Heat sink required for Pine64?

[pinea64.edison]

I just wanted to check if it is suggested to use a heat sink/fan for my Pine64. 

I was using my Pine64 for about 2 hours last night to watch some videos in Kodi and after that, just out of curiosity, I touched the A64 chip and it was super hot, I did not measure the temperature but i felt it was hot enough to melt the circuit if i watch videos for a longer duration. 

Specifics:-
Pine 64 - 2GB
OS - Android, 04/28/2016 image flashed using Phoenix card.
Outside temp - 21 degree Celsius
Other - No overclocking

[Beryllium]

Yeah it gets pretty hot, about 80-85c. I found old video card and took off the heat sinks of it and put it on RAM and CPU. I put a fan on it too, but after installing ubuntu my fan doesn't work anymore. :/ not sure what the problem is. but with this setup it lowered 25c.

edit:fan works, had it connected wrong :/

[g_t_j]

May I ask what size are the heatsinks you have installed? Thickness?

If you could post a photo it would be great.

[Beryllium]

---

This one doesn't fit, I tried...

[g_t_j]

Very neat work! Not surprised it lowered the temperature as much.

I got to find heatsinks like this. Thanks for the images.
.

---

Just saw the last image... lol

[Beryllium]

Thanks, you can buy them on ebay, amazon... for few bucks, but you can also find them in junk electronics, old motherboards, graphic cards, dvrs, etc...

I got my fan from some DVR I found. But I think heat sink is doing most of the work.

[Leoncito81]

Most of the higher powered SBCs I've seen have a small heat sink if you're going to be running graphics. :-)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[tkaiser]

Most of the higher powered SBCs I've seen have a small heat sink if you're going to be running graphics. :-)

Thermal behaviour as well as the (non existing) need for heatsinks depending on the use case has been extensively researched on. All information publicly available as well as the tools to measure the stuff internally: http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=389&page=5

[g_t_j]

Thanks, you can buy them on ebay, amazon... for few bucks, but you can also find them in junk electronics, old motherboards, graphic cards, dvrs, etc...

I got my fan from some DVR I found. But I think heat sink is doing most of the work.

i think I got an old graphic card lying somehere in the house. The fan is also ...fancy stuff.

Thanks!

[rahlquist]

Thanks, you can buy them on ebay, amazon... for few bucks, but you can also find them in junk electronics, old motherboards, graphic cards, dvrs, etc...

I got my fan from some DVR I found. But I think heat sink is doing most of the work.

Just keep in mind lots of the cheap heatinks you have on ebay have crap adhesive. I bought some for my Pi, within 3 months the adhesive had let all the heatsinks drift more than 3-6 mm across the surface of the chips they were on. Since heatsinks are metal, falling off the chip onto the pcb while running would likely suck. 

So get good stuff, use permanent thermal epoxy or keep the board horizontal at the very least.