So far, the only things that made global pollution reduce are economic crises

People keep saying that, but my experience with low end devices says the opposite. The less ram things take, the better. Programs will gladly fill the “unused ram”, but won’t give back as easily, and when we need to open something else, the oom killer isn’t fast enough, and the system freezes with the disk led flashing like crazy, so we have to restart the system and lose recent activity. Unused ram is wasted ram my ass. It’s easy to say that when you have the ram to spare, but without a bit of free unclaimed space, the system goes to shit very often

Ah, those python codes with requirements.txt containing libraries in versions that aren’t available anymore, and the code won’t run with the newer ones…

1.7 cm

I tried that one, but the grinding was enormous. Is the game like that, or did I do something wrong?

Thanks. I just don’t get this part:

Also make sure there’s something making contact between the SSD and the motherboard.

What do you mean?

Here’s the inside:

There’s a lot of options for heatsinking including large aluminum heatsinks you can buy with thermal tape that can attach to the outside of cases.

That sounds interesting. What kind of heatsink is that? Mind showing me some images?

Generally you want to avoid those kinds of passive cooling PC cases. Even the well built ones suffer heat issues for various components. They’re really meant for low end projects like running a display in a mall that shows a map and does basic tasks on a mini OS. Not for running a PC you’re regularly reading/writing files from.

Yes, that was my mistake and had to learn the bad way… but well, I got to stick with it for a while…

One last thing. Unless that’s a reversed fan (unlikely) you really want it blowing air on the case not trying to pull air away as you have it. It’s much more efficient that way in most cases. There’s not enough clearance for it to be a very effective puller fan. So in my opinion try reversing the direction you have that fan mounted.

I’m so used to using fans to pull air, that I didn’t think about that. Gonna give it a try too, thanks!

Thank you four your help and for your humor. The case doesn’t have any labels of model numbers on the outside, so I don’t know the exact model. I got it from aliexpress a few years ago, but I deleted my account recently, so I can’t search my history. However, that fmc-bm20 indeed looks very similar. The holes in the back are at the same positions

I even tried improvising a fan into the back, where those holes apparently suited for 2.5’’ drives are, but they’re exactly where the support holds the case on the table

Thanks. I will probably follow that direction, as others also suggested

About the rest of the case, it’s not overheating anymore, but other internal components are also suffering, like the wifi module, but those aren’t critical, so I’m not caring too much for now

Yes, the whole case used to get hot. I didn’t try disabling cpu boost, but I reduced cpu frequency with thermald. In order to prevent overheating, it got terribly slow, and during summer (room temperature goes above 40ºC here), it wasn’t enough to prevent overheating, so I ended up adding a fan to the case. It’s ugly, but keeps it cool

But the problem now is that only the cpu used the case as a heatsink, and the internal airflow is terrible, so the ssd is overheating. I was wondering if there’s some way to throttle ssds in a similar way we do with cpus

I added the hardware details and a photo to the post.

Hmm transferring heat to the case isn’t a bad idea. The case would get really hot before, but after adding that indecent fan, now it’s cool

I added the hardware details to the post. It’s an unbranded case and a sandisk m.2 2280 ssd

Thanks, I will give it a try. By the way, an external storage isn’t a bad idea. How could I not think about it before?

That would definitely solve my problem lol

Thank you. I added some hardware details to the original post.

My doubt with the heatsink is if it will be enough for a large difference, since the internal airflow is very poor, but it’s probably worth a try nonetheless. Thanks

With the shitty distros some of our oems ship the devices with, they’re more likely to reduce linux adoption than anything else.

Would a dissipator be able to reduce that peak of around 90ºC to something below the limit of 70 (from the manufacturer’s site)?

About the hdd, this machine is a mini pc that only has 1 nvme slot and no sata connectors. It was a terrible idea to buy it in the first place, but I’m stuck with it for now…

They remind me of a coffee machine

I have a device with 2gb of ram with mx linux, and it works fine. Here’s a few tips for any distro when using such configuration:

1 - if possible, enable multilib and run 32-bit versions from your heavier software, like the browser (the entire system as 32 bit helps a lot, but most distros seem do be dropping it)
2 - use zram
3 - in the browser, look for some form of tab suspender addon
4 - try alternative lightweight software for your stuff (for example, abiword instead of libreoffice)
5 - block ads in your network, to prevent the device to even process them
6 - don’t use the browser to wathc videos. Look for native players. In fact, avoid doing anything in the browser and look for native software when possible

I find it quite fun to use a constrained device like that, and it helped me change a few habits I considered to be bad for me, as well as it helped me focus more on my important stuff