I’m thinking of buying the Bolt v3 as a web server and occasional media player, but the cheap small fan is of concern to me, as this will sit in the living room. What I’ve concocted in my mind – and hope others more experienced here can help or correct me – is that: I’d replace the stock cooler with e.g. https://noctua.at/en/nh-l12s but use a 12cm 5V fan instead https://noctua.at/en/products/fan?voltage=5 (4-pin PWM in OK now, from what I gather). Build a box around the whole thing – I’m thinking of a wooden cube, with 5 sides full (well, one will need to leave space for the heat pipes). The last side I would leave open, where the Noctua cooler (if possible fin-side out, with the vent in the box) would stick out. Flip the whole thing upside down, so the cooler/fan will be facing downwards and pushing the air out in that direction. On each of the four corners of the cooler/fan the box would be protruding so it would now serve as feet to keep the whole things off the ground. For this I need to know: the socket mount of the CPU/APU, so I can get the right mounting kit whether the comparably massive NH-L12S will leave enough space for the RAM sticks and the SSD Of course, please do feel free to let me know if this is totally bonkers and won’t work! I’m open for alternative suggestions, just want to keep this puppy quiet, cool and looking nice. Alternative idea: remove stock fan, but keep the stock cooler (fins) on, without a fan just put a 12cm or 14cm fan on the whole box to suck out the air
Hello, the mounting for the Bolt is the FP5 which has screw hole spacing of 51mm on either side and the base should not be larger than 60mm as it can contact the memory modules, as for the memory height clearance I read that this heatsink even with the fan mounted below (low profile mode) it still provides 35mm and should be enough as the SODIMMs are usually at 30mm, though check with your memory, not sure if yours might be different.
About your alternative idea about passively cool it with the stock heatisink, it could work, you could always lock it into the lower side of the performance and setup up the throttle temperature, but it can and will throttle a lot, also should be upright for the convection to work, hot air will always go up in our atmosphere.
Would love to love to hear your results and findings, my self looking for a large heatsink too to cool it passively and completely silently, although in a more upright position. This heatsink looks very good as it also has the fins vertically to help with air convection along with the height clearance. The only problem would be the base size and mounting option. Could even drill the screw holes manually on it as long as it does not pierce any heatpipes.
My logic behind turning the thing upside down is primarily so the air would flow downwards into the floor, so I imagine it would be less prone to gathering dust. I may be just imagining things though … Will keep you posted here as things progress
If dust is floating in the air it will be sucked in no matter what you do, especially with forced air flow. Filters help a lot in that matter. You can also have dust repellent coating, but I do not know how it will affect thermal dissipation.
Just received an answer from Noctua and it’s not great: Good to know about the airflow and dust. I’ll rethink the idea then. Especially as it’s back to the drawing board due to the cooler anyway
I have the same exact problem, the socket mount option to be able to install one of the larger heatsinks and manage to even keep it passively cooled. The only mount that has the 51mm x 51mm bracket is for the nVidia GTX 1660 TI, but it is a bad fit for the Bolt. But AIO coolers for the GTX 1660 TI fit nicely. Also another method I was thinking about for my own was total immersion into 3M Novec 649 Engineered Fluid, which unlike mineral oils does not leave the board a mess, the price though is high and it needs a stage for cooling the liquid it self too.
I’m playing with the idea to hack together a DIY mount as Aurelien did here: https://www.udoo.org/forum/threads/fan-the-quiet-roadster-edition.30042
