Official box and my experience with it

[Francisco (Francisco garcia villalba)]

I’ll tell you about my experience with the official box and the overheating is incredible.

I bought the set5 which came with its fan, it was the most suitable for the ventilation that was sold,

I was delighted thinking that it would provide sufficient ventilation.

Then I acquired the be14000 module

I start working first with a 12cm USB fan since I always work like this to keep everything cool and so that nothing gets hot, especially with the BE14000 board.

Once I am familiar with Banana and OpenWRT, I start to assemble the box … be careful I put a heatsink on the sfp+45 that did not come with it to prevent overheating.

The first thing I see is that with any official image from the wiki the fan does not work, better not to talk about the official images which are a real joke.

Then I try unofficial images, at the moment wifi7 does not work, but at least openwrt users can be happy with the work of several colleagues with their images that are fluid and we have 6g, thank you for your work, and it turns out that the fan works perfectly with these images. So I started to mount the official box.

I finish closing the official box

I turn it on and it turns out that after 5 minutes it is already hot, after 20 minutes it starts to get too hot, but after an hour it seems like a toaster.

I have to turn it off, and start disassembling it since they have not left any cooling under the box, in order to put some fan in.

This is how I have it currently working

For now, until my brother can make me vents on the bottom and the top cover, it will stay like this.

I think it is regrettable that they have not taken into account that it is a toaster, once you close the box.

I was just giving you my experience with the official box, and that is even though I have removed the nvme, to save more heating.

[Mathieulh]

The case literally acts as a heatsink, it’s supposed to get hot, that’s the whole point.

I have been running the BPI R4 on the latest “official” image provided by Banana Pi along with the BE14000 in the official case for over a week now and this far it hasn’t died on me.

[meehien]

You can use the top cover upsidedown for quick access ;-).

[Francisco (Francisco garcia villalba)]

Well, I’m glad it didn’t fail, but the heat is brutal and with the money it cost, it wouldn’t have cost them much to make some vents at the bottom and at the top, to put a simple fan and keep everything cool. The be14000 for the money it’s worth, all that’s missing is for some component to burn.

I still think they’ve clearly failed at this point, and I’d rather not burn my money, and even more so when this is to be used 24/7/365 days.

I assure you that I’m not going to keep it closed until I have some vents that we’ll make very carefully so as not to break the box,

I don’t know what temperature the box is at, hopefully with some command we’ll overcome it.

If you put a fan underneath it for a simple TV box so that it lasts a long time or so that the routers also lower the heat, I put it like I have my routers and they are cool so you can’t even tell they are working.

This is a Xiaomi AX10G router, it is cool so it doesn’t seem like it is plugged in, and for the money it is worth, it is better to have it cool.

This other one is a Xiaomi AX6 with OpenWRT, you can’t even tell that it’s connected 24/7/365.

I’m just saying that with the money that the banana pir4 cost us, with its box and fans, and also putting more heatsinks on the sfp+rj45, don’t you think that some simple vents on the bottom and top would have helped us.

I can assure you that since it’s a toaster for me, I won’t put it in until I have the vents done, I think it’s crazy with how hot it is to have it 24/7/365

[Francisco (Francisco garcia villalba)]

I am currently working with him on the antennas

[Lorem_amicus (Michael Fischer)]

Can you say something about the power consumption?

[Francisco (Francisco garcia villalba)]

I’m sorry but I haven’t taken what the power consumption is.

[totkeks (Norman Dankert)]

What’s the thing that you put on the SFP cages?

[SpectreDev]

Its a heatsink you can get off AliExpress

[frank-w]

I guess similar to mine

[BPI-R4] heat problems with sfp+

I guess you use copper 10G module? [PXL_20240720_173851865.MP] Maybe something like this? And having active cooling on soc and the other chips… I do not have the case from bpi so i do not know if there is a way to add some cooling on the wifi card…

[totkeks (Norman Dankert)]

I know the forum isn’t good at showing what I replied too, seeing that you and @SpectreDev both answered the same in regard to the original post. But I was replying to the post that had this image https://forum.banana-pi.org/uploads/default/original/2X/e/e18c24373fce518db72c0791116425147913e79d.jpeg in it.

[frank-w]

Ah,sorry…looks like an external rtc due to the cell battery

[SpectreDev]

Ah, I think that’s the RTC battery

[meehien]

Yes, that is a battery “case” for the RTC clock which is already part of the board. Got this from amazon in a 10x package where about 60% worked…

The one I got is this https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09WVL8XNB, but I want to belive that there are better options.

[Francisco (Francisco garcia villalba)]

Now I can rest easy, the box is cool.

[Mathieulh]

This is especially dumb, you are literally drilling thermal mass out of the case, the case is a heatsink, the less materials it has, the less efficiently it’ll cool the board. Drilling the bottom part is even worse as this part comes into direct contact of the BE14000 ICs thermal pads.

[SpectreDev]

This is some really bad work, should’ve just replace the top with a mesh at most

[Francisco (Francisco garcia villalba)]

Good morning @Mathieulh, thanks for the notice, we will cover the bottom where the be14.000 is located to protect it and prevent direct air from hitting it.

Also, on the top part, vents have been made so that the air can escape, as long as it looks aesthetically I don’t care, what I didn’t want was to burn any component of the board or the be14000 module, my box really burned.

I don’t know if this will be enough, but at least it won’t be the toaster I had before, it burned the box.

[Francisco (Francisco garcia villalba)]

Good afternoon @Mathieulh, I have finally put this covering the air that entered the be14000 module, it covers it exactly, I hope it is enough, for the rest it remains as follows.

Thanks for the information

[SpectreDev]

whats the point of putting the holes and then covering it with tape