ProDesk Mini PCs Overheating

[slopo]

Hello, I tried contacting HP support, but they don't seem to have a solution for this. I'm running a couple Prodesk mini PCs as security camera viewing stations, so they are on nearly 24/7. The PCs get very hot to the touch and one keeps shutting down probably due to overheating.

The fan in this machine seems under powered. Have you experienced this? I'm looking for some solution to keep these from overheating. Is there a way to manually control the fan speed? Is there a direct fan replacement that's more powerful? Any external cooling options?

[DGroves]

these computers are very small mini ssf (Small Form Factor) based systems, and can easily overheat as the device was not designed for high usage (tasks where the system is at high thermal loads and/or high disk access)

your current "Mini" system is a poor choice in my opinion for the task you wish to use it for as such you may never be fully satisfied with its performance in this role,.... the larger SFF/tower systems in this family are better suited due to their increased size/cooling abilities

with the mini SFF, you can make sure no cooling vents are blocked/next to a wall

you can try placing a fan blowing air across the system (front to back)

you can replace the current cpu with a Low Power AMD cpu model, (if such a cpu exists) but this may drop cpu performance to levels that are unacceptable

you can hack attaching 10/15mm external fans to the back of the case at the expense of noise and a external power brick

a better option might be a used HP 500/600 series thin client system and removing the HP thinclient Os and installing normal windows 10

https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-T610-Plus-Thin-Client-1-65GHz-4GB-SSD-ThinPro-OS-C9Y36UP-ABA-1-Year-Warr...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxC7r6xkrcY

[slopo]

Thanks for the reply. I don't think it's a poor choice at all, but I understand what you're saying. SFF is too big for wall-mounting behind a monitor and I needed a machine that has better performance for video. The Prodesk mini met those requirements. 

[DGroves]

if it's mounted behind the monitor, i've seen many monitors that generate quite a bit of heat, does yours? if so then that heat may be getting radiated to your mini sff

you might want to remove the top cover of the mini sff and see if that allows natural convection air cooling to work

your mini sff is a nice system, but as i said it may not be up to the task you want it to do, how much of a load are you putting on the cpu in normal use?

just what are the video requirements?  are you displaying moving video 24/7?  tasks like that will  generate constant heat