Just a small update about cooling. As mentioned i got
Minisys NUC J3160 with
mSATA SSD (bought separately) and 8GB of RAM i already had. It just works (did not enabled VPN yet) but i had a feeling that the heatsink comes quite hot after a while even when the device is not under any massive load. I had ~57°C reported in pfSense and similar temperature for cores. The J3160 has 90°C as max temp so there was more than enough space but still.... The summer is getting quite hot in central europe in recent years and as i have the device hidden in a small cabinet under TV with small ventilation hole at the back i was afraid that the temps could jump quite high decreasing the device lifespan.
So how to cool it down a bit AND keep it silent? Well ... that Minisys board has micro JST power for SATA device i am not using so that is ideal source of 5/12V.
I bought
92mm Noctua NF-A9 FLX , pack of
4pin micro JST connectors and found one
FAN extension cable in my magic box of leftovers. Few min of work with wire cutters and pair of
shrink tubes to cover a
Lineman's Splice and tadaaa we have a FAN power source.
Note that on native 12V the FAN gets on full 1600RPM which is too much. On 5V the FAN does not start at all. Well just in case someone does not know you can use both 5V and 12V for the FAN which gives you 7V of effective power. That's just perfect Voltage to have the Noctua on slow speed to blow away the heat from heatsink while keeping it perfectly silent.
The best part is that i did not had to drill any hole into the Minisys case. There is a hole for Kensington security cable which is enough. Only thing i had to do is carefully dismantle the FAN 3pin connector (Use needle to press the small piece of metal while gently pulling the cables out) and push the cables through. Click the connector back, connect everything and close the baby. Final touch with pair of zipties and cover grid and we're ready to go back online :]
Few photos (click for big size)
Result is just perfect :]
Many many thanks!
