Active or Passive Cooling for P2?

[EssoAir]

Passive. Definitely passive.


Maybe with a hatch you can open to clip in a fan if you want to overclock enough for ARM to generate heat...

omg yes plz. I want a fan and that is probably the only way I would get one. I like this idea

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

Passive for me.  When it gets hot, I will cool it down like this to push the SoC to its limit.

Spoiler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIBYUZWV79c&hd=1

 

[Grench]

If we want to be really creative we could put a low pressure steam release valve and a 4oz water block on it...

Active cooling. Just add liquid. When the liquid runs out, better find more.

The whole unit best be waterproof then... naw - not worth it.

 

[Binky]

Added fifth poll option: No cooling system

 

[Mr_Loon]

...

...but the last thing I want is to have someone ask me: "Dude, is that your wallet making that whining noise or are you just happy to see me?" :lol: .

Then you want passive cooling, i.e. heatsink only (no fan)

Added fifth poll option: No cooling system

 WTF?

Some kind of cooling system will be required if a current Gen SOC is used.

Feel free to suggest an extra question, but please don't use your mod powers to add, what seems to me, to be a fairly ridiculous option.

Please don't think I'm overly offended / upset by this, but I do think Mods should maintain a light touch where possible.

 

[Binky]

Some kind of cooling system will be required if a current Gen SOC is used.

It would be possible to massively throttle a  state-of-the-art processor whenever it gets too hot.

I can't see "no cooling" as any more ridiculous than "large heatsink and fan".

 

[Askarus]

I can't see "no cooling" as any more ridiculous than "large heatsink and fan".

You're wrong.

Next Pandora will have 10000 mAh battery.

Also it'll be 10cm thick.

It'll contain 4 SD card slots, 4 speakers and 6 Shoulder buttons.

Don't forget the DVI and HDMI connector.



(Sorry, I had to)

 

[bzar]

Confirmed, Askarus is working on the device.

See, he's even apologizing to ED for leaking the specs!

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

I can't see "no cooling" as any more ridiculous than "large heatsink and fan".

You're wrong.

Next Pandora will have 10000 mAh battery.

Also it'll be 10cm thick.

It'll contain 4 SD card slots, 4 speakers and 6 Shoulder buttons.

Don't forget the DVI and HDMI connector.



(Sorry, I had to)

Awesome!  This is something the US military has been secretly working on  

 

[Askarus]

Don't forget that there will be 2 independent systems.

First one is for you and you can use it as you wish.

Second one is for NSA with GPS and Wifi always on to track where you are and what you do (for your own security).

 

[Mr_Loon]

@ Binky : I'm not sure you get it. You are a moderator, not an editor. Can you understand the difference without it having to be explained more clearly? As mentioned, please feel free to suggest modifications for polls / posts but please don't take it upon yourself to change polls / posts unless they breach forum rules.

Back on topic, from a personal perspective it's good to see that the vast majority of respondents do not want a fan. I've always found fans in electronic devices a little annoying from a noise perspective and very annoying from the perspective that they almost invariably lead to a device being clogged up with dust & general crud.

It would be good to hear from anyone with a bit of hardware knowledge if a 'no cooling system' option would be an intelligent choice for a device using a powerful modern SOC.

 

[Askarus]

Well I'd like to have a cooling heatsink inside that's as big as possible, even if we'd have to make one on our own.

 

[doragasu]

Passive/none. I'm fine with both of them. I prefer losing some raw power rather than having a stupid fan making noise, drawing power, increasing machine size, collecting dust and breaking after some months of heavy usage.

 

[Binky]

@ Binky : I'm not sure you get it. You are a moderator, not an editor. Can you understand the difference without it having to be explained more clearly? As mentioned, please feel free to suggest modifications for polls / posts but please don't take it upon yourself to change polls / posts unless they breach forum rules.

I appreciate that you don't want anyone messing with your polls - and I shan't do it again (to anyone) without due reason.

I don't agree that the absence of a cooling system is a completely ridiculous idea, though.

They are different issues, and should be kept separate.

 

[sebt3]

I for one thanks Binky to have made this pool usefull...

 

[Klumpen]

Some kind of cooling system will be required if a current Gen SOC is used

20% of the voters do not think so, therefore this option was needed to make this poll a bit more representative.

 

[WizardStan]

20% of the voters do not think so

Consensus does not equal reality. If a modern CPU running at higher clock speeds needs some form of cooling then it needs some form of cooling, and it doesn't matter how many people disagree. You're welcome to your own opinions, not your own facts.

 

[Mr_Loon]

@ Binky : I'm not sure you get it. You are a moderator, not an editor. Can you understand the difference without it having to be explained more clearly? As mentioned, please feel free to suggest modifications for polls / posts but please don't take it upon yourself to change polls / posts unless they breach forum rules.

I appreciate that you don't want anyone messing with your polls - and I shan't do it again (to anyone) without due reason.

I don't agree that the absence of a cooling system is a completely ridiculous idea, though.

They are different issues, and should be kept separate.

No worries Binky, I appreciate you only had good intentions when you modified the poll, so no offence taken.

However I still can't get my head round the idea that no sort of cooling system would be required. It might be just some kind of thin, flat heat spreader (this is still a heatsink), rather than a 'desktop' style finned / grooved heatsink.

I'm no expert but I like to think I've got a reasonable grasp of reality & I can't for the life of me see how a current gen SOC could be used in a mini laptop in a sensible way without some kind of cooling system. Can anyone who voted for 'no cooling system' point out a device (phone / tablet / netbook) where a current gen SOC is used and there is no cooling system?

 

[Binky]

I seem to remember seeing some kind of perf/power graph for modern SOCs, showing that when running at a small fraction of their total computing potential, they consume less electrical power than the. SOC used in the pandora.

This suggests that a modern SOC could be underclocked/throttled enough that no kind of heatsink would be necessary.

You could well argue that doing that would be a bad idea, but the same goes for fitting it with a large heatsink / fan combo.

 

[MrConfusion]

I'm no expert but I like to think I've got a reasonable grasp of reality & I can't for the life of me see how a current gen SOC could be used in a mini laptop in a sensible way without some kind of cooling system. Can anyone who voted for 'no cooling system' point out a device (phone / tablet / netbook) where a current gen SOC is used and there is no cooling system?

Hmmm... I don't actually even read reviews of gadgets like that these days all that often, but let's see if I can make an uneducated guess.

So... I'll bet on a phone with plastic covers, no obvious cooling holes...

Took a wild guess and checked out iPhone5C teardowns...

Anyone more in the know who can say for sure whether that thing covering the CPU is an EMI shield or heatsink?

Looks like a EMI shield to me, but what do I know... if it's a sink I'll continue looking h34r:

Anyway, I hope you are not counting a heatspreader as a heatsink?

By a heatsink I mean something that is basically attached to the factory manufactured CPU after it has left the factory.

A heatspreader is often something that you simply cannot simply "take away" (or hey yeah, sure you can, but overheating really becomes a secondary issue if you do that ).

So, actual heatsinks come in two varieties: The heat inducing sticker solution found in many modern tablets, in which the heat is forwarded to a "suitable" location, typically the sweating hands of the poor owner of the gadget.

Sweaty palms aside I effin hate these things, because when you perform surgical operations on devices you end up wondering whether that sticker should be replaced by the 10th time you dismantle the unit. By that time there's more of my wife's hairs and sometimes even babyfood on the sticker than the manufacturer planned...

From a dismantling point of view the "nicer" alternative is a heatsink that actually comes out easily with the motherboard. Unfortunately that one is typically either quite tall or a heatpipe heading somewhere else, quite often a fan.

I do like the current Pandora. Motherboard comes out, clips into alligator grips, goes back into the case, boot it up, done. No stickers, no fans, no heavy areas of the board to worry about while working. It goes neatly into even the little grips I got, I don't need to use two stands for support or anything.

I seem to remember seeing some kind of perf/power graph for modern SOCs, showing that when running at a small fraction of their total computing potential, they consume less electrical power than the. SOC used in the pandora.

This suggests that a modern SOC could be underclocked/throttled enough that no kind of heatsink would be necessary.

You could well argue that doing that would be a bad idea, but the same goes for fitting it with a large heatsink / fan combo.

I'm currently really confused about the "overall" plans for the P2... well, OK, nothing new there, there's a good reason why I chose the nick I chose, but let's say even more confused than usually.

On some threads people say "the successor" will not be able to run very many new emulators no matter how powerfull a CPU it will get, because said emulators do not run properly even in desktops.

Also in those same threads it has been pointed out that no emulator benefits all that much from threaded operation.

Yet at the same time there's this poll about possibly adding a fan to cool out all those clockcycles and cores that are likely to be of little use?

I think the target applications should be figured first, especially when it seems there are so few good options for the SOC.

You said it Binky. That was my thinking too: stock clocks so low that my palms won't sweat. Oh, and any kind of "leading the heat" to my palms is definitely a "no" if you ask me...