 degrees and there's no bios fan curve control for it except for extreme temp steps. I'm currently pondering adding a pico or attiny that reads the board PWM and retransmitts it so it only runs the fan when it's set above usual. Or maybe just a full passive copper block replacement, but that would require a case redesign... Otherwise it's a really capable little machine if they put a little effort into making it shut the fuck up at idle.

bayindirh 2y ago
G3's fan is mostly silent. You might hear a small clicking on lower RPMs, and mostly a whoosh on higher RPMS, OTOH, it' still moving air and sucking dust from the bottom. Looks like K9 needs to move more air since it's packaing an U5 in that small box, so cooling them silently is much harder.
- moffkalast 2y ago
  Iirc the N100 idles at 6W and boosts to 25W, whereas the 125H idles at 35W and boosts to over 100W, which the cooler has to be designed for of course. The Ryzen boxes have similar cooling problems from what I hear. But if you run the N100 flat out, which is likely to happen given that it's not the fastest thing, and disable turbo on this one (which I've done for now since my use case is a low power server) they are actually surprisingly close in heat output. The Radxa X4 tried to cool the N100 like a Pi 5 and it almost melts.

bayindirh 2y ago

G3's fan is mostly silent. You might hear a small clicking on lower RPMs, and mostly a whoosh on higher RPMS, OTOH, it' still moving air and sucking dust from the bottom. Looks like K9 needs to move more air since it's packaing an U5 in that small box, so cooling them silently is much harder.

moffkalast 2y ago
Iirc the N100 idles at 6W and boosts to 25W, whereas the 125H idles at 35W and boosts to over 100W, which the cooler has to be designed for of course. The Ryzen boxes have similar cooling problems from what I hear. But if you run the N100 flat out, which is likely to happen given that it's not the fastest thing, and disable turbo on this one (which I've done for now since my use case is a low power server) they are actually surprisingly close in heat output. The Radxa X4 tried to cool the N100 like a Pi 5 and it almost melts.