Not a NUC, just a small fan that measures the same db as your NUC under load. It produces about 60db with the tip of the SPL meter as close as I dare get it to the blades.
-
Welcome to ASR. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!
A fanless NUC?
- Thread starter Furio
- Start date
Old Listener
Addicted to Fun and Learning
If you have a concern about NUC fan noise, you should visit the BIOS and tune its settings. (pre-rant!)
My wife and I use 6th generation (Skylake) i5 NUCs as our personal desktops and I use a 5th generation atom-class NUC as a dedicated music player. I'm 2 feet away from my desktop NUC and I hear nothing until I have ~20 tabs open in Chrome with several Youtube videos up.
The way the fan is used can be adjusted in the BIOS for all these NUCs. A simple choice of the quiet profile is sufficient for the 6th gen. i5 NUCs. They have good features for finer fan control if I need it. I hear fan noise for a few seconds during the bootup process but then nothing during normal use.
The atom class NUC's BIOS has much less flexibility. I can choose fanless operation up to a threshold CPU temperature but when the fan runs, it runs at top speed which is quite loud. My choice was to allow slow speed fan operation at low temperature with a gradual ramp up with rising CPU temperature. I can hear low level noise at two feet. I hear nothing at my listening position 9 feet away. A practical solution as far as I am concerned.
My wife and I use 6th generation (Skylake) i5 NUCs as our personal desktops and I use a 5th generation atom-class NUC as a dedicated music player. I'm 2 feet away from my desktop NUC and I hear nothing until I have ~20 tabs open in Chrome with several Youtube videos up.
The way the fan is used can be adjusted in the BIOS for all these NUCs. A simple choice of the quiet profile is sufficient for the 6th gen. i5 NUCs. They have good features for finer fan control if I need it. I hear fan noise for a few seconds during the bootup process but then nothing during normal use.
The atom class NUC's BIOS has much less flexibility. I can choose fanless operation up to a threshold CPU temperature but when the fan runs, it runs at top speed which is quite loud. My choice was to allow slow speed fan operation at low temperature with a gradual ramp up with rising CPU temperature. I can hear low level noise at two feet. I hear nothing at my listening position 9 feet away. A practical solution as far as I am concerned.
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2016
- Messages
- 1,294
- Likes
- 1,217
That's a good take away. If this is being used for music only and not under any heavy load the fan is a non-issue. You can't hear it.
I encourage others to try it out as it's going to save you $$ and not compromise the listening environment. Same for my Crown XLS 1502. It has a fan but darned if it can be heard.
KSTR
Major Contributor
We use Intel NUC5i3MYBE fanless, albeit with a big custom headsink bolted onto a metal chassis. I've tested it with original fan/heatsink still attached but unpowered fan and it has no problems running a complex audio synthesizer rendering engine (quite more CPU load than just simple playback), total CPU load is about 7% (30% of one thread of one core, the rest is virtually unloaded). Even with the unit completely wrapped in foam the core doesn't get any hotter than 80°C as reported by a diagnosis tool. The fan is also really quiet, personally I found the "whining" noise of the onboard DC/DC converters of some units a bigger issue than the fan noise.
Similar threads
