Heat-sink as add-on?

[janjwerner]

@TL
Do you have any suggestions about feeding 5V through Euler extension pins? I would expect that it should be able to handle more than 1.9A?

[longsleep]

Trip cooling points with my current U-Boot builds are as follows: 65, 80, 90, 95 °C
2 cores are disabled when cooling state 5 is reached and ultimatively 3 cores are disabled in cooling state 6. The cooling tables are optimized to avoid loosing CPU cores on high load.

A heat sink is absolutely required to use all 4 cores with high frequency.

See https://github.com/longsleep/build-pine6...09bea2c251 for the commit and https://github.com/longsleep/build-pine64-image/pull/3 for the discussion and a lot of background information about benchmarking and thermal throttling.

TL;DR: get a heat sink when you want to use Linux and have the Pine do anything which utilizes multiple cores to avoid thermal throttling in normal environments.

[janjwerner]

Trip cooling points with my current U-Boot builds are as follows: 65, 80, 90, 95 °C
2 cores are disabled when cooling state 5 is reached and ultimatively 3 cores are disabled in cooling state 6. The cooling tables are optimized to avoid loosing CPU cores on high load.

A heat sink is absolutely required to use all 4 cores with high frequency.

See https://github.com/longsleep/build-pine6...09bea2c251 for the commit and https://github.com/longsleep/build-pine64-image/pull/3 for the discussion and a lot of background information about benchmarking and thermal throttling.

TL;DR: get a heat sink when you want to use Linux and have the Pine do anything which utilizes multiple cores to avoid thermal throttling in normal environments.

@longsleep I assume all those changes are rolled into your latest image?
ps cross-posting results from phoronix test suite
http://openbenchmarking.org/result/16030...603058GA54

[longsleep]

@janjwerner simpleimage yes, i will release a new Xenial image as well later today.

[janjwerner]

@longsleep
I'll just overwrite first 50mb & dos partition

[tllim]

@TL
Do you have any suggestions about feeding 5V through Euler extension pins? I would expect that it should be able to handle more than 1.9A?

Just plug in, Euler bus connector can handle more than 1.9A. Please watch out the polarity, reverse may fry the board.

---

Trip cooling points with my current U-Boot builds are as follows: 65, 80, 90, 95 °C
2 cores are disabled when cooling state 5 is reached and ultimatively 3 cores are disabled in cooling state 6. The cooling tables are optimized to avoid loosing CPU cores on high load.

A heat sink is absolutely required to use all 4 cores with high frequency.

See https://github.com/longsleep/build-pine6...09bea2c251 for the commit and https://github.com/longsleep/build-pine64-image/pull/3 for the discussion and a lot of background information about benchmarking and thermal throttling.

TL;DR: get a heat sink when you want to use Linux and have the Pine do anything which utilizes multiple cores to avoid thermal throttling in normal environments.

@longsleep, thanks on the heads up. I am currently working with one heatsink vendor and design a low profile but effective heathink for the situation where the board been pushed into performance situation like all 4 cores in full swing.

[longsleep]

@tllim: It would be nice if you would add some docs or wiki or even a small shield plug to power the Pine64 via euler bus - so it is easy for everyone to get rid of the micro USB limitations. The board is very easy to crash with poor quality USB cables and power supplies when going from 480MHz to full speed on all 4 cores instantly by starting 4 threads of NEON test code (eg cpuburn-a53) because of undervoltage / too much resistance in the USB cable. This cannot be solved with a heat sink and is the reason the Pine cannot use the full A64 potential.

A large heat sink would be nice but i am concerned how it can be fixed to the board as there are no monting holes. Also a thermal pad will be needed as RAM and CPU are not on the same level.

[tllim]

@tllim: It would be nice if you would add some docs or wiki or even a small shield plug to power the Pine64 via euler bus - so it is easy for everyone to get rid of the micro USB limitations. The board is very easy to crash with poor quality USB cables and power supplies when going from 480MHz to full speed on all 4 cores instantly by starting 4 threads of NEON test code (eg cpuburn-a53) because of undervoltage / too much resistance in the USB cable. This cannot be solved with a heat sink and is the reason the Pine cannot use the full A64 potential.

A large heat sink would be nice but i am concerned how it can be fixed to the board as there are no monting holes. Also a thermal pad will be needed as RAM and CPU are not on the same level.

@longsleep, will do. On the heat sink subject, there are three adhesive thermally conductive pads on top of SoC, and 2 SDRAM surface.

[Andrew2]

@tllim: It would be nice if you would add some docs or wiki or even a small shield plug to power the Pine64 via euler bus - so it is easy for everyone to get rid of the micro USB limitations.

Absolutely second that. BTW: How is correct polarity on the Euler pins to feed DC-IN here?

@tllim: Please think about a modular approach for the Euler connector. If you develop such a shield plug for the Euler connector, please think about preparing a good fan solution also (taking the 5V also directly from DC-IN so the PMIC doesn't have to handle that). Based on my tests (interrupted since fan and heatsink touched yesterday and the fan is damaged now) mounting a fan 10mm above the heatsink and blowing the air away from it showed the best results.

If you make such an Euler shield with a 5.5/2.1 mm barrel plug to be used also with an optional fan please also do consider preparing a vibration free mounting possibility, choose a fan that's silent (diameter as large as possible) and one that can be adjusted through PWM (the necessary 'cooler state' information that can be used to adjust the speed is already available through sysfs now). Combining this with another enclosure variant that would make a nice 'power user' bundle.

(might then look a bit like your Veroboard but with a 60mm hole for the fan, a barrel plug for DC-IN and both connectors for 3-pin and 4-pin fans. And it would be really cool if you not just provide a silent 60mm fan but also search for a laptop fan with same dimensions exhausting the air sidewards so mounting a Veroboard on top would be possible)

[tllim]

@tllim: It would be nice if you would add some docs or wiki or even a small shield plug to power the Pine64 via euler bus - so it is easy for everyone to get rid of the micro USB limitations.

Absolutely second that. BTW: How is correct polarity on the Euler pins to feed DC-IN here?

@tllim: Please think about a modular approach for the Euler connector. If you develop such a shield plug for the Euler connector, please think about preparing a good fan solution also (taking the 5V also directly from DC-IN so the PMIC doesn't have to handle that). Based on my tests (interrupted since fan and heatsink touched yesterday and the fan is damaged now) mounting a fan 10mm above the heatsink and blowing the air away from it showed the best results.

If you make such an Euler shield with a 5.5/2.1 mm barrel plug to be used also with an optional fan please also do consider preparing a vibration free mounting possibility, choose a fan that's silent (diameter as large as possible) and one that can be adjusted through PWM (the necessary 'cooler state' information that can be used to adjust the speed is already available through sysfs now). Combining this with another enclosure variant that would make a nice 'power user' bundle.

(might then look a bit like your Veroboard but with a 60mm hole for the fan, a barrel plug for DC-IN and both connectors for 3-pin and 4-pin fans. And it would be really cool if you not just provide a silent 60mm fan but also search for a laptop fan with same dimensions exhausting the air sidewards so mounting a Veroboard on top would be possible)

We have no plan to make a heatsink with fan support.