Open... and close... and open...

[rv6502-2]

It's not. The aim is to take heat from one place and move it to another, spread it out, and eventually it'll just leak right out the case. You want something that can conduct heat quickly in that case, and as Grench points out, copper is twice as good as aluminum at that.

Connecting the heat spreader to the USB ground shields and/or HDMI shield would allow someone to connect a removable external radiator, even one with a small fan powered by the USB itself.
Slap an ATmega32U4 on there with a small power transistor and you got a removable USB-controlled-fan external CPU cooler that turn on with CPU load
Might not even need the controller if we can software-control the power to the USB port directly.

Silliness aside, some heat could dissipate through the shielding of whatever cable is connected to it and a small external machined passive radiator as a port cover would be neat.

Some USB keys get incredibly hot while writing tho (measured one at over 50 Celsius while installing Linux to it) but that's an issue with the USB keys and only on extended intensive writes. I might just slap on some Raspberry Pi heatsinks on the key.
[doublepost=1503977540,1503975288][/doublepost]

Here

Quick and dirty concept of an external cooler.

Picture the aluminium radiator has two dummy USB-A male connectors to plug into the back ports and conduct heat out using the USB shielding which the internal copper spreader would contact with...

Doubles as dustcaps / port protectors.

Or a shorter version that only covers the two USB-A ports and leave the headphone free.
It'd need some kind of grip to pull it out tho but I just whipped that up in Modo and slapped it on a screen shot.

 

[Grench]

Move your hypothetical radiator to the chunk of plastic between the hinges (under screen).

 

[EvilDragon]

The fins/pins on the top are a bit vestigial when enclosed in a case. I wonder - if all of the available space in that cavity were -filled- with a custom cast block of copper - how large could that heat sink be?

Then there is a thought of eliminating the case plastics in that spot and having a heat sink with some fins/pins to expose to air through it.

Clearly several of us are going to need to order up a few extra sets of case plastics and see who can get the highest sustained clock rates with different thermal solutions.

Well, these are all stock parts, but they already work very well. I'll try to find out what a custom made heatsink would cost.
We could use the space below both USB ports, which would be more than twice the size

Sent from my XT1650-03 using Tapatalk

 

[ClockworkCoder]

Well, these are all stock parts, but they already work very well. I'll try to find out what a custom made heatsink would cost.
We could use the space below both USB ports, which would be more than twice the size

Sent from my XT1650-03 using Tapatalk

If stock parts work fine, is there a need to go custom? Sounds difficult and costly (and potentially trickier to maintain).

 

[Kuro]

I think a big block of copper between the 2 full size usb ports would be the best bet, as it would have a good volume to soak a lot of heat and be connected to the best 2 heat outputs we have without changing the case. I just hope it's not to hard/costly to do.

 

[Bernd]

The problem is to get the heat there with this thin copper foil.

The Ground / VCC - Plane of the main board is a nice heatsink too.
I think this was the originally planned heatsink.

Well, these are all stock parts, but they already work very well. I'll try to find out what a custom made heatsink would cost.

Ahh, this funny "search a manufactor which is willing to build them for a reasonable price" game.
I think I don't have to hint that small, nonrelevant details could have an massive impact to the costs.

 

[fusion_power]

Move your hypothetical radiator to the chunk of plastic between the hinges (under screen).

We already discussed that solution years ago. Not many liked that idea. I did.

https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/a-bunch-of-pictures.74706/page-7#post-1312043

https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/a-bunch-of-pictures.74706/page-10#post-1312096

View attachment 25426

 

[EvilDragon]

The problem is to get the heat there with this thin copper foil.

No, not at all. That works fine (as we can see with the heat measurements).

But the bigger the heatsink, the more heat it can take in before everything heats up.

The Ground / VCC - Plane of the main board is a nice heatsink too.
I think this was the originally planned heatsink.

Still being used

Ahh, this funny "search a manufactor which is willing to build them for a reasonable price" game.
I think I don't have to hint that small, nonrelevant details could have an massive impact to the costs.

Could, but doesn't have to. That's what I want to check.
There've been quite a few parts where I thought these would be really expensive but they turned out to be cheap in the end.

Sent from my XT1650-03 using Tapatalk

 

[Bernd]

No, not at all. That works fine (as we can see with the heat measurements).

But the bigger the heatsink, the more heat it can take in before everything heats up.

Good to hear.

Could, but doesn't have to. That's what I want to check.
There've been quite a few parts where I thought these would be really expensive but they turned out to be cheap in the end.

I knew.
I've seen the other way around too
But because we have most necessary machines to build our parts, we don't have to bother with this thema.

Sent from my Atari2600 using Tapatalk

 

[ahahah]

According to FormAction, the material from the company in France hasn't arrived. Which sounds a bit like an excuse - they could've at least received enough for samples in that case.

The ask of the tracking number should change their awnser.

 

[Grench]

Clearly several of us are going to need to order up a few extra sets of case plastics and see who can get the highest sustained clock rates with different thermal solutions.

Well, these are all stock parts, but they already work very well. I'll try to find out what a custom made heatsink would cost.
We could use the space below both USB ports, which would be more than twice the size

No worries - when you get to somewhere between 'good enough' and 'pretty darn good' you're done. I was thinking more along the lines of giving the mod & optimization crowd something to do. I.e. how far can it be taken into the silly realm?

A sheet of silver instead of aluminum - insulated/coated everywhere but the thermal contact pad points...
Use a rotary tool to cut a hole through the lower back of the case...
Custom cast a ~2oz solid silver heat sink that rests with a few fins exposed through the hole...

Next up - liquid cooling - which is a bit silly on a handheld pocket device - which could lead to embarrassment.

Then liquid Nitrogen or Carbon Dioxide or Nitrous Oxide canisters (any liquified gas would work for phase change cooling) - though that gets very silly and would require a side-car for the gas canister - but that may be the end of silly unless someone has access to sheets of diamond...

As for casting the solid silver heat sink - it would be time consuming and materials are a bit expensive but not difficult...

Some day someone will come up with a way to make thin sheets of pure diamond and sandwich them between layers of aerogel. The most efficient passive heat transport ever. Until then, a copper sheet (collection & transport) to a cheap copper heat sink/radiator (storage/dissipation) is a pretty darn good solution.

 

[JustSimon]

Quick and dirty concept of an external cooler.

Picture the aluminium radiator has two dummy USB-A male connectors to plug into the back ports and conduct heat out using the USB shielding which the internal copper spreader would contact with...

Doubles as dustcaps / port protectors.

Or a shorter version that only covers the two USB-A ports and leave the headphone free.
It'd need some kind of grip to pull it out tho but I just whipped that up in Modo and slapped it on a screen shot.

That actually looks quite neat.
If that was a thing, I'd probably be willing to pay 10-20 € for that.

 

[Xcl4m4t10n]

 

[Mr_Loon]

Let's start with 1.:

Nikolaus tried a few things, but he can mostly do hardware design checks and these seem to be fine.
So it's time for an expert to step in - and luckily, there's someone who really knows everything OMAP: Tony Lindgren (the maintainer of the OMAP kernel).
He mentioned he already helped out with memory issues with other projects (and they even had a faulty memory chip design on one project - let's hope that's not our issue) and he just received a prototype last week.
Besides the memory issue, he'll also work on some other patches (like the OMAP5 hanging when we're doing a warm reboot).
So let's all hope that issue will be solved as well!

Once the 4GB works... we can already produce the CPU boards (they're waiting to be populated at GC!)

@EvilDragon : Any official word on whether the 4GB issue has been solved? This post from @sebt3 seemed pretty promising but the lack of official fanfare regarding this makes me wonder......

 

[Haraldur]

@Haraldur using the stylus should avoid the grease aspect.

But then you risk misplacing or losing the stylus. That would really annoy me.

 

[levi]

Some day someone will come up with a way to make thin sheets of pure diamond and sandwich them between layers of aerogel. The most efficient passive heat transport ever. Until then, a copper sheet (collection & transport) to a cheap copper heat sink/radiator (storage/dissipation) is a pretty darn good solution.

How about the heat pipes containing a coolant that achieves phase change cooling as a side effect of removing heat from the hot end? Those are a step above plain copper sinks IMO, at least if the moving of heat to an exit point if part of your cooling strategy.

Re: Losing your stylus, I've managed to keep mine, after all these years of Pandora ownership, even after I broke it in two trying to use it to reinsert my hinge clip I still know where both parts are. While it was whole, it had a home inside my Pandora's stylus holster. I did manage (I think) to lose my original 3DS stylus, but that's because I replaced it with an X-stylus which then broke. Keep your stylus in its holster and it is likely to remain there basically indefinitely.

 

[sebt3]

@EvilDragon : Any official word on whether the 4GB issue has been solved? This post from @sebt3 seemed pretty promising but the lack of official fanfare regarding this makes me wonder......

Well...As far as I can tell (most of the chat about this is a little over my head), while it works, it currently doesnt work "as it should". Setting the voltage over the spec to make it works is not ideal (battery life, thermal...).
The good configuration is still beeing researched. It's reassuring that I've never seen talk about hardware fault, so there's no talk about a new bord revision because of this, it's just some software (kernel) configuration to be found and applied at the right time. Others issues of the same genre are also being researched... I'm betting ED wait for all of this to settle

 

[Bosbeetle]

Its so much fun to read that kernel thread... I like it when stuff seems sensible but goes over my head. (it's a bit like people talking about esotheric stuff but then you know it actually makes sense to someone)

 

[Mr_Loon]

Well...As far as I can tell (most of the chat about this is a little over my head), while it works, it currently doesnt work "as it should".

Cheers, that interpretation makes sense, also tried to follow what was going on in your linked thread and it was way more than a little over my head

 

[Dark Pulse]

@EvilDragon : Any official word on whether the 4GB issue has been solved? This post from @sebt3 seemed pretty promising but the lack of official fanfare regarding this makes me wonder......

IIRC they solved it by bumping the voltage up a bit (to 1.39V). That presumably will let it be stable enough (as it's still within tolerance/spec) while they potentially look into whatever else it could be, and presumably if they find a way to fix it, they can then bump it back down to 1.35V.