Igor_K Posted March 24, 2018 Share Posted March 24, 2018 @tkaiser my Nanopi Neo boards use 2mm thermal pad. It just works. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkaiser Posted March 24, 2018 Share Posted March 24, 2018 23 minutes ago, Igor_K said: my Nanopi Neo boards use 2mm thermal pad. It just works. I know: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/1580-nanopi-neo-air/?do=findComment&comment=14045 But the situation is different. On the NanoPi the thermal pad will be used on the PCB side where the SoC is so it mostly transfers heat directly from SoC to their large heatsink. I'm talking about boards where the SoC is on the wrong side (upper) and such a 2mm thermal pad can only be used to try to transfer the heat away from the whole PCB. So the effect is quite different especially with load peaks. Talking about NanoPi. Their heatsink is somewhat efficient (especially without an enclosure!) but an aluminium enclosure design using just a thin thermal pad or even thermal paste to connect the SoC to the enclosure will work way more efficient dissipating heat away from the SoC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor_K Posted March 24, 2018 Share Posted March 24, 2018 @tkaiser It is a fair point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyMac32 Posted March 24, 2018 Author Share Posted March 24, 2018 4 hours ago, tkaiser said: but an aluminium enclosure design using just a thin thermal pad or even thermal paste to connect the SoC to the enclosure will work way more efficient dissipating heat away from the SoC. Because I like sometimes to do the ridiculous thing simply because I can, I have a NanoPi air thermal epoxied to a Pentium 3 north bridge heat sink. It never gets warm. ;-). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkaiser Posted March 25, 2018 Share Posted March 25, 2018 Since we already trashed the whole thread with all this thermal babbling... Pi 3 B+ without heatspreader: https://youtu.be/4LtL9e7JqxE?t=3m10s 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyMac32 Posted March 25, 2018 Author Share Posted March 25, 2018 32 minutes ago, tkaiser said: Since we already trashed the whole thread with all this thermal babbling... Pi 3 B+ without heatspreader: https://youtu.be/4LtL9e7JqxE?t=3m10s Firstly, why on earth pull the heat spreader off? Secondly, Yeah, I agree we wrecked the thread, but cases only serve the functions of "protect sensitive parts" "facilitate operation" and "look good" The last one is preference, the other two important. For me I like the solid aluminum ones with the SoC contact best, but they are impossible to find for every board, so talking thermal is a good place to go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyMac32 Posted March 28, 2018 Author Share Posted March 28, 2018 On 3/22/2018 at 12:45 PM, chwe said: Did someone ever test such stuff for cooling? (http://www.versarien-technologies.co.uk) I bought a couple for testing, could be useful 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyMac32 Posted March 30, 2018 Author Share Posted March 30, 2018 Now, also a terrible idea for thermal, but possibly fun for the kids (and so able to be downclocked): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01E10IXRQ The brick studs work quite well, and the board fit is perfect. As it turns out the other colors are all cheaper than black, which I think is... odd. This will go nicely with the lego-studded motors I got a while back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guidol Posted March 30, 2018 Share Posted March 30, 2018 35 minutes ago, TonyMac32 said: The brick studs work quite well, and the board fit is perfect. As it turns out the other colors are all cheaper than black, which I think is... odd. 2 years ago I ordered a blue, red and yellow of these LEGO-cases along with (at this time) 3 new RPi3. But if you want to change the board its hard to realese it out of the case and some part can break. For underclocked RPis (and children) its a nice case. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moklev Posted March 30, 2018 Share Posted March 30, 2018 On 25/3/2018 at 8:28 PM, TonyMac32 said: Firstly, why on earth pull the heat spreader off? To replace it with a higher efficiency one, without "toothpaste". See the latest intel cpus (without welding). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tido Posted March 30, 2018 Share Posted March 30, 2018 On 28.3.2018 at 10:10 PM, TonyMac32 said: a couple for testing hmm, these thingies have no fins - how does convection work here or does it need contact/touch the housing? I read on their website: Often passive cooling is not enough to ensure the temperature of components stay within operating limits. http://www.versarien-technologies.co.uk/passive-heat-sinks This sounds to me, for short peaks or little load = fine ; for more continous heat not. So I stay with fins. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyMac32 Posted March 30, 2018 Author Share Posted March 30, 2018 hmm, these thingies have no fins - how does convection work here or does it need contact/touch the housing? I read on their website: Often passive cooling is not enough to ensure the temperature of components stay within operating limits. http://www.versarien-technologies.co.uk/passive-heat-sinks This sounds to me, for short peaks or little load = fine ; for more continous heat not. So I stay with fins.It's an open-cell metal foam, so it has increased surface area. That said, I'm looking at how well it works, not necessarily whether it's perfect for this application. For something like the s905x, I'm betting this is good enough for a "normal" operation. For an RK3288 or RK3399, not a chance.Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor_K Posted April 23, 2018 Share Posted April 23, 2018 I've just tested my new case. Here is my preliminary review. TLDR: It is not good. 1) It does not fit perfectly, there is air between microchips and a case. I hope a thin thermal pad (0.5~1.0 mm) can help here. (As you can see in a photo there are almost no marks from a thermal paste on a chip) 2) Surfaces are not perfectly flat, they need be processed by a file tool or something. 3) Screws are thin and do not look reliable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor_K Posted April 23, 2018 Share Posted April 23, 2018 I'm surprised but it seems like it works. The temperature drops 4-5 degrees Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chwe Posted April 23, 2018 Share Posted April 23, 2018 26 minutes ago, Igor_K said: I'm surprised but it seems like it works. The temperature drops 4-5 degrees Idle, under high load? Absolut values might be interesting too... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guidol Posted April 23, 2018 Share Posted April 23, 2018 43 minutes ago, Igor_K said: I'm surprised but it seems like it works. The temperature drops 4-5 degrees with the thermal pad? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor_K Posted April 23, 2018 Share Posted April 23, 2018 3 hours ago, guidol said: with the thermal pad? No. I have got no pads yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor_K Posted April 23, 2018 Share Posted April 23, 2018 (edited) 4 hours ago, chwe said: Idle, under high load? Absolut values might be interesting too... It is a media player on OpenELEC so yes it is idle almost all the time. Some details are below. It was about 64 °C now it is about 59 °C. Edited April 23, 2018 by Igor_K add the temperature 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyMac32 Posted April 24, 2018 Author Share Posted April 24, 2018 This looks like the same one I have (and sent 3 others to friend/family), mine seemed to fit a bit better than that, the case gets warm to the touch and the SoC stays cool. I think the thin thermal pad should do the job. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisf Posted April 24, 2018 Share Posted April 24, 2018 In theory a sealed aluminium case should work better than a sealed plastic case, offering better thermal conduction between the inside air and outside air. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor_K Posted April 24, 2018 Share Posted April 24, 2018 5 hours ago, TonyMac32 said: This looks like the same one I have (and sent 3 others to friend/family), mine seemed to fit a bit better than that, the case gets warm to the touch and the SoC stays cool. I think the thin thermal pad should do the job. I hope so. Will see. For the record, here is the previous setup (the old case was open all the time). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyMac32 Posted June 6, 2018 Author Share Posted June 6, 2018 On 3/22/2018 at 12:45 PM, chwe said: Did someone ever test such stuff for cooling? (http://www.versarien-technologies.co.uk) Had a little time to test this today, as expected, it's junk. Being copper it moves heat quickly, having no real fins or the like it simply has nowhere to move it to. It can handle "smoothing out" the heavy thermal loads, but it simply can't move enough heat. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor_K Posted June 22, 2018 Share Posted June 22, 2018 Just a small update. With thermal pads temperature dropped for 5 degrees. Finally, the case is not bad at all. The temperature was 69°C now it is about 53°C. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyMac32 Posted June 22, 2018 Author Share Posted June 22, 2018 Cool. I had similar results with mine, but I used thermal paste, must have had a closer to "nominal" casting. The entire aluminum brick gets warm when running, which is a good sign (well, not so much for the RPi efficiency, but nice for the fact it's moving heat) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor_K Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 @TonyMac32 Yes same here the case gets warm. It can be a good option for outdoor, it should be easy to make it water-resistant simply with a duct tape. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyMac32 Posted July 14, 2018 Author Share Posted July 14, 2018 @guidol has a good looking case mentioned in the NanoPi K1+ thread: 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guidol Posted July 14, 2018 Share Posted July 14, 2018 19 minutes ago, TonyMac32 said: @guidol has a good looking case mentioned in the NanoPi K1+ thread but for the K1 Plus it will block the IR-Port and I dont know if the WiFi is useable inside the Aluminium-case. The K1 Plus seem to run very cool (also without the case) because I got around 29 degree Celsius ambient temperature and I couldnt feel any heat in idle-mode, but armbianmonitor -m doesnt show the temperatur in this dev-image ( I knew its experimental/testing): Linux npi-k1-plus 4.18.0-rc4-sunxi64 #214 SMP Fri Jul 13 00:03:19 UTC 2018 aarch64 GNU/Linux root@npi-k1-plus(192.168.6.70):~# armbianmonitor -m Stop monitoring using [ctrl]-[c] Time CPU n/a load %cpu %sys %usr %nice %io %irq 23:41:17: --- 0.00 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 23:41:22: --- 0.00 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 23:41:27: --- 0.00 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 23:41:32: --- 0.08 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyMac32 Posted July 14, 2018 Author Share Posted July 14, 2018 56 minutes ago, guidol said: but for the K1 Plus it will block the IR-Port and I dont know if the WiFi is useable inside the Aluminium-case. The aluminum brick on my RPi 3 doesn't block wifi completely, but I haven't tested how much it reduces the capabilities. As far as the IR-port goes, I'm afraid that's universal, for any of those you will probably have to get out a drill. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkaiser Posted July 17, 2018 Share Posted July 17, 2018 Another one: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=6288 What can be seen at the enclosure top is a L shaped rail to be combined with thermal pads to dissipate heat away from SoC (and DRAM most probably too?) to the enclosure top cover. I think on this prototype the height of the rail is not sufficient but hey... it's a prototype most probably to check position of this rail thing (if you check the post carefully you see that it's designed for more than one board ) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyMac32 Posted July 17, 2018 Author Share Posted July 17, 2018 Ah, nice, one that plugs up that 4the USB hole. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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