Intel NUC cooling mod
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ก.ย. 2015
- Add extra air cooling to the Intel NUC to avoid CPU throttling and extend the life of components.
In this video I explore different options for improving the cooling of the intel NUC. Although ultimately none of them worked that well.
I tried to force air into the sides, from the bottom and against the top CPU cooler/fan. My idea was to 3D print a fan holder that would clip onto the side of the NUC and force fresh air into the side vent. After making a cardboard prototype, I realized that it didn't seem to make much difference.
My ambient room temperature is around 25-30C and the NUC sits at around 45-50C when the system is idle. During video editing I often hit 80C; the fan then kicks into turbo mode and tries to balance the CPU frequency to maintain 80C or less.
It's the Intel NUC5i7RYH. Inside you'll find a 5th generation i7 CPU, intel iris 6100 Graphics, 16GB (1600 MHz DDR3) Crucial RAM, Samsung 250GB 850 EVO M.2 SATA SSD (Boot), 120GB SATA 3 Corsair SSD. It's running Mac OS X Yosemite.
Under normal use, it only consumes around 15-40 watts, much less than a typical desktop computer.
Despite its tiny size and low power usage, it still manages to keep up with my video editing and export rendered videos from Final Cut Pro in a very quick time. It also performs well with multiple virtual machines running inside Mac, for example Windows XP, Windows 10 and Ubuntu.
I was originally using this Intel NUC as a ESXI machine to run many virtual machines but my main desktop computer has been extremely unreliable so I decided to make the NUC as my full time desktop computer instead.
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Fascinating actually. What I think you have shown is how complicated cooling is. Accomplished (I am assuming) engineers worked the design with (most probably) the aim to optimize size-efficacy-sound issues and it looks like they did a good job. After all, you had great difficulty improving the design This is such a good example of how well designed the NUC is. I really appreciate your willingness to just try things. I really liked this video and your way outside the box approach. I think you must have had fun with this. Good on you.
This might be one of the best comments I've ever had on my channel. You should be a writer!
although i wouldnt consider the cooling a success, this video does illustrate that its not worth trying to cool down the NUC with external fans. this should save people some money from buying laptop coolers, fans etc..
sometimes disproving a theory is just as important as proving one. thanks, you saved me some money.
+Sas Quatch I had considered it but I have a feeling it might just make things too complicated. Ultimately I think you're right, If I want good results, I need to remove the stock cooler/fan. It spans the CPU and GPU chips and doesn't do a good job of transferring the heat evenly across the fan heatsink. I'd have to remove it and then make a new plate that covers the two chips and then add a large heatsink and cooling fan to that new plate.
"i dont know if im imagining it but i can smell something burning"
His just like me when im tampering with my home electronics
Great tests. It shows Intel has done a really good job with cooling. After watching your video I have another idea that may cool it down without the use of an additional fan. Will have to do a test first (not that this little machine needs it). I live in QLD and no matter how hot the air gets, the NUC copes very well.
using vacuum cooler works really well for me. I have exact same intel NUC model like yours. I try to play game like CSGO it went down from around 80-90C (before using vacuum cooler) to around 60-70C (after using vacuum cooler). I put the vacuum cooler on the exhaust so it helps sucks more heat air out and it works.
The issue is the intake. The fan's intake is on the very top and there are no air vents. So drilling some holes into the lower part of the U-shaped metal plate should help.
nice research.
what would the ideal temperature be?
how hot is too hot and why cool it?
expanding lifetime?
What NUC is this, i7? do you have a m2 and a mSata disk in it?
have you thought about a peltier junction ? Also, you need to dismantle the nuc to see how the existing fan works - are the two fan ports on the rear in/out or both out ? if one is an inlet you could force more airflow through it.
They have self cooling cases for the NUC. They are basically milled aluminium and the entire case becomes a heatsink....
I was thinking about putting a standard cpu cooler on mine to put a larger and quieter fan on it.
We've been through the same steps as you and no result. I had been encouraged to do this by having pointed a hair dryer directly at a desktop PC CPU and saw a remarkable decline in temp. For NUCs i thought circulating more air, same as you tried, would work but the CPU is on the wrong side of the motherboard for any of your (our) methods to be effective. The NUC fan is on the correct side but may lack the power to do much cooling. You didnt say what your BIOS settings were for the fan, or its speed or temp visible in the BIOS and that would have helped. My NUC stays around 48 degrees on either COOL or BALANCED settings with the internal fan and I dont know enough about the BIOS to make all the other fan adjustments like Custom, Duty Cycle, etc. I have a GoRite USB lid and they make a cooling lid but the air flow to the CPU is blocked by the fan plate so whats the use? If the fan exhaust was located elsewhere, then Id try turning off the internal fan and using your external fan to blow into the the exhaust. There must be a way for this, the other alternative is disaster, to take apart the NUC and mount all the components on a wooden plank, attach a heatsink to the CPU and then a desktop fan to blow through the heatsink. Ridiculous. The other alternative is to remove the lid and fan plate and mount a PC fan to blow onto the exposed motherboard. But any of these kinds of measures defeat what a NUC is. Did you try using BIOS settings to MAX the fan speed? I cant even understand why you have 80 degrees. Please join the Intel forum and discuss it there. On the other hand, its been four years since this vid and maybe you dont even have the NUC anymore.
> During video editing I often hit 80C
Is this the CPU Core temp, or something else? What program are you using to measure the temps?
awesome video! will the last solution. Curious to know if you did 3d print a case with the setup.
awesome video! thanks a ton, will try this on my nuc
Fan on the side will not give you anything. It does not matter how much air you push into the NUC. It will only let through amount that internal fan can let. The additional air will not also affect cooling much. Because it is calculated. The surface of the internal cooler and amount of air needed effectively transfer heat from radiator to air. Any additional air does not matter because it will only increase speed of the air but not amount of heat transferred. Anyway if you want to increase amount of air you have to add suction. I mean you have to add fan to pull air out of HUC instead of push it in.
I think that most big effect would be to push cooler air in. For example if you have Aircon, you can create pipe from aircon to suction holes of NUC. That will significantly drop temperature.
Another way is to make air more humid. Because it is actually a moisture that absorbs heat. But you are in the Philippines and I do not see any way to make air more humid than there.
And last way to make heat lose more effective is to increase radiator surface. Make more edges. But since radiator is internal I also do not see a way to modify it.
What about sitting it on an gel ice brick. Im assuming that fan housing is part of the heatsink. Ive got an i7 10th gen and thats what im thinking with mine. I might even hook up a big ass peltier module and see if that makes a difference
I have a spare intel CPU cooler sitting aside and I would almost think that if you placed it on the hottest part of the fan shroud on your NUC it might help. How much I am not sure but if you did have like an extra small reference style CPU cooler sitting around it may help.
those temps are too high for me. have you try replacing the stock fan with thin case fan?
8:50 have you tried moving it to the hot place or used cpu cooler? looks like it is working
I am also having a similar problem yet fan at the side are bloody ugly. Why not just fit a low profile unit (Akasa 2u Cooler Nero LX 2) on the top and power it from an external PSU?
Also look at the Tranquil case. It's a completely passive design.
I just got my NUC down from 98 degC to 42 degC - there appears to be a design flaw with this model where dust sits between the fan and the heatsink - I just followed videos on disassembly and cleared out half of this Manila dust we get and it’s fixed!
Just did this for 15 month old NUC5i5RYH. It is now silent.. It had been running the fan constantly. Any ideas on adding some sort of air filter anywhere?
I got my NUC down to about 43C from 75C by installing two rows of M.2 ssd type drive heatsinks on the fan plate. These come with thermal tape making them easy to mount and two of them cover most of the plate while maintaining a low profile. A fan fits nicely over the top and blowing a little air over them dramatically helps keep the entire case cool.
Can you provide picture and link on this component that you mentioned?
This is super useful info. Just to clarify, when you say "fan plate" do you mean the metal plate underneath the cover, to which @Gadget Addict applied the thermal paste and heat sink @7:37 in the video? Thanks!
Thanks, I think this is the real tip here. the heat already comes off the heatsink. so add some more surface area to the heatsink and a fan would be good
Try adding a smaller heat sink where the hot spot is on the upper top of the nuc and add a 40 or 60mm fan blowing down on the heatsink.
Hello, could you please tell How do you meter the temperature of NUC (I have NUC 8 and Linux)?
A hole needs to be drilled in the top aluminum covering the fan. i drilled a hole in my and temperature only goes to 60 to 65 Celsius on full load. there is not enough air intake on models up to 7th Gen that causes NUC's to overheat
I wouldn't use a nuc for anything performance-related, as tempting as it is (not considering price of course). Looks like an interesting project for custom cooling solutions though, especially if they release a more overclockable one.
Wow I pulled the plastic cover off and temp instantly dropped 3 degrees C. Its summer here and it's too hot for the little nuc
Which application did you use for temp monitoring?
80c, lucky you. Got the very same NUC and mine hits 100c easy if i stress it hard and long enough.
what if the temperature sensor inside is broken?
Nekem is mindig túlmelegedett az Intel NUC 7i7BNH , Aztán a hátsó csatlakozók feletti légrésen befújtam kompresszorral levegőt, és az oldal nyílásokon is. Nagyon sok por és kosz jött ki, és azóta nem melegszik túl. Azt hittem valami baja van, de csak piszkos volt. Egy év alatt elkoszolódott, pedig szűrt levegő van a lakásban. Most viszont szuper.
Are you still using it now? Is it good?
I got confused, which one is the most effective way ?
What I want to do with all my NUCs is to drill hole and pullout hot air with even a small 4x4 cm fan, will surely work better and safer than....hell now, what can be safer than drilling holes in a safe, metal case :)
the best way to cool this out is going to it's bios and boost all the cooling setting to max. Tried it and it does work very well. It's a bit noisy (cause the fan run at 6500 rpm) but everything seem ok
can i see your bios fan setting please?
Under-speed threshold: max
minimum duty cycle: 100%
maximum duty cycle: 100%
Also, its better to suck hot air away then blow cold on. If you grabbed a blowervac and ran it flat out blowing onto it maybe youd notice a little but if you hooked up the intake, itd firstly suck everything out from inside but if you stopped that happening it would cool to a point but only ambient.
Re the hot air cold air thing. If you can blow colder than ambient temp air ie refrigerated air in it will cool, otherwise better to remove the hot air.
I have similar model, the best solution is to disassemble the NUC and clean dusts of the fan inside. Unfortunately I don't know how to pull it apart 😢
Remove the bottom plate and 2.5" drive if fitted (including cables), remove all connectors from the mainboard, undo the two screws either side of the mainboard and gently pull it upwards. You might need to help it a bit through one of the USB ports or push it from the fan side through one of the tiny holes wiothout damaging anything on the board below. You can also turn the case over and knock it on a table, should do the trick. Then it's just undoing the two screws that hold the actual fan down et voilà!
I was thinking of buying used NUC but now after this video, I don't think so. I am looking at fanless model from MSI.
Wait, what? You are from Philippines? Bro, CD-R King pa more!
And also, try water cooling mod and use AIDA64 for benchmarking.
I can tell you why you are not getting a temp. drop. You are measuring the CPU core temp, and you are trying to cool all other parts than that. If you want to further cool your CPU/GPU/Chipset you need to take off that stock cooler. then add a lager heatsink. If you succeed doing that you will have a new problem, you wont be able to put the top on :)
Just put a 120mm low profile heat-sink and fan on the top connected to an external PSU
100mm else the fan would be larger than the case
I like this video because you sure how annoying hot the nucs run.
I bought a NUC and they are surprisingly small. Yet they don't have awful performance.
why did you riquire a cooler for Nuc mini pc? As far i know these kind of mini pcs are already have their smart cooler solution. I was going to buy Nuc mini pc but now i am confused.
+serkan yıldırım The built in cooler has to balance noise and cooling efficiency. I thought that I might be able to improve the cooling at the cost of extra noise (additional fans). Whether the average consumer would be interested in this, I don't know. Probably not since it defeats the purpose of buying a tiny near-silent machine.
+Gadget Addict ok thanks for the explaining, could you also give a little bit information about its noise? Is it really as silent as they claim? I am about to buy Intel Nuc or MSI Cubi. I tried MSI Cubi and it was quite silent but i have no idea about Intel Nuc, its performance, noise and stabilty as well.
I use a ce bottle inside a empty glass and it cools just fine
Ur going have to mode it use a desktop CPU fan!!! I've seen the same p.c they cut a hole in the top of the case and use a desktop CPU cooling system
why not just use the big heatsink? place it on top of the heat source and secure it with rubber bands or plastic straps.
passive cooling from the heatsink alone removes 20-30C vs large fan that cools off only about 10C
- edit -
hot gluing it might be a better way to secure it on the NUC
+comebackata2 If I was to do that, I'd probably use a sticky heat transfer pad and then make some kind of 3D printed clip to hold it in place. But honestly, I don't know if I can see a passive heatsink performing as well as the current small heatsink/fan combo they have installed. I managed to move the heatsink to the edge of the fan and now it gets pretty hot when the NUC is under a heavy load. So the heat is actually being transferred now and I blow a fan over the exposed heatsink. Honestly, it still doesn't seem to make much of a difference.
6:48 your assumption is not true. cpu is just on the other side of mobo, and it open to side chassis. have you open the case and saw by yourself?
a small scale water cooler would be a good project for this, don't you think?
+Tyr Anasazi It would be awesome. I tried looking on amazon but couldn't find anything small enough.
+Gadget Addict I'd be surprised if Amazon had it. It would have to be a mod like this www.thinkcomputers.org/worlds-first-water-cooled-raspberry-pi-computer/
+Tyr Anasazi Wow that looks awesome! I'm not sure if I could come up with something as good as that :P
+Gadget Addict We have faith in you :) It would be a good project though for youtube. Keep up the good work!
Very Filipino. CDR_King and Hanabishi.
putting the 120mm Fan at the bottom with hardly any space for airflow is plain stupid, I would get 2x 140mm and create a push/pull config to see.
I've tried this, a better solution is to epoxy glue a laptop vacuum cooler to the rear vent.
For me, the only thing that worked was when I somehow managed to install stock cooler from normal intel processor. I have only i3 version but the temp drop was from around 45 - 65 C to 33 - 51C. Dunno how right now but I will have to make a custom case for this to work :/
is that body plastic,??
No, its aluminium. The 8th gen NUCs are the first with a plastic case (with a metal sort of skeleton inside).
You need to repaste the CPU as well.
Bare wires while power applied? Check....
Thankfully the NUC is powered by an adapter that converts high voltage AC to low voltage DC :)
Since I bought my NUC6i5SYH the heat is my main concern. Similar to you I live in Brazil, and we do not use air conditioners here too.
I thank you for doing many test, and actually go through all my initial ideas, and you proved me that it is not worth the trouble of modifying the NUC.
As last option, not covered in your effort, is to remove the original fan/heat-sink and actually use a more efficient option like the copper/water cooling solutions, which will actually make the NUC very tall in size. Also this last suggestion should be tried only when you run out of your manufacturer warranty, or you will be in trouble if something goes wrong.
Cheers!
try to create a bigger case.. and put a lot of fan inside.
+Julius Sanpedro Interesting idea. Although if I do that, I might as well have just bought a regular desktop in the first place :P I'm not against the idea, I'd just like to consider a smaller option first! :)
I don't understand what you doing and why are you focussing on the metal plate on the top of the nuc below the lid.
Below that metal there is the FAN and the heatsink... not the CPU!
Moreover, the heatsink (actually the tiny top of the fins) is not even in contact with the metal plate because it's covered with an anti vibration insulating foam.
So at 7:35 you are just trying to cool the chassis, which is not in contact with anything.
+Nox665 Below that plate is the heatsink that covers the CPU and GPU. The heatsink makes thermal contact with the plate. If you open your NUC and feel around, you'll see most of the heat ends up being transferred to part of that plate. If you can cool that plate it will cool the heatsink below and the CPU/GPU :)
+Gadget Addict No, as far as I have seen the heatsink does not make thermal contact with the plate.
The fins for the heatsink ofc have a base but does not have a "roof". In order to create a "roof" that close the heatsink creating a finned duct, intel have put there an adesive foam pad which act as an insulator.
I have already opened and repasted several of these NUCs, mainly high end ones like the 5I7RYH.
You can clearly see the pad covering the fins here (actually there's 2 of them in this picture, but in the latest models is just 1):
cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/DSC053861.jpg
So cooling that plate is a waste of time.
Nox665 I'll have to take a closer look but perhaps I messed up. It's weird that adding a heatsink to the plate has since made a difference in cooling. Perhaps just random coincidence? Thanks for the heads up!
take a packet of ice and put it ontop of the computer
Pushing air doesn't help! Try turning the fan upsidedown then you'll see a difference. ;)
+Nima Jafari Tried pushing pulling, doesn't really make much difference either way. Putting the NUC upside down causes much worse heat build up though lol
Oh, I just got my NUC today and the cpu usage is always high. Do you know of any solution? Thanks! ;)
Nima Jafari Maybe it's a software specific problem? I'm running Mac OS X on mine. Have you checked activity monitor to see what apps are eating up the CPU?
Yeah but nothing is using more then 0.8 %. :( Thanks though.
I wish I would have watched this video before I bought $25 of cooling crap that didn't work :-/
уфд рфк пуул!!!
😂😂😂… it’s all wrong! Full suck…
:))))))) this is garbage
"i dont know if im imagining it but i can smell something burning"
His just like me when im tampering with my home electronics