"Smach Z is Back!" ...?

[elwing]

You gotta be kidding me, is Craig running this thing?

What's your order number?

 

[vcoleiro1]

Has anyone backed the Smach Z and seen the update which are for backers ony?

 

[Pyrate]

I do not believe in the Smach Z until they have a proper prototype with the real chip, not a mockup. As per AMD website the RX-421BD SoC, which is the fastest Fusion-R on the market as of now has a TDP of 15-35 W.
This means on full load you would need a laptop size battery to get decent run time when running on battery.

Also the cooling solution will need a heatpipe and active Fan to get that amount of heat out. That calls for a weight of at least 700g or more.

I mean them no harm and hope they are able to put a nice system out, but until they provide the final specs like weight and battery life I am not interested.

 

[vcoleiro1]

I do not believe in the Smach Z until they have a proper prototype with the real chip, not a mockup. As per AMD website the RX-421BD SoC, which is the fastest Fusion-R on the market as of now has a TDP of 15-35 W.
This means on full load you would need a laptop size battery to get decent run time when running on battery.

Also the cooling solution will need a heatpipe and active Fan to get that amount of heat out. That calls for a weight of at least 700g or more.

I mean them no harm and hope they are able to put a nice system out, but until they provide the final specs like weight and battery life I am not interested.

Are you saying active cooling would push the weight up that high?. Becuase there are plenty of actively cooled devices which come in a lot under 700g. For example the GPD WIN and Pocket. I think the WIN is 360grams and the 7" Pocket with full metal case, heatpipe, fan and heatsink comes in at 480grams from the specs

By the way, they did mention the AMD SOC they will use has a TDP that can be set, I think they mentioned setting it to the lower 15W

 

[Pyrate]

I was more referring to the battery size - at 35W they would need a 400g battery at least.
But my GPD Win has a 4W TDP and its copper cooling plate weighs in more than 100g. And the battery with 6900mAh at would give you less than a hour playtime running at 35W.

So I really hope they can get the actual TDP down while keeping enough juice to power the games. If the Smach Z won't have enough grunt to power modern games, it won't be successful.

 

[vcoleiro1]

Apparently their currnet plan is to have 4 cells of 3250 mAh 3.7v, each weighing 60g. So 13000mAh at a weight of 240g
I'm guessing these are 18650 batteries

They also plan for the back cover to be removable, presumably to be able to swap the batteries

 

[Pyrate]

It will be interesting, how much TDP the final version of their chipset will use.

 

[EvilDragon]

Removable batteries with that much Watt hours?
Good luck with shipping... At least legally...

Sent from my XT1650-03 using Tapatalk

 

[vcoleiro1]

Given what they said about the batteries. I'm betting they will use four 18650 batteries like below.
The issue I see though, is if they are swappable - I'm not sure they have confirmed that, but if they are , then the risk would be ensuring people swap in 4 batteries equally charged and of the same brand. Unless Lithium Ion batteries don't have that issue?

 

[elwing]

Li-ion suffer worst from this issue, but if this thing were designed not to be a bomb, each cell would be managed separately, and not just being put in series without any control...

 

[vcoleiro1]

Li-ion suffer worst from this issue, but if this thing were designed not to be a bomb, each cell would be managed separately, and not just being put in series without any control...

I guess that makes sense. I must admit, I hope they can pull this off, I'd like to see more competition in the Windows Handheld space

 

[levi]

I've seen plenty of electric drill teardowns where the li-ion batteries are just linked in series. They don't tend to act as bombs, although they do thrash their batteries so they die before their time.

 

[elwing]

Well, i suppose you really want to avoid using unprotected li-ion in this case... Anyway i was using a rather hypothetic form as:
1) i doubt they are really designing the thing.
2) I'm unsure they would care about such details anyway...

 

[MJPIA]

Snippets from the latest update.

- The integration scheme of Merlin Falcon in Rhomb technology has finally been validated by AMD. It has passed their tests and requirements. Now we will be able to start working on the production of the component.

- We’ve started to do cooling system simulations. After the first tests we deduced that the planned passive cooling would be enough to dissipate 15w, but we may need more margin to ensure a full performance in any situation. By adding a fan we’d be able to dissipate up to 28w, so we’re considering this solution. The cons of adding a fan are a little bit more of weigh (10-20gr), more noise when it gets on (but it'd be very quiet), more battery consumption when it gets on (but it'd be in rare situations) and a slightly higher cost per unit (but it wouldn't be added to the customer price). We have run a poll on the development polls and your feedback has been to add a fan so we’re working on that direction. The final decision will be made after the final cooling tests.

- Unfortunately, this month has been complicated due to many unexpected issues:

• The laser 3D prints to test the final mechanical case have been delayed and with errors. The tolerances were wrong and it has delayed all the process to continue the plastic molds.
• 

• Also the plastic mold company have raised the initial budget estimation (and time) to create the molds, and we’re analysing other alternatives. We have to create them in Spain but it’s more expensive than other countries. In any case, at this point, with the current plastic molds company or a new one, we’re into August where all the factories are off in Spain and that we wanted to avoid. Now, plastic molds won’t be ready before August creating a bottleneck of tasks dependent of this milestone.
• In addition, but not related to plastic, during our temperature and powers consumption tests we’ve burned all the AMD Merlin Falcon test boards that we had. We’ve ordered new ones, but it’s taking much time that it’s affecting other tasks that needed the boards.

- Due to these issues we’re adding more delay to the project. It’s confirmed that we won’t be in the E3 at all and unfortunately, our presentation at the Gamescom will need to be postponed too. Without a final plastic case we can’t present the console, at best we could bring a 3D printed prototype.

Burning all their CPU test boards seems not good.

When they say test board I assume they are talking about these dev boards they got from AMD and those can't be cheap.

 

[vcoleiro1]

@MJPIA

Is that the Kickstarter update from today (19th May)?


Is it me, or did these two comments they made come across odd.

"We’ve started to do cooling system simulations. After the first tests we deduced that the planned passive cooling would be enough to dissipate 15w"

"during our temperature and powers consumption tests we’ve burned all the AMD Merlin Falcon test boards that we had"

I suppose they must have tested beyond 15w to burn the boards out


I wonder if they will be getting help from KS's newly launched Hardware Studio: https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/18/kickstarter-launches-tools-for-creators-because-hardware-is-hard/

 

[MJPIA]

@MJPIA

Is that the Kickstarter update from today (19th May)?


Is it me, or did these two comments they made come across odd.

"We’ve started to do cooling system simulations. After the first tests we deduced that the planned passive cooling would be enough to dissipate 15w"

"during our temperature and powers consumption tests we’ve burned all the AMD Merlin Falcon test boards that we had"

I suppose they must have tested beyond 15w to burn the boards out


I wonder if they will be getting help from KS's newly launched Hardware Studio: https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/18/kickstarter-launches-tools-for-creators-because-hardware-is-hard/

Yeah its from today.
I found the statements about cooling system tests being adequate and them burning their test boards contradictory as well but figured I'd give them benefit of doubt here since we don't know exactly what happened.
Either way though something does seem odd there, like you may need to do some destructive testing to prove the cooling works and test just how far it can go but you wouldn't ruin all your test boards on purpose if it meant it'd effect production.

 

[Exophase]

Burning out boards during testing is concerning. Even if they had insufficient cooling, like if the fan was removed, the SoC should still throttle down or if necessary turn off entirely to prevent damage. And this didn't just happen once but multiple times.

I'm still very skeptical that passive cooling could successfully dissipate 15W in this form factor. And they seem to be realizing that 15W isn't enough when factoring in power consumption from components other than the SoC, like the PMIC, DRAM, and display.

 

[elwing]

Pretty sure the burn soc had nothing to do with the cooling solution, I heard the box with the dev kit just happened to be in a nissan leaf that took fire...

 

[Pyrate]

Do they already have custom mainboards now? Ih not then I would also guess the dev boards got destroyed?

 

[MJPIA]

Well uh thats interesting.
https://blog.rhomb.io/rhomb-io-will-not-support-smachz-project/

Rhomb.io will not support SmachZ Project
#### English ####

Due to diferences between both companies, TNFG ( Tecnofingers ) the owner of rhomb.io has closed the relation with SmachZ Project.

Giving them all the flexibility and freedom to develop the device by his own side but not supported by rhomb.io and S500 rhomb.io Core AMD RX421.

unfortunately big discrepances in the project Have forced both parts to get that decision and a long pause in development.

In the next days TNFG will share with SMACHz team all the documentation and test regarding his project after close the terms.

Thx.

#### Spanish ####

Debido a las diferencias entre ambas empresas, TNFG (Tecnofingers) el propietario de rhomb.io ha cerrado la relación con SmachZ Project.

Dándoles toda la flexibilidad y libertad para desarrollar el dispositivo por su propio lado pero no apoyado por rhomb.io y S500 rhomb.io Core AMD RX421.

Desafortunadamente grandes discrepancias en el proyecto han forzado a ambas partes a tomar esa decisión y una larga pausa en el desarrollo

En los próximos días TNFG compartirá con el equipo de SMACHz toda la documentación, pruebas y pruebas sobre su proyecto después de cerrar los términos. Gracias.

[doublepost=1498442470,1498441596][/doublepost]This is the contact details listed on Rhomb's website.

C/ Corretger 67 Parque Empresarial Táctica
46980 Paterna Valencia, Spain

Phone: +34-962-055-109

And IMASD's contact info.

C/Corretger Nº 67 Parque empresarial Táctica - 46980 - Paterna - Valencia - España

962055109

As far as I can tell Rhomb is still a part of IMASD
Rhomb has a dev wiki with a bunch of components including the cpu board which appears fully developed.
http://wiki.rhomb.io/index.php?title=AMD_Embedded_R_series_Processor_RX-421

So did IMASD completely cut ties with the project team?