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Blog Cooling the Dragonboard 410c
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Engagement
  • Author Author: Former Member
  • Date Created: 1 Feb 2016 7:49 PM Date Created
  • Views 325 views
  • Likes 3 likes
  • Comments 3 comments
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Cooling the Dragonboard 410c

Former Member
Former Member
1 Feb 2016

A bottom mounted cooling solution is best for the Dragonboard 410c due to layout and top-side interference shield with air gap. This will work for all current and future Dragonboards that follow the same 96boards CE spec. Here's a summarization of what you need to do:

 

Required Items

 

  • A drill with a 3/32″ drill bit (or a drill press)
  • 4x 4-40 PHILLIPS MACHINE SCREWS - These are self-tapping screws
  • 4x 4MM M3 SPACERS
  • 1x THERMAL PAD
  • 1x ALUMINUM HEATSINK 2.0" WIDTH. Order 4" in length and specify 3.3" actual size (I went with 3.5" to allow my self room for errors since I didn't have a drill press at the time).

 

Drilling

 

Place your Dragonboard on top of the heatsink, mark the locations of the 4 mounting holes, drill all four holes 3/32″ diameter. If you have a drill press, use that. Use WD-40 or cutting oil.

 

Tapping (threading)

 

First a note about taping holes in any metal. You cannot just drive the tap into the hole, it will break and you won’t be able to get it out. The tapping operation ALWAYS is done in stages:

 

  1. Drive forward about 2/3 of a turn,
  2. Then back about ½ turn, then forward 2/3.
  3. Repeat until you have done about 2 full turns then
  4. Back the tap all the way out,
  5. Then back in to where you left off.
  6. Repeat the above steps until you have finished tapping the hole.
  7. Always tap holes by hand and do not apply too much force to the tap.

 

Heatsink Installation

 

Place the thermal pad onto the 410c over the gold square on the bottom, place the 4 standoffs onto the heatsink over each tapped hole, place the 410c over the standoffs, and install the four screws. Since the standoffs are 4mm tall, and the thermal pad is 5mm tall it will get crushed 1mm and make good thermal contact.

 

References

 

  • https://www.96boards.org/forums/topic/recommended-heatsinkfan-for-410c/

 

Results

 

Before installation, the following would stutter or drop frames after only 10 minutes of running:

 

ePSXe: Playstation Emulator - Tekken 3

Mega 64: Nintendo 64 Emulator - Super Mario 64

reicast: Dreamcast Emulator - Soul Calibur

reicast: Dreamcast Emulator - Sonic Adventure 2

reicast: Dreamcast Emulator - Marvel vs Capcom 2

Plex: - 1080p stream LAN

Kodi: - 1080p stream stream internet

 

I ran Trepn Profiler immediately after each session and noticed a drop to 800MHz on all 4 cores and actually teetering between 800MHz and 500Mhz if I'm seeing it right (.8/.5). Very hot to the touch.

 

I then started on drilling my heatsink with the recommended 3/32 bit and WD-40. Hammered guide holes first using a hole bit tip. My actual drill bit broke on the last hole luckily right after it drilled all the way through. I did this without a press so some holes were at a slight angle but didn't affect the end result. I put my drill in driver mode and manually drove the screws in since they were self-tapping. The thermal pad made good contact and slightly squishes between the board and heatsink.

 

I then ran the same tests listed above for 10 to 15 minutes each and noticed that the board and heatsink only gets slightly warm on a load this time around so it's doing a great of job of wicking heat away. After each test I immediately ran Trepn profiler and it showed all 4 cores happily humming along at 1.2GHz, teetering between 1.21 and 1.0GHz. The extra 400MHz is immediately noticeable as all tests displayed no signs of stuttering or slow down.

 

 

 

Anonymous
  • Former Member
    Former Member over 6 years ago in reply to Former Member

    Didn't have to build Kodi. It's Android so you just download Kodi 16.0 Jarvis from Google Play store.

     

    Bluetooth controllers just work. For PS3 and PS4 just google or youtube for PS3 or PS4 controller on Android.

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  • Former Member
    Former Member over 6 years ago

    hi there

     

    referring to your post here Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: DragonBoard 410c Kit Powered By AWS

     

    have you got a post on how to build your kodi version? I am familliar with kodi on my PC but I want to try it on my dragonboard, and have particular interest in setting up control pads as well. So a guide or how-to would be great. many thanks.

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  • clem57
    clem57 over 6 years ago

    Sometimes we forget ambient temp could be problematic also.

    Clem

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