A mini fan in a WiFi 6 travel router?

Technical Support for Routers
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Hi there,

We’re working on a WiFi 6 travel router currently, but it’s difficult to solve the heat dissipation problem. We want to know what your opinions are about adding a mini fan inside the future GL.iNet wifi 6 travel router. :thinking: Please leave a comment below. :sparkles:

Update:
We just kickstarted our wifi 6 travel router project. Positively speaking, we will be able to deliver it to you before next summer. I created a poll to gather your opinions easily: Opinions needed for our wifi 6 travel router! 🤔 Please vote! We will be able to build a better OpenWrt router with your support!

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It really depends on how much noise that fan makes.

I’m not instantly against things with fans, but I think it will be pretty difficult in this specific case. Travel routers are generally small, which means it will be a small fan. Small fans often make high RPM to move the required amount of air. High RPM and moving much air with a small fan means to solution will be pretty noisy. Travel routers might be used in hotel rooms, which means it will be located close to someone trying to sleep.

I believe a good first sanity check for a travel router with such a cooling solution would be, would you be willing to sleep next to it having it on your nightstand?

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I’m think WiFi 6 in travel router not needed and fan too) But if without fan he is very hot, need good fan low noise (Noctua?)))) or clocking down cpu if it’s possible.

I’m think fan in all of the routers it is bad idea

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Thank you for asking for user input.

I hate fans in my travel stuff! They are noisy and being mechanical they are usually the first thing to break. Please look at using magnesium or aluminum heat sinks or as the case material, and use the case as a heat sink. My gigabit home router uses an Intel i3 CPU with passive cooling and works great. My travel laptop is passive cooled and I’m never going back to having fans in systems I travel with.

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I think you should use the case as a heatsink, for a travel router it it the way to go,

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IPQ60xx based solution?

I’ve seen first hand the 8devices Mango Dev Board, and they do run warm - passively cooled with a fairly large aluminum plate…

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The Mango Dev board size 38,3 by 61,7 mm. When adding a base board, it is even bigger. Also when you add enclosure, it will be more hot.

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I’m think need just upgrade Mango to 32 mb NOR and 256 gb ram and new mediatek dual core CPU MT7621A ))) looks like mini Beryl ) Or just upgrade NOR, 16 mb is too small at this time ) And with Type-C )

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Copper is a better conductor than aluminum but aluminum fires heat faster, so I have looked for mixed dissipators.

I have found this for interesting reference:

https://www.fischerelektronik.de/en/latest-news/press-releases/releases/new-heatsinks-made-from-aluminium-combined-with-copper/

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I would prefer a fanless router but larger or heavier or with less performance.

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A wifi 6 travel router is possibly not that interesting in itself. Much less if it has a fan.

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Completely agree with you @groentjuh. The comments by others indicating a preference of heatsink over fan are motivated by fears of sound (and maybe reliability of the fan motor).

But so long as we list the requirement as “silent cooling” I think we (mostly) cover this concern?

Wifi 6 has some good benefits over Wifi 4 and 5, which make it a great idea to include in future travel routers.

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The recent ax routers all include fans, don think you as a small(er) designer can out-engineer the big boys, just add the fan because running reliable is most important.

Personally, I don’t mind that speed is limited to 200mbps in order to run on passive cooling.

Personally again, 2.4g should only run on 20mhz, maybe even for 5g, should be up to 40mhz only, especially for a travel router

You want 800mbps or 1gbps, get a proper home router

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Heat sink case all the way, but if you must design the fan encased as a snap-on to case externally and thermal sensors to step down cpu and fan error detection.

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