mercredi 20 avril 2016

The Bolt that should have been

Got a new Bolt 500 last week and I mostly love it.
One thing I noticed however: the unit was getting really hot to the touch with the fan constantly spinning (even when in standby) and with the resulting noise noticeable and distracting while watching dialog movies/TV.

The Bolt looks original and undeniably cute but IMHO aesthetics should never compromise performance.

Hot air is lighter and rises so a high speed/pitch 40mm bottom mounted fan extracting air from the bottom of a case with no intake seems to me like a flawed design.

So I decided to take matters into my own hands:

Replaced the original fan with a top mounted Noctua 92x14mm
Added a 70 ohm resistor on the fan 12V line to decrease speed
Replaced the HDD with a Samsung 500GB SSD

I know, it's not as cute as it used to be, but now my Bolt is stowed away inside the media center, virtually silent and cool to the touch :)

Attached Images
File Type: jpg bolt.jpg (58.5 KB)


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