Power & Source of Big Ideas

Installing a fan NEO3

Moderators: chensy, FATechsupport

Hello Everyone,

as you might have also noticed, the NEO3 is running very hot inside the white plastic box. I have already got the top of the enclosure off, which helped a bit, but it is still quite hot, so I need to think of some kind of cooling. I would like to install a fan.

I am a newbie to SBCs. I had examined the board and have found two pins tagged as 5V and GND for FAN.

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IMG_1995.jpg (145.83 KiB) Viewed 10225 times


Is this the place to connect the fan to? Will any type of 5V fan with a 5V and GND cables work or do I need to look for a type specifically? Is it somehow possible to configure the SBC to control the fan and adjust the RPM according to the current temperature of the CPU? (One fan I can buy has some kind of PWM control, but it has 4 pins instead of 2.)

Thank you!
According to the schematic, there are MOSFET drivers on this to switch the fan ON and OFF via GPIO2 which is also marked as PWM2 at the same time.

Not sure if the kernel is already driving this as ON and OFF or PWM but it is possible to control the speed with this for a basic 5V powered fan if you have the skills to fiddle with the kernel etc.

Attachments

anybody ever figure out a decent fan solution?

- the 2-pin fan header next to the serial port has some tiny pins. That's why I ask.

you can find these kind of 25cm things, but I dont want 25, I want 40 or 50cm:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000406024395.html

In the meantime, I have completely removed the white plastic marshmallow case as I need unfettered access to the serial port. My neo3 is just a bare board sitting on a metal plate (which I think is helping with the cooling).

similar trials + tribulations of the armbian folks with the R2S:
https://forum.armbian.com/topic/14365-n ... hrottling/
I installed a mini-ITX cpu fan on my Neo3. It helped a lot - the board was sitting on my shelf without a case and temperatures were always around 70°C in idle state, but then I plugged the fan and put the Neo3 in a case (not the official one, I'm using an electrical wiring junction box) and now it stays at around 55°C.

The fan is rated for 12V and had 3 wires going to it, but I just figured out which 2 were required by connecting them to a 9V battery and then I scavenged some old PC parts for the connector. Since it's rated for 12V, it spins a bit slower on 5V, but as you can see, it's still enough to cool it.

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