New Bolts MAY Have Better Fans

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New Bolts MAY be coming with much better fans - even better than the recommended replacement fans?

I am starting a new thread on this so the information does not get buried in all the other complaints about noisy fans and poor cooling. Those other threads regularly recommend replacement of the stock fan with a Blacksilentfan XS-2 to both make the box quieter and lower the temps by about 10 degrees.

My experience has been very different. If you have a new 2017 Bolt, you may not need a replacement fan!

I currently have three Bolts, and I have zero complaints about the noise on any of them. My first one, a 1TB model with the original drive installed, was new in September, 2016. The ODT temp on this box remains around 59 - 62 degrees while sitting on an open glass shelf.

But the real surprise seems to be my brand new 500GB box, built on 4/1/17. I installed a Toshiba 3TB drive in this box (uses much more power than the stock drive), and it is sitting on a wood shelf in an enclosed cabinet with the UPS and other heat-generating equipment. I ran this box for a month with the stock fan, and never saw the temp go above 69 degrees. Yesterday I replaced the stock fan with the recommended XS-2, and guess what? The temps did NOT go down at all. In fact, after only running for a few hours, the ODT was showing 71 degrees!

I did make sure the new fan was spinning before I put the case back together. I'll poke around a bit more today, just to make sure no wires or anything might be fouling the new fan, but if I cannot find anything wrong, I'm going to put the stock fan back in this Bolt.

 

Yes, the plug is on correctly and the fan is blowing down/out. Interestingly, this morning when I turned on the TV to check the temp after having it run all night (I do not use standby on this box), it did show a slight reduction, down to 66 degrees. That may simply be due to a cooler than usual room temp due to the cold-front yesterday - no way of knowing for sure.

I popped the small cover off and verified that the fan was both turning the correct direction and was not being impeded in any way. And although I did not let it run this way for an extended period of time, the ODT temp did start to rise with that cover off - this is to be expected, since the only intake vents are located around the far edges of the case bottom, which normally forces the incoming air to flow over the hotter parts of the system before being exhausted. By only removing the small cover directly over the fan and HDD, none of the normal board cooling can take place.

I went ahead and pulled the full cover off the box again, just to verify the fan connections and re-route the wires (that XS-2 fan has a lot of extra wire compared to the stock fan). Perhaps the excess wires were impeding the air flow a bit? Right now the temp is at 64 - while that is 5 degrees lower than it used to be with the stock fan, it hasn't really been running all that long since I put it all back together again today. I'll update this thread tomorrow after I watch it for another day.

 

System information, 2nd page. A couple of lines above the Remote address. On the Bolt, they only have one temp value, called ODT.

 

My room temp now is about 66F, but inside the cabinet where the equipment is located shows about 76 degrees. Right now that Bolt shows ODT = 65 (very little improvement over the stock fan).

Although I have not done specific indoor temp measurements over the past month, today's ambient temps are at least 10 degrees lower than they have generally been for the past month (days have regularly been in the 80s, but today's high is still only 59F), so I really doubt that this new fan is gaining me anything at all.

 

In my opinion, this is all completely off-topic for this thread. I am not complaining about the temps in the equipment cabinet, nor am I complaining about the internal Bolt temperature in a box running an upgraded HDD. In fact, I was specifically pointing out that even in a less than ideal location the STOCK FAN was doing a very good job in my opinion.

What I was trying to do by starting this thread is specifically address the question of whether or not the fans in the newer Bolts were as bad as many people keep yelling about in various forums. Personally, I think they are just fine, but I tested the popular XS-2 replacement just to see if it would be even better. So far, I am sure it is NOT better than the stock fan in the one Bolt I have tested. During normal use yesterday evening, I repeatedly checked the Bolt temperature, and it was running as high as 68 degrees - just one single degree lower than I had always been seeing with the stock fan. And the room was still generally cooler than it had been over the past few weeks, so I'm betting that single degree cooler temp is due to the room and NOT the replacement fan.

My advice to other Bolt owners would be that they do NOT need to replace their fan. Unless they suspect they have a defective fan in their box, they should not expect some magical and oft-repeated 10C reduction in internal temperatures by replacing the fan. Just my opinion. But I did the testing, and I wanted to share the results.

Maybe TiVo sources their fans from multiple suppliers, and half of them are good while the others are bad? I do not know - I can only say that in the three Bolts I own right now, all the stock fans are very quiet and cool the boxes very well.