I’m running the BPI-R3 in the metal case and notice that the case was extremely hot. I started collecting thermal_zone0 (which has the typecpu-thermal) temps and at idle the average is around 75ºC.
I don’t have a heat sink on the board. I purchased from SinoVoip’s Aliexpress store and don’t see the heatsink pictured in the wiki or that was sent out with review units.I’m not sure that heat sink would be effective with the metal case anyway, which has no ventilation.
Is 75ºC a reasonable temperature for the BPI-R3 or is there something else that might be going on with my unit?
A quick followup: removing the lid of the case dropped the temp around 15º.
60º still seems pretty high for an idle temp, however. I have an idling AMD box in the same closet that’s idling around 27º, so I don’t think ambient temps are a problem.
I purchase the kit from Sinovoip store at Aliexpress. They included 4 heatsinks with adesive to put in SoC, switch, and both wifi chips.
Running lmsensors ( sensors command ) shows
Bpi-r3 is a very new board and we have the very basic support for it merged for 6.3,thermal and pwm not yet completely,cpufreq is maybe next,but all takes time and is some work which has to be done including testing. So please do not expect all is working out of the box.
Yep, BPI-R3 is pretty hot with stock case and radiators. 56-57 ˚C on average without much load. 65-67 ˚C under some load. And I don’t see too much sense in installing fan, because stock case hasn’t any ventilation holes. It is sad, because I like this case. I’m looking for better “cooler” case and normal radiator with quiet fan.
I similarly considered a single large heatsink given the mounting holes but the chips covered aren’t entirely the same height, particularly the switch chip MT7531. Did you use some thick heat pads perhaps?
That’s interesting. I purchased the kit with the board, case, antennas, and power supply but didn’t get any heat sinks in the package. If just adding the heat sinks drops the temps that low, that’s probably the way to go.
The case is pretty bare bones. It would have been nice to have the LEDs exposed and maybe a punch out for the USB header.
It seems like others have started some models for a 3D printed case, so that might be the way to go in the future. I also might try my hand at replacing the top with acrylic with ventilation.
I think I’m going to get a block heatsink and cut it to size. If I get ambitious I’ll tap some holes to mount it.
There are the kits with and without the heatsincs.
The temps are without the top of the enclosure. I believe that some holes in the upper and bottom frame to allow some convection plus a low noise fan.
