Raspberry Pi 3 Cooling / Heat Sink Ideas

RE: Raspberry Pi 3 Cooling / Heat Sink Ideas

redhotiron2004 — Sun, 19 Nov 2017 16:48:05 GMT

FCH25255T - AMEC THERMASOL - Heat Sink, 5 mm, 25 mm, 25 mm | element14 India

Would this heat sink be compatible with raspberry pi 3 without obstructing other things. I am interested in this as it have a lower profile with fins also tge w/c is less then 10.

RE: Raspberry Pi 3 Cooling / Heat Sink Ideas

tinderbox(uk) — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 08:32:01 GMT

I wish they would not pre-apply the heat pad, for those who would like to use other mounting methods, also you cannot check the bottom of the heatsink for a good surface, I have sanded down a few heatsinks to a mirror finish when i use to make desktops.

I will most likely just use the thermal pad included with the heatsink, i am not going to overclock and i am going to add a fan.

EDIT: I was looking at the Arctic Thermal Adhesive, both the Silver and Ceramic version, And their website says it not recommended for use between cpu and heatsink. ???

EDIT2: I received my ceramic finned heatsink (above) and used the included thermal tape, in the clear plastic case (above) with no fan, my cpu reached 71c after only 30min of playing an 1080p 10bit video that was giving an cpu usage of between 70-100% so if you are using an enclosed case you will defiantly need a fan if you want to avoid cpu speed throttling when it hits 80c

John

RE: Raspberry Pi 3 Cooling / Heat Sink Ideas

tinderbox(uk) — Wed, 12 Oct 2016 17:01:59 GMT

How did you mount the ceramic heatsink, did you use the included thermal tape, I would love to use thermal paste (i have some arctic alumina ceramic paste) for the superior thermal conductivity but how to hold the heatsink in place is the problem.

I wish a manufacture would make a case that comes with a spring mounted heatsink so we can use thermal paste, instead of these low quality thermal pads, I use to make desktop computers and the heatsinks use to always come with a packet of white thermal grease, but nobody who knew better would use it, they would use AS5 or other good thermal paste.

John.

RE: Raspberry Pi 3 Cooling / Heat Sink Ideas

tinderbox(uk) — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 17:13:07 GMT

I just ordered an Raspberry Pi 3 Model B yesterday, and i should get it on monday.

I watched an youtube video of a guy checking the Pi 3 SOC for throttling, he said it happens at around 80c and it does not take a lot to get to 80c, even with a heasink in a sealed case with no airflow the heatsink make very little difference, he recommends an heatsink and a fan, or an heatsink and an open case.

I was looking for a ceramic heatsink and found a UK seller that sells all the heatsink mentioned in post 1, but he also has these ceramic heasinks with fins to improve the cooling effect

The heatsink below is 25mmx25mmx5mm and is the smallest one the ebay seller does and was only £2.89 delivered

I wonder what the weight this heatsink is as it`s 5mm high (i will weigh it when i receive it), compared to the 22mmx22mmx2.5mm heatsink (no weight given) from post 1 the more ceramic material should equal great heat dissipation?

I ordered a case that can take a fan as it has the mounting holes, 2 of the 3 heasinks supplied can be used.

John.

RE: Raspberry Pi 3 Cooling / Heat Sink Ideas

Former Member — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 10:11:49 GMT

ceramic heat sink- ok. actually a smart choice

fan- ok

but there are some major mistakes- fan on top of the heat sink is useless in this arrangement- the fan has to blow the air somewhere and to suck it from somewhere. putting it on top as in the photo blocks the airflow. possible solution would be to enter intermediate plate with cut off sections to allow airflow.

simple solution would be to get turbine type fan from/for GPU and probably also the heat sink with keeping the ceramic plate as intermediate.

the ceramic heat sink doubles the surface (may be even x4) but this is not big gain. aluminium heat sinks multiply the surface x10 and more

best solution (in my opinion) would be to get a heat pipe and then there will be enough space to add extreme cooling without blocking the Pi ports.

as I tested yesterday my Pi with YouTube and it overheated badly (once BSOD with dump and once did not get to the dump phase (Win IoT)) I will get some cooling also. the bad thing is that all the 3 chips get hot. the good- without cooling internet browsing and not very intensive tasks are ok.

If you will 3D print case- then it is best first to consider passive aluminium heat sink and orientate the blades to be along the airflow. If I have enough time I will try aluminium heat sink with "chimney". 3 chimneys means that the Pi will have to be straight and not flat in the box, but then the chimneys can be longer. (probably the USBs will be facing up)

p.s. I plan to use my Pi headless and not sure if I will use many IO pins.

RE: Raspberry Pi 3 Cooling / Heat Sink Ideas

rsc — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 15:54:29 GMT

I've run my Pi 3 all weekend with just a little 1-inch 5v laptop motherboard fan on top and it wasn't even warm.

I'll put a thermistor on it this weekend and take a few measurements.

Scott

RE: Raspberry Pi 3 Cooling / Heat Sink Ideas

clem57 — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 02:23:13 GMT

I was browsing and saw this: http://makezine.com/2016/03/02/raspberry-pi-3-not-halt-catch-fire/ . It should be noted that under voltage protection can slow processing down to 600Mhz well before heat does. With so many folks running poor or less than optimal power, heat is the least of the concerns.

Clem

RE: Raspberry Pi 3 Cooling / Heat Sink Ideas

rive — Thu, 14 Apr 2016 18:27:20 GMT

For those who want to see some Stress & Cpuburn-a53 test results:

[View:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bso6ucTuH8:440:330]

Ambient is 20C, Cpuburn-a53 @ 62C (1.3 GHz)

Rasberry Pi 3 Model B/ Pi 3 official case:

RE: Raspberry Pi 3 Cooling / Heat Sink Ideas

rive — Wed, 13 Apr 2016 21:11:52 GMT

Overclocked "Hot Rod Pi3 Extreme" (element14 Pi3 from MCM Electronics)

The heatsink pictured below is custom machined for me by a friend, is made of anodized aluminum, and the outside dimensions are L.87" x W.96" x H.70". the centered 'socket' on the bottom is L.66" x W.66" and .010" deep. The cooling fan is 12v (on GPIO 5V 4/6 pins) 70mm x 70mm x 10mm, and sells pretty much everywhere for around $4. The case is the "official" pi3 case, which runs $8. (fan itself is removable, and is held in place with velcro)

Ambient 20C: Cpuburn-a53 runs @ 64C, Stress runs @ 43C, Idle @ 27C

dtparam=sd_overclock=100
arm_freq=1300
core_freq=500
over_voltage=4
sdram_freq=575
sdram_schmoo=0x02000020
over_voltage_sdram_p=6
over_voltage_sdram_i=4
over_voltage_sdram_c=4
v3d_freq=500
h264_freq=333
gpu_mem=256

"Hot Rod" Extreme Pi3

Under the hood:

Ambient 20C (Cpuburn-a53 Results: 62C):

RE: Raspberry Pi 3 Cooling / Heat Sink Ideas

Former Member — Thu, 07 Apr 2016 22:56:30 GMT

This discussion was an eye-opener. I am getting a Pine A64+ with 2 GB of DDR3 RAM. I have been forewarned!

RE: Raspberry Pi 3 Cooling / Heat Sink Ideas

shabaz — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 17:23:28 GMT

There is a 1-page article on the heat topic in magpi:

[View:/resized-image/__size/620x822/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-8bc7b3ba-711b-498c-933f-6fec8d46da7e/7128.contentimage_5F00_182027.png:620:822]

So it looks like the fix they have implemented is more aggressive throttling through software changes. The wording is interesting in places.. it is "not a problem" yet it needed a software change, and "..it will never likely happen". With all the vague wording and caveats, I interpret the entire text to say "please get a heat sink, not only but especially if you're running it in an enclosure, and have some passive cooling (e.g. ventilation slots in the enclosure) or active cooling (fan) unless you want speed to be throttled down during some workloads".

It should be noted that the 'ModMyPi' heat sinks that they link to in the article have quite poor figure of 25 degrees C/W thermal resistance, whereas the ceramic ones have a better 10 degrees C/W figure.

RE: Raspberry Pi 3 Cooling / Heat Sink Ideas

bwelsby — Mon, 14 Mar 2016 10:21:47 GMT

Some interesting comments here https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/issues/1337 including extending the cpu throttling down to 300MHz and also getting temperatures of >100'C using a more aggressive cpuburn-a53 I may give that a test run with heatsink and fan.

RE: Raspberry Pi 3 Cooling / Heat Sink Ideas

bwelsby — Sun, 13 Mar 2016 10:59:48 GMT

I have just added the "with HAT" test results here Raspberry Pi 3 temperature and cooling testing Part 2 with a HAT tests. With a low level (5mm above RPi PCB) dummy HAT the increase in running temperature was approximately 10'C. The Fan and Heatsink combo still kept the temp well below 80'C and the heatsink alone still provided a significant delay in reaching this.

Brian

RE: Raspberry Pi 3 Cooling / Heat Sink Ideas

bwelsby — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 10:33:18 GMT

I have added the following word of caution to my blog:

A word of caution for the inexperienced

The heatsinks we have been discussing are held in place by a thermally conductive adhesive pad. In essence they are glued to the processor chip.

I would recommend that you DO NOT attempt to remove them as any twisting,pulling or prising is likely to damage the chip or its many extremely tiny soldered connection to the PCB

The Raspberry Pi may be an inexpensive single board computer but it could easily become a very expensive piece of scrap.

I tend to forget there may be young (and old) inexperienced readers here and I would hate to see someone destroy their lovely Pi

RE: Raspberry Pi 3 Cooling / Heat Sink Ideas

rsc — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 14:24:07 GMT

Here is a pic of my PI2 heatsink:

[View:/resized-image/__size/620x424/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-8bc7b3ba-711b-498c-933f-6fec8d46da7e/1731.contentimage_5F00_182025.jpg:620:424]

and this is a pic of the fan I added to BBB:

[View:/resized-image/__size/620x415/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-8bc7b3ba-711b-498c-933f-6fec8d46da7e/8686.contentimage_5F00_182026.jpg:620:415]