Hi,
I want to install a fanless heatsink, but I’m having a hard time to find out the correct form factor from the specs of the one used in your board. Who should I talk to about this at Solid Run?
Thanks,
Daniel
Hi Daniel,
The CPU fan has the popular 40x40 form factor. You can find many manufacturers
of fans in this size.
We have been using so far a 39x39mm heatsink with fan which we have purchased from Aliexpress.
Below are pictures showing the heatsink and fan
Best Regards,
Yazan.
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I believe the important measurements you are looking for is the 59mm mounting pin spacing. This spacing was popular for northbridge and other chipset, as well as GPU mounts. If you search for those types of heatsinks you should find options available on the market. Just note that there are board components close to the 40x40mm SOC area so cooling options larger than that will need a vertical offset to clear them.
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I was struggling to find a bigger cooler, but then I came across AABCOOLING NB Cooler 1 | Producers \ AABCOOLING Computers and Laptops \ Chipset Cooler | Tytuł sklepu zmienisz w dziale MODERACJA \ SEO
Removing the existing cooler was a little fiddly, but installing the above cooler was pretty easy. It seems to fit really well, and there seems to be a good amount of mounting pressure.
I tried two 40mm Noctua fans on the replacement cooler, a 10mm thick one and a 20mm thick one. I tested with stress on all cores. With the thin one, the CPU temperature hit 70 degrees on the hottest core. With the thicker one, the hottest core was 66/67 degrees, around 4 degrees lower. With either fan, it was much quieter, which is what I was going for.
Thanks for reporting back you success with that cooler. We are going to start a HoneyComb build thread soon so customers can document their custom builds as a reference for others to use.
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FYI Noctua’s 40x40x20 fans do the job quite well I find.
I guess you’re referring to the 12V 40x40x20 PWM fan “NF-A4x20 PWN” as described at NF-A4x20 PWM ?
It would be great if SolidRun would provide the full specs of the stock “GDSTIME” Fan. Unfortuantely it doesn’t feature a part number but just “12V 0.1A” rating which doesn’t tell us much in terms of CFM/airflow or static pressure
@jnettlet: Did that Honeycomb build thread materialize? I’d be very interested in hearing about what others built, particularly in terms of a proper option for cooling, which maximizes airflow (and hence no CPU thermal throttling) while keeping noise levels at a reasonal level.
Yes, that fan.
Its noise is low enough for me, however it seems it’s a little hot. No thermal measure to check though.
A thermal paste would be my next addition if it was needed.
Ive got a water cooled lx2k with a heat sink / custom block in a ghost s2 mini case. I need to pull the covers off for a photo op.
Actually not so popular. I am actually looking for something that has this 59mm mounting space and that is copper not aluminium and I am struggling to find anything useful.
Will those work?:
Or this one
From the datasheet they are not exact 59mm I wonder what is the tolerance on the hole itself and if that would still fit. I am looking for something copper and with lower profile so I can mount 20mm heigh fan that is quieter but still should do the cooling.
I tried Noctula NF-A4x10 PWM fan but this doesnt cool enough. Idle around 72°C way too much. With stock fan I get 52°C Idle.
Or maybe after I figure out some script to do I²C control of fan I will try to spin up Noctula or spin down stock fan. Will see
Hi, @Dingo could you share your water cooling solution?
@jnettlet what is the maximum amperage (or power rating) for the CPU fan connector?
The ATX standards has limitations regarding the 12V pin headers and those are best observed. However we don’t specifically limit out boards regarding the 12V outputs. How many Amps are you looking to pull from the pin connector? That would really be the limiting factor. Those rails are driven directly from the main 12V input from the ATX PSU.
Ok thank you for the information @jnettlet. Unfortunately its the stock fan that broke down for some reason not header or pin.
I checked other fan that is not 10mm high but 28mm and it works finewith PWM. So now I really need to figure out this custom water cooling solution to be able to use lx2160 as server. Or for the time being get some 10mm fan.
When I finish I will share my setup with cooling maybe it will inspire others. Anyway it was mentioned somewhere that such a separate topic might be started for people to share.
Edit: I am trying to power water cooling pump and 3 fans. But I found a workaround using PWM hub powered from SATA power connector to not to drain too much directly from CPU fan header.
The pump is using 0,25A (max) so 3W. My PSU has 5A max on 12V rail so if its drained directly still should be safe even with 3 fans added should be 2,35A total at full duty so less than 5A.
Those numbers all sound reasonable and within spec. For water cooling a 1ru, although pricey, I think alphacool is the only player in town for radiators and pumps in that form factor. Although I would not recommend their 40mm water block. I found that one to be a little on the small side for the LX2160a and instead found another on ebay that works well. You can see it installed in the lower computer.
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That looks almost exactly what I bought but has 4 screws mounting and I wanted to make custom metal plate laser cut or CNC engraved. But looks like there are some with 59mm spacing ready. I will look on ebay unless you point me to the exact offer.
And about water cooling solution I went with Dynatron L3 (AIO) (4-times less the price of Alphacool and could source it locally) that I will swap the waterblock.
My requirement is 1U so that was the only solution I could get. Or maybe I didnt look hard enough.
Edit: No, all offers I could find are like this:
Be it ebay or ali and this is what I got to customize.
Now I see on your attached image that under the acryl part you must have done straight cut along copper thing. I will do the same then. There is no way you got 2-screw mounting. I’ve searched the whole Internets😉
correct. I just took a dremel with a cut off wheel and zipped off the extra parts. But it worked wonderfully. With that waterblock the LX2160a never got above 48C under full load.
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Here is what I did for a fanless solution:
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Use this case: HDPLEX H1 V3 Fanless PC Case which comes with large copper heatsink and copper heat pipes.
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Get some polycarbonate sheeting and cut out rectangular hole and attach it to the copper heatsink with mounting screws.
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Trim the original heatsink plastic tubes and re-use the springs and thread them over a couple of cable ties as shown.
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Apply heat conducting paste and mount the heatsink to processor on LX2160A COM board. Use 2 more cable ties to pull down on the polycarbonate mounting before trimming excess cable tie plastic.
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Reattach the LX2160A COM to the Honeycomb carrier board and put it in the hdplex case. Then attach all the heatpipes.
I have been running 2 Honeycomb boards mounted in hdplex cases this way for a couple of years without problems with room temperature ranging from 15 deg C to 40 deg C.
Current room temperature is 25 deg C.
First machine:
cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
55000
Second machine:
cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
58000