I today got and set up my NESPI+ case with cooling fan in my 3b+, which was a fairly smooth process apart from a bit of tinkering. I hooked up the separate cooling fan to the board and installed the script etc… The cooling fan seems to be quite loud however and makes a sound like a mini jet engine. Is there some way to reduce the noise or as some people have said only have the fan going when the pi is under heavier load such as with certain emulators? I already have two heatsinks on the board so am not sure if its necessary for the fan as well and probably the most processor intensive emulators I use are for ps1 and N64. I have heard the wires for the fan can be separated from the plug and used somewhere else but am just wondering how difficult the configuration is. Any advice on what to do would be great. I am using it with a raspberry pi brand psu which I have noticed before today the lightning bolt seems to be coming up more often. I am not sure if I remove the fan if that will affect the symbol appearing more often.
Hi Matthew,
It sounds to me like you have a faulty fan. They should make a quiet hum, but not a jet turbine sound.
Hit reply to your order confirmation email and we can sort out. Alternatively you can write some code to turn on the fan only when the processor is hot. The lightning bolt symbol means that you have low power. Not enough power is being supplied by the power supply or your device is drawing too much power. You shouldn’t ever be seeing it with a basic NESPI+ setup. If you disconnect the fan does it go away?
The fan does make a noise, it’s not gong to compete with well crafted PC-case type fans. Though “mini jet engine” is a whole new level. Maybe a cord is touching it?
I couldn’t deal with the hum, so I disconnected the fan in my NESPi setup. The 3B+ has much better thermal properties and I’ve had no issues using a heatsink on top of the BCM chip (the bigger-one with the tin hat).
The mini jet engine description may be an exaggeration in terms of volume but it is definitely clearly noticeable even when a game is playing. It was more in terms of it being a high pitched whirring sound. I can take the case apart to see ifthe wire is touching. I may have to just end up taking out the fan as I have read that others have experienced the same issues with their pi. I know what causes the undervoltage symbol but am just not sure why it began occurring (it started with my old case). Was curious if I remove the fan, will that create extra load on the unit and affect the undervoltage symbol appearing more often.
What power supply are you using - the undervoltage issue was fixed a long while ago with NESPi cases?
