Hi, I need help with Aopen MiniPC.....

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davebell1
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Hi, I need help with Aopen MiniPC.....

Post by davebell1 » Sat Jul 08, 2006 8:37 pm

Greetings to all fellow silencers,

I just built a AOPEN minipc with a Celeron M 1.5ghz, 512 RAM, and a WD Scorpio 60 GB drive. So far, so good, with the exception of ZERO documentation. After struggling through, I managed to get it booting and installed Win XP. Yay!

I intended to use this as a very light weight server, and leave it on 24/7. I also thought I would offer it to clients as something different and a real space saver, as well as super QUIET. Again, so far, so good. Tha darn thing is VERY VERY QUIET. WOW, I am really happy about that.

SO, the reason for this post is two fold. Does anyone know of any documentation regarding Main Board and BIOS? The model number is MP915-X. The AOPEN web site had a "manual" that tells how to surf the net and play music on a finished system, which is more than useless and really should not even exist in todays world.

The BIGGER of my two issues is HEAT, and I mean HEAT. Speedfan is reading 64C, 65C, 52C and 22C. Hard drive is the 52C and I have no idea what the others are except that the CPU temp is obviously one of the higher readings. And this is at IDLE. Scares me crazy. I could never recommend this to clients.

I have considered a laptop cooler, which may help, but negates the space saving aspect a bit.

This is such a cool little computer and darn near totally SILENT, I hate to give it up without a fight, not to mention the cost of $450 or so.

There is precious little documentation or info on Google, except as mentioned above. I will probably try to get in touch with AOPEN, but they are so big I cannot see how they will care much about my plight.

So, I reach out to my fellow SPCR's for some much needed help. If you saw this little baby and heard how silent it is, you would understand my frustration and concern over the heat immediately.

Thanks for listening to my rant, I look forward to any and all responses. Ambient temp here is about 72F. Summer on Cape Cod is oh so sweet :)

Thanks,

Dave

Bluefront
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Post by Bluefront » Sun Jul 09, 2006 1:26 am

IMHO.....the very first thing to do is to determine the true temps. Get a CPU benchmarking utility such as CPUBurn, run the prog while watching the speedfan temps. The temp that shoots right up is the CPU temp. Then you need to confirm the temp reading is accurate.

There are several methods to do this.....I take readings off the base of the heatsink using an external temp probe of some sort. Only when you are really certain of the true temps, should you make any judgements. The speedfan readings may be way off......

jaganath
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Post by jaganath » Sun Jul 09, 2006 5:28 am

The BIGGER of my two issues is HEAT, and I mean HEAT. Speedfan is reading 64C, 65C, 52C and 22C. Hard drive is the 52C and I have no idea what the others are except that the CPU temp is obviously one of the higher readings. And this is at IDLE. Scares me crazy. I could never recommend this to clients.
The Scorpio is rated to operate at up to 60C, so that kind of temp will not necessarily kill the HD, although it will shorten its useful lifespan. I would recommend changing the CPU to a Pentium M, the Celeron M doesn't have Speedstep and so runs much hotter.

davebell1
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Post by davebell1 » Sun Jul 09, 2006 7:00 am

And I thought I was being so smart by getting a "low power" Celly :) Thanks, I will see what I can do about that! Dave

davebell1
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Post by davebell1 » Sun Jul 09, 2006 7:26 pm

I found this excellent article on my exact unit.

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm? ... 965&page=1

Thanks,

Dave

BillyBuerger
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Post by BillyBuerger » Mon Jul 10, 2006 3:20 am

I looked at this before as I have a spare 1.3GHz Celeron M laying around collecting dust. But I was hoping to use it for an HTPC. The lack of audio options on this disqualifies it for me. :(

So is the CPU fan running at all? It would seem if it's running that hot, that the CPU fan should be speeding up and getting more noisy.

Although the Celeron M will idle warmer than a Pentium M due to lack of Speed Step, they should be equivilant at load with stock voltages.

davebell1
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Post by davebell1 » Mon Jul 10, 2006 8:09 am

to the best of my knowledge, the fan is spinning. Not really changing speeds though. I have a call into AOPEN due to the thermal grease issue, which, due to the design of the heatsink and other things, is really hard to tell what touches what and what is supposed to touch what.

In the mean time, I am running it, seems to be just fine. I have ordered an external thermaltak USB fan to put on it to see what I can get temps down to.

I really want this to work and be reliable as I think my clients would LOVE it. I am used to the vey cool figures of my big box. I never overclock or anything like that and cooling is one main reason I do not.

Hopefully, AOPEN will call me today!

Dave

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