Does exist a stable, old, low temperature version of Armbian for OPi1

[psygnosis]

Hi,
I have 2 OPi1 that I want to use for some test projects.

One project consist just on PiHole, the other one on Tailscale.

Since with newer kernel I have high temperature on idle (like 70°C) can you advice me an old version that maybe has a "better" thermal management?
Thank you so much, if I'm saying something stupid please tell me, maybe I just need to tune something like disable hdmi, gpu etc...

[Stephen Graf]

@psygnosis Which version of Armbian and os are you running? Yesterday I loaded  current noble on a test system and I just noticed that it is running hot (45) even with a significant heat sink.  Another operational system that is running current bookworm runs much cooler (32). If you are running noble, could I ask you to try bookworm to see if there is a difference.

 

I will load up my test system with bookworm to check also.

[Stephen Graf]

It looks like my test system just runs a little hotter, probably because it is in a case. I took the SD card out of the test (hot) system and put it in the operational system and the operational system still ran cool.  So it is not the os. Changing to noble from bookworm made no difference in the running temperature.

[Stephen Graf]

On 7/14/2025 at 12:07 PM, psygnosis said:

can you advice me an old version that maybe has a "better" thermal management

 

@psygnosis

Can you run "armbianmonitor -m" (as root) to see what the processor speed and system load is when you are experiencing the high temperature.

 

I found an old distro and loaded it on my test system and the temperature did not change:

 

Welcome to Armbian 22.11.1 Bullseye with Linux 5.15.80-sunxi

System load:   10%              Up time:       5 min
Memory usage:  14% of 491M      IP:            192.168.1.69
CPU temp:      49°C             Usage of /:    1% of 109G
 

sysadmin@orangepione:~$ sudo armbianmonitor -m

Stop monitoring using [ctrl]-[c]
Time        CPU    load %cpu %sys %usr %nice %io %irq   CPU  C.St.

16:09:02:  816MHz  0.18  15%   3%   7%   0%   3%   0% 49.9 °C  0/4
16:09:07:  816MHz  0.16   1%   1%   0%   0%   0%   0% 45.6 °C  0/4
16:09:12:  648MHz  0.15   1%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0% 46.0 °C  0/4
16:09:17:  648MHz  0.14   1%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0% 45.6 °C  0/4
16:09:22:  648MHz  0.12   1%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0% 45.6 °C  0/4
16:09:27:  816MHz  0.11   1%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0% 45.8 °C  0/4
 

[psygnosis]

Sorry for the late reply.
I had some spare time and I've installed bookworm 25.5.1 

 

Time        CPU    load %cpu %sys %usr %nice %io %irq   Tcpu  C.St.

20:38:51  1296 MHz  0.41   7%   0%   2%   0%   3%   0%  58.1 °C  0/7
20:38:56   480 MHz  0.38   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%  54.4 °C  0/7
20:39:01   480 MHz  0.35   1%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%  59.8 °C  0/7
20:39:06   480 MHz  0.32   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%  54.8 °C  0/7
20:39:11   480 MHz  0.29   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%  56.4 °C  0/7
20:39:16   480 MHz  0.27   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%  55.5 °C  0/7
20:39:21   480 MHz  0.25   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%  57.6 °C  0/7
20:39:27   480 MHz  0.23   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%  56.2 °C  0/7
20:39:32   480 MHz  0.21   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%  54.2 °C  0/7
20:39:37   480 MHz  0.19   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%  56.1 °C  0/7
20:39:42   480 MHz  0.18   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%  54.1 °C  0/7
20:39:47   480 MHz  0.16   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%  58.0 °C  0/7
20:39:52   480 MHz  0.15   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%  57.0 °C  0/7^C

Actually you had some difference in temp between bookworm and bullseye

Edited Friday at 06:41 PM by psygnosis

[laibsch]

I would not expect an older release to run cooler.

[Werner]

8 hours ago, laibsch said:

I would not expect an older release to run cooler.

I would. Happened in the past but no clue which hw. Probably also something aw related.

[laibsch]

OK

 

That would be called regression and should be analysed for a fix moving forward.  Specifically looking for an older release as a "solution" still seems misguided and should only be done to bisect not as a kind of permanent solution.

[Stephen Graf]

@psygnosis Do you have any heat sink or other cooling on your orangepione? Is your environment hot?

 

At idle (480MHz) your machine is running quite hot, over 55 deg. The idle cpu speed is the minimum that the os can manage and so the os it doing the best it can.

[laibsch]

I am not entirely sure if those sensors are always accurate.  In the case of my BPi M2+, I have some serious doubts.