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My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

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Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#71
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or people who argued that “the eye can’t see more than 60fps”

Or people who argued that "4k is pointless, you can't see the different with 2k anw".

For gaming or videos I actually can’t tell the difference between 4K and 1440p. For text rendering I absolutely can.

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#73
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine it's promoting fairly poor posture. I would end up with a migraine from the neck strain.

Just like using a laptop.

I got a stand from Flio to help with that a few years ago [1]. It folds up into a thin laptop-sized rectangle, so it's easy to take with me.

Looks like the certificate on their site expired though, so I've no idea whether they're still in business.

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/482077604/flio-up-the-1...

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#74

I was wondering how they can run that cpu without any cooling.. Then they say it goes up to 90°C .. That's way too hot! thats like laptop / mac temperatures. It will function sure, but it wont last, it will degrade relatively quickly.

> maxing out all cores

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#75
Thanks for posting this. It finally made me realise that I could disable the stupid LED lights on my B550 mainboard (same AMD CPU as the guy in the linked article).

I'm running a similar setup with Linux (Manjaro) and a Streacom FC8 case with a Nano PSU (no coil whine).

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#76
I once put considerable effort into making my setup as silent as possible. Then I realized I could have it as loud as needed as long as it was in another room. So now I either use my television with cables run through my crawlspace to my office or a remote desktop on my silent tablet.

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#77
I have similar but not so extreme inclinations towards fan noise. I settled to build my desktop with a simple NZXT case, intel 8th gen CPU running Arch Linux with CPU governor set to Performance. The pSU is an ATX power supply that is rated for 750W, while I could barely get to half that with full load(which means PSU’s fans almost never need to spin up). The CPU is cooled by an oversized NH D-15 Noctua air cooler with two 15” fans that are set in BIOS to only spin up when temps get quite high(which never does unless I run synthetic benchmarks).

I have been so happy about this system that I almost never talk about it. It is a tool that does its job well to my needs and gets out of the way.

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#78
> Since the LG UltraFine exposes a USB HID device to control its brightness, I wrote a driver to attach to it and expose the brightness adjustment through wsconsctl display.brightness.

Wow, that is impressive both from the device _and_ from the author. I wonder how many displays support controls over USB? Personally, I hate having to manually adjust my display's brightness in the evening.

Edit: This got me curious and after digging it looks like some utilities can actually control the hardware backlight brightness, like xbacklight on linux: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/backlight#xbacklight

You can also use xrandr to control the signal brightness, but that's not really the same as controlling the hardware.

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#79

I have similar but not so extreme inclinations towards fan noise. I settled to build my desktop with a simple NZXT case, intel 8th gen CPU running Arch Linux with CPU governor set to Performance. The pSU is an ATX power supply that is rated for 750W, while I could barely get to half that with full load(which means PSU’s fans almost never need to spin up). The CPU is cooled by an oversized NH D-15 Noctua air cooler wi…

One option here is to wire up the fans to run at 7V (connect negative to 5V line), or even 10V (by connecting to -5V and +5V).

But getting software control to bump that up to 12V when needed could take some extra steps/hardware. But if you use the system lightly enough, it’ll be cooler in its norma state and might not need the extra cooling oomph.

Heat kills!

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#80

I have similar but not so extreme inclinations towards fan noise. I settled to build my desktop with a simple NZXT case, intel 8th gen CPU running Arch Linux with CPU governor set to Performance. The pSU is an ATX power supply that is rated for 750W, while I could barely get to half that with full load(which means PSU’s fans almost never need to spin up). The CPU is cooled by an oversized NH D-15 Noctua air cooler wi…

One option here is to wire up the fans to run at 7V (connect negative to 5V line), or even 10V (by connecting to -5V and +5V). But getting software control to bump that up to 12V when needed could take some extra steps/hardware. But if you use the system lightly enough, it’ll be cooler in its norma state and might not need the extra cooling oomph. Heat kills!

That's not necessary anymore, the fans are either PWM or voltage controlled by software in every modern system. The noctua fans are also rather quiet by default.
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