Changing Lucky Miner LV06 Fan
My Lucky Miner LV06 runs at around 56° C at settings of 550MHz/1.2V. The tiny 4cm fan in there is also pretty noisy, so I decided to get a 5cm fan to replace it. A 5cm fan running at the same RPM as the built in fan should be able to push 50-60% more air.
I bought the following fan from AliExpress. Take note that it should be 5V and 3pinFG version. I also picked the hydraulic bearing version as it lasts longer and stays quieter. Important update, see the note at the end of this article.
Just so that we have a baseline to compare to, this is the temperature and fan speed of the built-in fan.
Next, we open up the Lucky Miner’s case. There are 3 screws holding the built-in fan to the heatsink. They are accessible between the fins of the fan. Unscrew them and disconnect the cable from the PCB.
Here, just for testing, I plugged in the replacement 5cm fan and ran it without the case on. The temperature was 11° C lower! Awesome!
Now we can proceed to mod the case. I used a cutter to just cut the plastic grill off, followed by drilling 4 holes for the fan screws.
As you can see in the first photo below, the hole is just a bit too small for the fan. We don’t want the airflow to get disrupted. I used a marker pen to mark the area that needs to be filed down. I used a Dremel to make a quick job of this. Now we can go ahead and attach the fan to the top of the case.
Lastly, connect the cables for the fan and display, and snap the cover back in place. That’s it! We’re done.
With the case back on, the temperature is around 50° C.
It’s not bad, but not as good as with the cover off. I guess there are insufficient ventilation holes to exhaust the hot air, so I decided to also cut off the round grill on one end, and cut a bigger hole with a Dremel and also also removed the display altogether, as the display connector is blocking the airflow too. Removing the display does not affect the function of the miner, no worries!
With all of that done. I was able to get the temperature down to about 48° C. This fan runs way quieter than the built-in fan.
Now that it runs much cooler, I pushed the frequency up to 575MHz and it only increases the temperature to about 49° C. It’s a simple mod, and I highly recommend it.
Important Update
The fan that I used in this mod didn't last very long. It started to get a bit noisy after just a week and there was a little oil leak. My mistake for using a cheap fan. Anyway, I decided to get a Sunon Maglev KDE0505PFV2 instead. It's also a 5cm fan that runs at 5V 0.8W. The only thing to note is that the power pins are reversed in the connector and I had to switch it before connecting it to the LV06. Here is the LV06 with the Sunon. Note that this fan is a bit noisier than the crappy fan I used earlier.
