As part of my self-hosted infrastructure endeavors, I am looking to set up additional cooling in my M90q Gen 3 Tiny PC. I have a M90q as a router with an AOC-STGN-I2S v2 card, which definitively needs additional cooling - so I am thinking of adding extra cooling by form of a stock low profile CPU fan, which I am going to repurpose for this extra cooling, and wanted to check the following:
- Any issues if the fans have different amperage? (The stock fan for the CPU is 1.5A vs 1.1A from the spliced fan)
- Has anyone ever dealt with this extra cooling? any suggestions or pointers to a ready made cable? (most likely not available, but doesn’t hurt to ask)
Most fan headers on current motherboards can handle 3A. I’d say check the manual, but it is a prebuilt from one of the big three, so I know it does not have that info.
If the stock fan pulled 1.5A, then replacing it with a fan that pulls less current is safe to do.
Reminder: Current is how wide the river is, not how steep it goes downhill.
I have built USB to 12V adapter cables using DC-DC converters in the past. In your case, that would not work due to power requirements of the fan though.
Thanks for the update!
Just one caveat, I’m not trying to replace the existing fan, but to add another fan to the same connector by splicing the wires by hand to a single connector, as I can’t find an adapter cable (a la Noctua) for this particular connector.
Based on your response I think it should work, was trying to avoid the manual effort involved - it’s always easier to use something ready-made when not inconvenient!
I missed that.
If you can, measure the actual current draw of the fans. Maybe the rated power is overly optimistic.
Edit: Just pulled a random Dell-CPU cooler from my junk-box. Says 12V 1.5A, pulls 700mA at 12V
I wanted to do this in a Lenovo Thinkstation P350 Tiny a while ago. In the P350 Tiny the fan header isn’t a standard fan header size. Was a bit hard to track down, might be a JST SH with 1mm pitch J.S.T. Mfg. Co., Ltd.
That was the closest I could find. The current rating on those is 1.0A. So if it is that connector in the M90q, using Mazeframes 700mA reading, you might overload the connector with a second fan?
I ended up looking at USB fans/converters, but never finished the project. Fwiw I cut some extra holes in the top of the case and that helped with temps by a few degrees, was still noisy.
The initial pull is higher then it levels out once up to speed
Am aware.
Was too lazy to set up the scope for that video, should have in hindsight.
