1.3GHz

[stuartiannaylor]

I was playing HydroThunder while scraping games in RetroArch and listening to music last night and everything was running fine, but the CPU climbed to 106... I wouldn't recommend an overclock. If anything, maybe an underclock to be safe lol

Just out of interest did you have a heatsink or any active cooling or just bare?

currently just bare and in a case... but the lid is off the case. Considering a small heatsink and maybe a case fan. I'll decide once I get my usb hub tomorrow

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Really should be an addition in the Pine shop and maybe a mention its better for the Rock to be more modest and not have him run naked.

... was a deliberate marketing choice.  They did not want to generate the impression that there is a "thermal problem" with the RK3328;  deliberately running the board conservatively not only improves its stability, but allows the board to be run even under modest loads without active or passive cooling add-ons.

I always add passive cooling to my SoC(s) and most of them have pwm driven (2N2222) active cooling via 5v brushless fans;  my Rock64 has the fan mounted underneath the case enclosure ( can evacuate the case about 135 times per minute and that with a good heatsink and 3M thermal tapes ).

Probably not the best marketing choice as without a heatsink you could say it has a thermal problem.
Its a cracking chip with some ooomf and dunno way they thought the additional need of a $2 heatsink would give the impression of a 'thermal problem', but hey.

I went a bit crazy just to give me a little project and check out the header and I2C.
Got one of these https://www.aliexpress.com/item/16-Chann...30158.html as its the same as the adafruit ones and there is a python library and examples.
Driving a mosfet https://www.aliexpress.com/item/5PCS-TOP...85649.html but inverting the input so it will run at full and slow as the PWM is mark/space increased.
They are cheap and often I always do something dumb with breadboards.
I would like to see what are the maxes you can get whilst remaining stable and when it arrives and gets build I will publish some details.

The Rock64 is going to become a few little servers and its interesting as often I have used virtualization to share expensive hardware and looking at the specs I can do this replacing containers with singular boards and just hook up at the network level.
Hence the cooling circuit and even got a £16 LiPo UPS / Battery backup and its going to be extremely server like and the exercise is just to push it as far as it will go.

Some might go the conservative option and some might try for higher performance, how stable that will be is to be seen and have to burn in over time.
I might try for that 1.5Ghz elusive figure of an overclock but hey if I kill the Rock its my own fault