Commentary
Don't be a 'fan' of media player fans
Many people think of fans as essential components for cooling heat-generating electronics devices such as digital signage media players. Fans are loud and make devices bigger than they need to be, but they're a necessary evil, right? Wrong!
November 2, 2017 by Jeff Hastings — CEO, BrightSign
Many people think of fans as essential components for cooling heat-generating electronics devices such as digital signage media players. Fans are loud and make devices bigger than they need to be, but they're a necessary evil, right? Wrong! As far as media players are concerned, they are actually completely unnecessary and a telltale sign of inefficient design.
I am a firm believer that fans should be avoided at all costs. First of all, a fan is a moving part, therefore a potential point of failure. When a fan does fail, you probably won't know until the entire device overheats and fails.
Second, the fan itself requires power, which generates additional heat. Lastly, fans are not an essential part of electronics if the device is designed properly. They add no operative value – they'e simply a cooling system. That's why many digital signage vendors avoid putting fans in their players.
Specifically in digital signage, there are simple ways to avoid the need for a fan. Start by designing products that produce less heat in the first place. Product designers should be sure not to use bigger processors than necessary. Although it's counterintuitive, using a lightning-fast general-purpose processor may slow the system, rather than speed it up. Using appropriately specified processors with efficient, dedicated software can enable all the functionality required. A purpose-built, commercial-grade OS (rather than a consumer-grade OS, like Android or Windows, which is multipurpose and clumsy) can drive low-powered efficiency. Use fast, solid-state storage that can be returned to a low-power idle mode quickly. There are many strategic ways to produce less heat and creative methods to dissipate heat that do not require a flimsy, breakable fan.
If you are considering a player or SoC that needs a fan to cool it, be sure to also consider the potentially much higher TCO as a result of the fan breaking and the system overheating. That's simply not a risk you shouldn't be comfortable with taking.
Image via Istock.com.
About Jeff Hastings
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BrightSign
BrightSign is the global market leader in digital signage media players, offering the most reliable, secure and sophisticated solid-state media players on the market today.
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