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CM4 integration and thermal consideration

AlfiereInnovation

hello group,

I am designing a carrier board to integrate a CM4 into my project. Due to the thermal needs of RPI chips, in particular on the CM4 board, I am thinking about adding a thermal pad between the CM4 and my carrier, creating a sort of sandwich configuration. this pad will touch on one side the CM4, and on the other side my carrier board, in a region that I will populate with exposed ground with vias to connect to the other side of the carrier.

basically, I would like to use the PCB as heat sink, and add a sheet metal heat sink on the back part to the carrier to help the thermal performances. 

the layered structure will be something like:

--------- CM4

--------- THERMAL PAD

--------- CARRIER BOARD TOP COPPER LAYER

--------- CARRIER BOARD BOTTOM COPPER LAYER

--------- THERMAL PAD

--------- SHEET METAL HEAT SINK (plenty of space on this side)

what is your experience with such a solution? 

do you have any consideration to share?

thank you,

Luca

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  • in reply to dougw

    thank you for the quick feedback. I wonder also if the CM4 board can achieve a sufficient dissipation and heating transfer if only from the back. based on the location of the connectors, I can only touch the back of the board actually. until now, I used the RPI zero form factor, which allowed RPI upside down and thus to have the top layer facing the thermal pad. I wonder if you have any direct experience on that. thank you for your feedback!