Fanless Aspire One

It's definetely not just the air whooshing. Both vibration and the whirring of the fan motor are audible. The vibration can be helped somewhat by carefully pressing the bottom of the notebook. The whirring of the fan motor, on the other hand, is just the signature of a cheap low quality fan, there's very little one can do about it, except change the fan.

 

I am very happy with actual solution of turning off the fan until an hight level of temperature. All Atom netbooks have this problem of hight temperatures, none is fanless.

Maybe some fans on AA1 are low quality... but I am waiting for a near future where all netbooks are fanless!! Thats what we costumers want!! Thats why there is now some computers fanless, people enjoying "green" pcs and fanless. I will wait for this on my next netbook, while then, I have one of the best netbook of the market.

 

If that noise is normal, i dont send back my aao.

Here two vids of the beebook:



Filmed by mobilphone and pressing the micro on case.

 

could it be that the eeePc survives without fan because it's using a slower processor with about 900 MHZ compared with Intel Atom's 1600 ??

I can see the energy savings, but wouldn't take the risk

PS my fan is quite loud

 

Wow is that the noise that everyone it complaining about?! No that is not normal!

Let me see if I can film mine...

Edit:
ok it is too noisy around here but when it quiets down I will try and get a vid

Edit once again:
I can't record mine. Everywhere I go the ambient noise is louder than the fan so there you go....

 

YUP thats the SCreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee NOISE LOL
I didnt believe them either b/c my SSD version is wisper silent.
Untill i visited MicroCenter,Bestbuy, circuit city and saw a 150 next to a 110.
All the stores seem to have a Deffected 150 120HDD version.
The noise is as loud as Small HairClipper, or beart shaver, or a LOUD Cellphone on VIRBATE.
It seems alot of SSD dont seem to suffer this issue except HDD

 

Hi,

has one of you returned it to Acer and they "repaired" it / downgrade the noise? I think about sending it to the Acer-Support for reparing it - but they could only repair it, if there is a fault fan or something. If all of you with an AAO 150 have the same sound, i wouldn't send it back.

@esaym - do you own a silent AAO 150 or a 110? Yesterday i went to MediaMarkt (a big electro-company over here) and listend to the 110 - it was so unbelivibel quiet

 

@MrM

I sent my Aspire 150X to Acer (Germany) about two weeks ago. Repair was very fast (4 days including shipping) but they replaced the fan with the same model, unfortunately. The new fan is a bit quieter that the old fan, but the whining sound still remains :/

 

( Dann spar ich mir das gleich - immerhin müsste ich sonst alles neu aufsetzen )
(=)
Than i wouldn't send it back - its more work for me than result is worth it.

Lets hope there will be a replacement kit or something else - from acer or a third-factory - it should't be such hard to built a better fan - think about profit they could have - nearly half the owner of an aao would buy it or even would someone (like me) insert it for paying a bit.

 

Sorry i am from US =D
And yes mines is a 110 Wisper Quiet.

Ja ich hab nen Acer 110, die is ja ziemlich leise. Nicht so bescheuert laut als den 150ziger.
Ich Glaub es hat mit der HDD und die zusaetzliche hitze von der HDD zur CPU.

 

Here's fan control software programmed especially for the Aspire One I found in the BIOS update comments in the main page of this site:

http://www.computentsystems.de/aceraspireonefancontrol/

works like a charm

 

WTF - you don't share the source code nor the information about how to control fan!! Shame on you.

I would suggest for anyone NOT use your "Freeware" program as it can contain virus - without the source code no one knows what your program really does "under curtains".

 

Has somebody tried to solder a small resistor on the fan power wire? That would make the fan run at less rpm and should make it more silent. It would give a more constant temperature than using a fan control software that completely shuts down the fan. Or then maybe a potentiometer so you could select the fan rpm speed when you need it to be silent or cool more.

 

Then do not use the program.....as it can contain virus wow :|

 

I've also done these changes and straight away its gone from being really noisy to silent.

I haven't changed from the settings in Rachel's which are:

INTERVAL=5
FANOFF=60
FANAUTO=70

At the risk of sounding silly - Does this mean that the fan will only kick in if the temp goes over 70C?

 

sounds like the mighty 150AAO LOL :lol:

I think you neec to contact the Manu to if they replace the fan for you.

 

Wow, took a long time to read through this thread.

I just have a few suggestions people can try out. I haven't tried them myself yet because I'm waiting on some RAM to ship so that I can do all this modification stuff in one swoop. In fact, I haven't even gotten around to popping my AA1 open so take my advice with a grain of salt.

Rachel mentioned before that a lot of the noise was coming from the fan housing and resonance of the fan's vibration with the chassis. An easy way to resolve this would be to decouple the fan with the chassis. If you want to retain the screw on mechanism of the fan assembly, you can use silicone grommets between the fan assembly and the chassis to absorb the vibrations. Also an option is forgoing the screw system altogether and just using some double sided tape that has a foam insert between the sticky ends (most of them do). In both of these cases, it will be metal -> foam/silicone -> metal instead of metal -> metal -> metal as it currently is designed. The only thing I'm unsure about here is whether there is vertical room in the chassis to insert another piece of material between what is currently a tight junction between the fan and the PCB.

I don't know if this has been tried already but replacing the stock thermal paste/grease with something of higher quality like AS Ceramique would probably net you a couple of degrees C (hey, every bit helps!).

Regarding the noise echoing inside the cowling, there are online stores that sell sound absorbent foam than you could cut and stick on as little triangles on the sides of the fan assembly (on the inside side) so that the air moving out (and the sound moving with it) will be bumping into the absorbent foam before escaping the case. There are a number of variations as to what airflow impedance design works best but that is the one that I have done on my desktop and it works pretty well.

I think someone's already mentioned placing an in-line resistor on the 12V line of the fan to reduce RPM at all levels. The principle has worked well for me on desktop heatsink/fans but I'm not sure about the required starting voltage for the AA1's fan so using a resistor that lowers the voltage too much (below 7V for example) may result in a fan that can't turn on, and from what I've read here, that would lead to crashes.

For the true hardware mod, you can solder/thermally epoxy on heatsink fins or a low profile heatsink onto the current fan assembly and lower temperatures quite a bit. From what I can see in pictures, the fan assembly used by Acer is pretty much worthless as the fan blows against....nothing. It looks like a flat aluminum surface as far as I can tell and without any proper heat conduction elements, the fan is far less efficient. Combining this with the fan control software that everyone here has graciously developed would let you safely operate the AA1 without the fan ever coming on.

Normally, I don't advocate fanless since a proper fanless design still requires some level of airflow to be effective. I do think that with a properly set up fan (read: constant low RPM) and heatsinking, its possible to achieve both low temperatures and near silent operation. Hopefully I can get cracking on some of these things soon!

 

i have the bios version 3114 so all about if we update the bios we will dont have anymore noise from the fan is false. sorry guys we must find other way :!:

 

I want to use this, but I don't know how. *Complete* newb here. Could someone walk me through the steps? The last time I tried to change a file in etc/rc.local (to make the wireless led work again) it said I didn't have permission to change it, so maybe that tells you how much I (don't) know.

Thank you thank you - my computer was so whiny in class today that it gave me a headache.

 

Here is a quite good guide: http://n00.be/archives/758/
There is not so much information on how to configure the /etc/acerfand.conf file so you have to search for that.


Anyway, has nobody tried putting a resistor on the fan power wire? I think the fan is running on 5 volts so lowering it a little by using a simple resistor would make the fan run slower.