why is the UM790 a disaster
?
I was looking into getting a minisforum pc at some point, so I would love to hear some thoughts
It's easier you to open reddit and search UM790
A lot, who bought UM790 Pro is struggling random BSOD-s, freeze - Fortunately there is huge mini-PC community and bright heads, who now have solve this BSOD thing by disabling C6.
For me, UM790 case fan started making noise. What I liked about DeskMini - it was silent, because the only fan was Noctua and I was so spoiled by that silence!
So I wasn't going to wait any longer and decided to make some improvement and:
1. Threw away heatsink, default fan, RAM heatsink and installed Noctua fan.
^^
Unfortunately UM790 fan header is something really tiny one, cant find it anywhere so I had an IT technician make one adapter.
First I chose Noctua NF-A9x-14 PWM 92x92x14 mm fan. I was damn surprised that the fan worked only at full speed. So there is no PWM on UM790 - You cant control fan rpm - No BIOS option, no program support. So I decided to bring rpm down with Noctua Low Noise Adapter (LNA) - Tried different ones, but stuck with NA-RC9: 100 Ω - After adding this - silence!
Unfortunately this Noctua fan worked strangely. Fans rotated, then stopped, rotated-stopped. Used the same Noctua on DeskMini.
So I decided to try another one: Noctua NF-A9x-14 HS-PWM chromax.black - BOOM everything worked correctly - As far as I know - this was worlds first UM790 with Noctua fan installed. I was really happy. I'm not a technical person, but the silence drived me
Noctua width was little bit thick so the backplate didnt close, even if I modded backplate itself. There were about 0.5mm gap between the PC and backplate and the screws did'nt go in...Tried to find those screws. Also asked Minisforum about the size:
So I improvised and bought these small adapters and had to grind them to size and round:
Now I got the original bolts connected to the adapters and the extension was ready:
Yes, there is gap, but it doesnt really bother me:
because the UM790 sits behind my monitor with VESA:
I also tried Akasa AK-FN076 Slimline PWM 80mm. It's width is enough to close the backplate, but for me it was a little bit louder and fan made some tic-tick - returned it and went back to the roots - Noctua
I ordered Noctua NF A4x10 PWM (40x40x10 mm) to try, how it works and then going to decide, which one to use. If I'm going back with the bigger Noctua then I guess we need custom 3D printed backplate for UM790
- In conclusion, I got what I wanted - silence in daily tasks, what wasn't an option before. Yes, under load the CPU blower comes to live and it makes sound, but I understand it.
After fan upgrade, I started working with BSOD-s. First of all there was about 1x day, then regularly 2-3x times + random freeze. So decided to disable C6 and task schedule it so I dont have to do it manually every time. After that - flawless...
So yeah, there are problems, but for me those 2 faults was big ones. Now I can use PC like I wanted to, but still - DeskMini is in my heart and going to replace the UM790 to DeskMini X600.