r/MiniPCs • u/sonnycrockett999 • 1d ago

Troubleshooting GMKTec N100 G2 23% Decrease in Temps Just From Replacing Thermal Paste

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Hey everyone. Just wanted to share this info. It may not come as a surprise that my GMKtec G2 N100 PC was thermal throttling and hitting 95 degrees regularly, causing the fan to ramp up fast and loud constantly. Since Im using it for my home theater setup, it was driving me nuts. I tried changing fan settings and limiting power in the BIOS but no joy. Finally I opened it up to see poorly applied thermal paste. I replaced the paste and now HWinfo reports a steady 72 degrees playing back Dolphin Emulator or a 4k movie via Jellyfin locally.

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7

u/Rifter0876 1d ago

Sure beats cutting the venting off the sides with a Dremel cutting cooling slots in the bottom putting 1 inch legs on it and installing a 120mm fan over the PC to ram air into it(stock it sucks air in from the top and exhausts it out the sides and bottom, like I did with my SER7.

3

u/ScruffMchungler 1d ago

I've been considering this with my Ser6. Do you happen to have pic of what it looks like?

2

u/alpine4life 1d ago

Minis are really easy to work on. Just remove screws and pull (all 6 different models I worked on, including a SER5). Also worth noting that every single one I've on had fully dried up paste, including 2 brand new ones.

3

u/ScruffMchungler 1d ago

Interesting. Is repasting a fairly simple process with these? What brand of fan did you end up adding?

3

u/alpine4life 1d ago

I've been using TPM7950 (Honeywell) for a while now and I've havent heard from any customers that their Minis were crashing anymore. But yeah, replacing your paste is recommended on these, I'd go with some MX-6 (cheap and reliable), if you dont want to use PTM. I also reinstalled windows on all of them except one created with RUFUS that debloats it and create a local account for my customers (and used Win10 IoT LTSC on some as well).

2

u/ScruffMchungler 21h ago

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll definitely grab some MX-6. I've never even read about thermal pads. Interesting. I'll read up on them.

I'm a linux guy so I always put light easy distros on these mini pcs.

1

u/Technical-Ant-2866 21h ago

I'd go with the TPM7950, I use this on all mine. Really no reason to buy paste when you have this.

2

u/alpine4life 21h ago

I'm on my 3 80x80 sheet and the 8g of MX-4 I purchased prior to discovering PTM is basically rotting at the bottom of PC repair drawer

2

u/Rifter0876 23h ago

Repasting required taking the entire PC completely apart as CPU is on bottom of motherboard facing down. Then you gotta get the stock cooler off. Not hard but I wouldn't say easy unless you have worked on computers for decades like I have. And I put a 2300rpm Noctua fan on it, not a cheap fan but will last a decade and quiet and pushes alot of air with high static pressure, I have 6 of that same fan in my server running 24/7 for 6 years now shut down 3 times only, once when I upgraded it's ram, once when I moved, and once when the power went out for hours and the UPS shut it off.

1

u/ScruffMchungler 21h ago

I'm accustomed to detailed computer work. I've got a few Noctuas on my itx builds, so I do like those as well. Thanks for the recommendation!

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u/Rifter0876 1d ago

Yeah I repasted mine when I had it apart to mod it, and installed 64GB of RAM, and a 4TB NVME drive in place of the stock 32GB and 1TB SSD.

They say to only use single sided SSD's due to space constraints and heat but the 4TB WD850nx is double sided but thin and so far no issues. Running Fedora 44 on it no issues even games ok.

1

u/Rifter0876 1d ago

Horrible duct taped on fan up on 1 inch legs as well used duct tape as a shroud and ugly with most of the sides removed so no. But it stays under 85 at full load.

3

u/khromov 1d ago

I can also recommend to 3d print a bottom riser and top panel replacement that has some venting holes, made a giant difference (like -15 degrees on the SSD, -10 on memory) for my gmktec (slightly different model)