Video freeze caused by overheating?

[wanthalf]

Hello, my video display is constantly freezing (if it lights up at all), sooner or later. I tried both my Pine64 1GB and 2GB versions, different displays from the default Pine LCD 720p module to large screen 4k LCD TV. Within a few minutes the screen turns white (or black) and nothing else helps. I did not even manage to start playing any video, just showing the desktop. When trying the 4k video resolution, I noticed it freezes rather sooner and the chip is getting really very hot. I attached a not-so-tiny heatsink to the chip, and the device managed to run at 1080p up to (maybe) some 10 minutes until even the heatsink got burning hot and the picture froze again.

I think I tried all the versions of Android available, from 5.1 to 7.1 (but mostly the 7.1). I am not sure whether I tried some standard Linux distribution with a display as well, at the moment. But without the display, all my Pine64s run continually without problems (and I have one running really 24/7 as a small single-USB-disk NAS, without any problems).

Am I the only one having these problems?

[dkryder]

my guess is you are not the only one. heck, i know you are not the only one. i've read many reports of the same activity over past 2 years. the thing is , the pine64 just is not a good media server. you could try adding a fan above the heatsink to further the cooling. as you have found out the chip chokes when hot, and when the chip/heatsink reaches the same heat level, the combo chokes.

[wanthalf]

But there is no such problem with Armbian. I cannot play fluently a FullHD H264 video in Armbian, but at least it can display the desktop without overheating. I do not think anyone would develop Android if it couldn't run a static desktop for more than a dozen seconds.

[wanthalf]

OK. It seems the whole problem was probably just a bad/dying MicroSD card. :-( Sorry for any inconvenience.

[hmuller]

OK. It seems the whole problem was probably just a bad/dying MicroSD card. :-( Sorry for any inconvenience.

That is commonly a problem with embedded SBCs. (bad uSD cards)  But I am curious about the overheating, did changing the micro SD CARD alleviate the overheating? Or just the video freezing?

There are a number of ways to extend the life of an SD card too, Google is your friend but here is a great start:

https://haydenjames.io/increase-performa...-sd-cards/