Cooling the A2000 in my MS-01
Table of Contents
The problem
A few weeks ago, I completed my homelab downsize, and it’s been absolutely amazing. Virtually perfect, except for one problem. In my Minisforum MS-01, the A2000 with its custom N3rdware cooler reaches temperatures that are way too high for comfort.
Sometimes the card idles around 70°C, climbing easily to 96°C during gaming or LLM workloads, and takes forever to cool back down. Adjusting the fan curve, downclocking the card, and setting temperature limits didn’t help much - temperatures were still uncomfortably high.
Additional cooling
As a simple fix, I repurposed a few Noctua 40mm fans I had lying around from my old server and network switch. Since these are no longer in use, I decided to reuse these fans to cool the A2000.
As a quick test, I used masking tape to mount the fans inside the GPU chamber of the MS-01 and connected them using a USB-A to 12V PWM adapter.
After plugging it in and letting the fans run, I instantly noticed a huge difference. The card now idles in the low/mid 40°C range, never exceeds 85°C under heavy sustained loads, and cools down much faster once heavier workloads finish.
This was enough for me to call this project done for now! I’d like to move away from masking tape as a mounting option, but don’t have many ideas right now. There’s nothing more permanent than a temporary solution!
Regardless, this was a quick, simple, and effective fix, and I also think it looks pretty cool. :)