xeros

Thx. Unloading sun4i_gpadc_iio kernel module:
sudo rmmod sun4i_gpadc_iio reduced in my case CPU usage by kworker processes from ~21% to floating 5-12% (without trace log change).
 
While sun4i_gpadc is still loaded and unloading it doesn't make anything better than this, however got single error about reading thermal in dmesg:
[ 5498.530760] thermal thermal_zone0: failed to read out thermal zone (-110)  
Edit:
And one more thing - on kernel 4.14.15-sunxi I'm not able to set CPU frequency above 960MHz:
$ echo 1008000 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq 1008000 $ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq 960000 $ The board worked fine so far @1008MHz 24h/7 for few years on 3.4.x

I also noticed that a year ago when I switched to mainline on my Banana, IIRC I talked to tkaiser about it and it was a normal side effect. I did not try to change anything about as my banana pi stay mostly idle and only use their CPU when doing compression and that does not happen very often.
 
The max freq is defined in the device tree so you can change it on userland

Right, thanks. I've got two of them today (similar ones, but having different weight) and so far so good - tested them both with few older 2,5" & 3,5" disks around and no problems in few hours of stress tests.
So, now I think I'll buy 4TB WD Red 3,5" disk :-)