Fanless Aspire One

I want to buy an Acer Aspire One. Currently I own an Eeepc and I have it as a fanless computer (simply I disconnected the fan connector) without no problem at all. Many people have done it on Eeepcs without any overheating.

Have anybody tried it on Aspire One? I think I shouldn't have problems?

 

theres been a lot of people complaining about fan volume, and rightly so..

but is the atom thermally efficient enough to not constitute using a fan? i would be reluctant to try unless i had some beefy custom made heatsinks

 

I disconnected the fan - the AAO doesn't boot up.

 

Then I think I won't buy the AAO
Atom is supposed to be able to work with a passive cooling system, I don't know why acer puts that noisy fan there and doesn't allow to disconnect it.

 

Let's see those EEE without fan few months later.... :!:

 

I don't know what fan you are listening to, because the fan on mine is dead silent. You have to put your ear up to it to even know it's running. I've been on this thing for an hour and it is still perfectly cool, the fan is running, but very quietly.
Matt

 

fan problems do seem very 50/50 at the moment

 

I have my eeepc running without fan since january without any problem. Often running for several hours.

Pleople are scared of running a computer without fans, but this should be the advantadge of having a low power consumption processor. Acer and Asus have included the fan but it doesn't mean that the system needs them, perhaps customers like active cooling systems. Sometimes those tiny fans only are useful to make noise, because they don't blow the hot air out of the laptop. For example in the eeepc the contribution of the fan to the cooling system is quite small.

 

hmmm, not convinced..

quite like the idea that a component is keeping my device cool, and not just relying on a few slabs of steel, copper, etc...

that said, if the fan makes a ridiculous amount of noise (which it shouldn't because it is supposed to be of a high quality) then i will most def take it back and get another AA1

 

I have get rid of most of the fan noise by setting the cpu frequency to 800 MHz. This is enough for everything I want to do with it.

 

And how do you fix the frequency to 800mhz?

 

-----and how does that affect battery life? better i assume

 

Install the necessary command line tool by entering

Code:

sudo yum install cpufrequtils

in a terminal window.

You can set the frequency to 800MHz now by

Code:

sudo cpufreq-set -f 800Mhz

and get infos on the CPU by

Code:

cpufreq-info

It will stay on the frequency of 800 MHz even after reboot. BTW this does not affect the noise of the fan at start level. But it seems that it keeps things cooler such that the fan will not wind up so often.

 

I would recommend bringing any noisy Aspire One back to the retailer. (or at least replace the fan yourself instead of just unplugging it)

 

wow, underclocking by 50% is a fairly huge step down.

still. if your needs don't constitute using the extra power then it's a good idea

 

Finally I have bought the AA1 and the fan noise is quite annoying, as I supposed. Even at 800Mhz is quite noticeable.

Could it be possible to create a script to control the fan speed? like in this other aspire: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p= ... tcount=117

I guess so. Let's hope that somebody with enough knowledges create it.

 

I'm also trying to get my AAO quite, changed the whole cooling system today, but without a fan
connected the AAO powers off after around 70seconds, looks like I need to build an fan dummy
which emulates a RPM singal.

 

Instead of disconnecting the fan, a better solution to a quiet aspire one would be the ability to control the fan speed from software. Slowing down the fan would provide some cooling while substantially reducing the noise.

On the eeepc, the hardware solution of disconnecting the fan occurred almost immediately after the devices were available, but with the ability to slow the fan speed (or stop the fan in software) there is no need to do a hardware mod. See the discussion at http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:disconnect_fan?s=turn off fan or google for it.

So has anyone found any software controls for the fan? The OSs are different and arise from different forks (Linpus from Fedora, Xandros from Debian) so the software might not be available, but perhaps the same packages exist on Fedora repositories.

Along the same lines, some simple CPU temperature logs would seriously help us understand how much CPU cooling is required. And also how much is gained by locking the CPU freq to 800MHz. Does anyone have any temperature logs and how did you get them?

 

This strikes me as sound advice. Just unplugging it is surely asking for trouble.

If the noise is a rattling/scraping sound then it may be that it's just a cheap fan and would sound better if replaced by a better quality one. Whether you do this yourself depends on whether you have already voided your warranty doing something else or if you can bear to be without your One while the retailer fixes it.

If it's just due to the volume of air then you cannot do much about it apart from underclocking without risking your One starting to get hot.

Out of interest, do the people with quiet fans all live somewhere cold and the people with noisy fans all live somewhere hot ?

 

Any idea where we can get a replacement?
Would it need to replace the whole thing including all the metal bits, or just the fan itself? I'm not worried about warranty, it's a bit late for that...
Rory