Beaglebone Ai Heating Issues

On the subject of cooling there is an ultimate solution, literally, where the entire board is immersed in a non-conductive cooling liquid such as this one from 3M: https://www.3m.co.uk/3M/en_GB/novec-uk/applications/immersion-cooling/

Pump the liquid around the sealed enclosure and through a large external heat exchanger.

Now, where was that reset button? Oh yes, inside the sealed case

Nice! Kind of like a nuclear reactor being cooled : )

I went with some ceramic tiles. Looks a bit like the space shuttle heat shields : )

I'll try powering it up tomorrow. I'm not sure it will be super-effective due to how it was interfaced. It consists of a 60x40x1mm copper sheet, with six 20x20x2.5mm heatsinks20x20x2.5mm heatsinks attached with thermal tape. Then it was attached to the existing heatsink on the BB-AI using more tape. The 60x40 sheet almost does not fit the BB-AI, the plastic standoffs need some dremel'ing with a grinding wheel. I had to do that because I couldn't make the heatsinks smaller, it seemed impossible to cut or sand them, they are really tough. Also, the plastic standoffs needed some trimming in a few places at the junction with the PCB, otherwise they are really close to some components.

A bit sad that I cannot see the guts of the BB-AI any more : (

Good to know, I will try with mine next days. First I will see a real temperature curve while using the board, to have an idea. Then probably adding a small fan is the faster solution I can afford here with the stuff I already have around. Like a CPU fan over the big square cooler. Does it has sense?

It's misuse of those mounting holes : ) I wanted to put a cover with fan glued to it on the underside:

A CPU fan could work well I think! Looking forward to seeing your results! Are CPU fans 5V or 12V? I've wired the fan I'm using (5V) to the connector P9 on the BB-AI, pins 2 and 8 (GND and VDD_5V respectively), I just directly soldered the wires to the underside of the board.

Hi!

No idea yet, but I will try to power up later today, and follow the information people have been posting about how to monitor the CPU temperature.

I hope this low wattage fan won't affect power adaptor supply. Hoping for the best.

As far as I know, CPU cooling fans are working 5 volts.

Thank you I will keep the same scheme.

Enrico

Just noticed there is also a plate behind fan with hole, there might be a problem for air flow. I'm afraid fan might not work at its full efficiency.

These fans are super low power, but don't bet too much on small fans over the desktop board CPU. In that case, they have not serious problems of powering. I am using one of the two macbook pro old model fan that are very low consuming.

I'm using a 40mm fan out of my junk box which runs at 12v....not sure where I salvaged it from. Fairly sure it wasn't a PC though as it is too small for the usual case-cooling fans.

I'm using a 40mm fan out of my junk box which runs at 12v....not sure where I salvaged it from. Fairly sure it wasn't a PC though as it is too small for the usual case-cooling fans.