How to replace the fan of the OUYA to make it quieter

While watching movies on the OUYA, the device becomes pretty hot and the build-in fan is making much noise whilst cooling the device. That’s probably no problem, when the surrounding sound-level is high enough, but it is definitely annoying, when you are watching a movie.

So in post i will show you how to replace the stock fan against a more silent one. This is my 10tht post on this blog – a jubilee – AND: the first one, that is about an actual mod for the OUYA. Hurray 😉

Exchanging the fan of the OUYA is not a very complicated exercise. You should look for a 40x40x10 mm fan with a mini-2 pin plug (2mm). That’s the exact size of the actual fan. Unfortunately this type of fan-plug combination is not very popular, but I found a working model for you – the Scythe 40x40x10mm Fan 2 pin with 3 pin adapter.

I didn’t make a fancy Youtube-video, but I made some photographs of the exchange process. Sorry, the camera of my mobile isn’t the best 🙁

First of all you will need a  screwdriver with a hexagon cap. The first step is to unscrew the four screws on top of the OUYA.

 

You can now take out the PCB from the Case. Gently pull the fan-plug from the “mainboard” and uncrew the screws of the fan. Because i didn’t want to wait for shipping from amazon, i got a NB – SilentFan from a local store (which by the way is really silent 9dB – beat that). The problem is, that most of offered fans are such with 3 pins. Also the connector is bigger, as they are sold for PC-cases.

If you get one like i did, you will have to cut the wires and solder another connector. You can take that one from the original fan, but i recommend you to buy the  Scythe fan, it’s much easier and you can keep the original fan as a spare part.

If you want to follow my path however, the next step is to solder the right wires together. Black is ground, red is the 12v supply voltage and the white wire is for the rotation speed regulation, but we don’t need it, as the OUYA doesn’t provide this.

You see the different connectors in this picture. The connector of the new fan is too big and won't fit

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