[BPI-R4 Lite] Passive heat sink on chips prevent insertion of mPCIe cards in CN11 and CN13 connectors?

Banana Pi Router design
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I am considering buying the BPI-R4 Lite router board Please see the picture below from the Banana Pi Doc.

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Looking at the picture, it appears to me to that installing passive heat sinks on the larger chips will prevent insertion of mPCI cards in connectors CN11 and CN13.

As a standard practice I install passive heat sinks on the main chips of SBCs to help heat dissipation.

I would appreciate clarification from those who have this board. I don’t want to order the board from AliExpress only to return it back because the heat sinks will not allow me to install mPCI modem or WiFi card.

Thanks

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Hi, we have a dedicated heatsink for the R4Lite. Its installation will not affect the BPI-BE14 and will be available for sale soon.

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If the height of the components or shielding cover at the bottom of the module is within 1.5mm, or if it is higher than 1.5mm but the distance from the gold fingers is within 10mm, then there is no problem.

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Thanks for the confirmation of heat sink availability.

A follow up question regarding CN11 and CN13 - are these slots are good only for the BPI-BE14 card?

In the BPI-R4 Lite - what are the options to add storage, to share media files over the network? (The BPI-R3 has a NVME slot for storage).

Thanks

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Have you picture where heatsink is mounted? I’ve noticed that there is not much space between be14 and R4lite for a heatsink. But most chips are there which may cause the heat.

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Yes, the BPI-BE14 card can be installed.But other devices can be installed only if the components beneath it do not come into contact with the heat sink.However, this board does not have the M.2 KeyM interface, so it is impossible to install an NVME SSD.

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Thank so much for sharing the picture.

BTW - Where did you order the black heat sink? And why do have the square aluminum heat sink on top of the black one?

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These two types of heat sinks are not yet available for sale. Please be patient and wait for the news. We expect to have them soon.

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The heat sink of R4Lite is already available for sale. You can take a look.

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The black one is for cooling R4Lite, and the white one is for cooling BE14.

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So the black is between R4Lite and BE14?

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Makes sense but I found this mpcie to nvme adapter on amazon.com.

I suppose it should work with loading the Linux **nvme** kernel module. I plan to use the OpenWRT image (currently in the snapshot branch) for this board.

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FWIW - I have enterprise WiFi APs (Ruckus and Aruba) for WiFi and much rather use the slots to add SSD storage for media file server.

Would love to hear your thoughts on it.

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Yes. If you want to follow the design of the heat sink from R4Lite and BE14, then the heat sink should be placed between R4Lite and BE14.

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Is there a 3D printer design for a case for the BPI-R4 Lite? The metal case on AliExpress are upwards of $40 (with S/H and customs)