I’m fortunate to have the Huaying fan in my Deck (the quieter fan), but the folks at Linus Tech Tips decided to take matters into their own hands with the Delta fans: putting in a heatsink and fan into the unit. I won’t get into detail about it, but essentially Linus dremel-cut the back part of the Deck so a custom-shaped piece of aluminum could be fit into the device. A heatsink was then applied on top with some thermal paste, and they even went so far as to attach a fan to it. Here’s the difference in temperature in the GPU and CPU before and after, as well as the difference in RPM with the internal fan:

ltt heatsink temperature comparison Image credit: Linus Tech Tips

The GPU is a whole 19° Celcius cooler while playing Horizon Zero Dawn (179.6° F vs. 145.4° F). The CPU cores are also noticably cooler and are at lower percents for power consumption. Fan speed has been reduced to almost half, from ~5,700 RPM to ~2,800. The result of the reduced fan speed also means lower audibility.

This even caught the attention of Lawrence Yang from Valve, who said on Twitter “You guys are nuts @linusgsebastian 🤣.”

With that heatsink sticking out of the back I wonder if it will affect the ergonomics of the device. My fingers would probably hit it with my large hands.

At any rate, if you’re irritated with the fan noise, I guess you could do something like this. Seems like it’s a lot of work though.

Cover image credit: Linus Tech Tips