Improving thermals on your SBC

[NicoD]

Hi all.
I've just finished a new video where I polish the heatsink of my Rock Pi X with sandpaper. This because there's a rather thick powdercoating on the heatsink in the spot where it makes contact with the SoC.
This caused a lot of thermal resistance. The SoC would get hot and overheat, while the heatsink didn't warm up. And the top of the board was the hottest spot.
Here my video.

On the NanoPi M4 and M4V2 there was a thermal pad included. This also was pretty bad.
I raplaced those with a copper shim and some thermal paste and improved the thermals by about 10C.

If you like to use your board passively cooled it can be important to look for the details to improve things. This method might also be possible on the Rock Pi 4. I don't have it anymore to test.
Greetings.