Crazy Small Router Firewall and Virtualization Node iKoolCore R1 Review 4x 2.5GbE

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PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
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Its very cute. Like a little kitten or a new puppy. Just makes you want to hold it!

On a more serious note - I read your comment about preferring fanless. But even these low-power Intel CPUs are hard to keep cool enough in small volume cases to really be successful as "fanless" devices. Just look at forum threads on the Topton fanless units - now several hundred posts long - with a large number of them dealing with overheating, adjusting the heat spreader, adding fans, etc.

I think having a small quiet fan is a good thing. But only if it is able to be monitored in the OS so you can know when it is working.

In the future, when you review these kind of platforms, could you take a look to see if the fan speed can be seen from the OS. Ideally using standard tools like lm-sensors? Because if you can see it there then you can monitor it and alarm it with your favorite monitoring tool (e.g., Zabbix, etc.). If I can alarm it then I have no worries throwing it into a garage or closet and letting it do its routing thing in peace. But - as you've noted in almost all of your reviews on this this, a fan that you have to physically see or touch to know it failed is a disaster in the making.
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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Good point @PigLover

We have been very lucky with the fanless units. ~2 dozen of them and have yet to see the problems some others have. We started putting that disclaimer/ thread in the reviews since there seem to be a lot of variabilities in manufacturing.

I will put this as a note to the team to check lm-sensors. We are like a month ahead in production, so hopefully, it gets into the late April/ early May pieces.
 

PigLover

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Jan 26, 2011
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BTW, for reference, I have not found any way to detect the fans in software on my R86s. I am very curious about whether the fans would be visible on the CWWK/Topton AMD 4825u box @Patrick reviewed last year.