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


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.
 
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.
 
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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.

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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.

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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.
 
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.
 
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. :p

U0PabIc.png

That actually looks quite neat.
If that was a thing, I'd probably be willing to pay 10-20 € for that.
 
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......
 
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.
 
@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 ;)
 
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)
 
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 :)
 
@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.
 
I remember having to slightly bump the voltage on my PCs ram to keep it running full speed with the suggested timings. (This was high speed gaming ram)

From catching up on the 4G thread, it looks like the team is closing in on the problem, and have had some success at 1.35V but with strange timings.
 
Magnesium is 1.05J/gK
The idea of a magnesium heat sink made me smile. :) This would provide us with the spectacle of a Pyra in flames! Nicely thematic, but Pyras are rather pricey for a one-time entertainment use, however spectacular the effect. :P
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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 ;)
Your reading of that list is more optimistic than mine! It seems to me that the cause(s) of the 4 GB problems has (have) not yet been identified. And that until the cause(s) has (have) been identified, it will not be known whether the solution(s) will require hardware changes, software changes, or just configuration changes. Of course, like everyone else, I think, I hope that the problem(s) will be tracked down soon and that that solution(s) will just be configuration changes; that could happen any day. :) This might be all completed before ever the plastic cases are mass produced!
 
Massive bloc of magnesium presents no risk... You'd be hard pressed to heat it hard enough for it to ignite... The rest of the pyra would be completely charred before the magnesium would burn...
 
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