The tale of the cases


ED talked about doing 2 heatsinks on the system not just a single one. Plus he talked about adding a fan to the system if he had to. A very small one. My post was about doing the dual heatsinks and then keeping the space for the fan in the mould and it could still fit. That's what I'm talking about. You might as well go with the plan that you already had.

CPUs do throttle but not if they're cooled properly. On x86 you won't burst anymore upon reaching too high temps. My laptop doesn't go below the 2.4ghz that the standard clocks are. Plus you're talking about future socs as if they won't be even more insane in terms of thermal runaway. Doing what you suggest will require the system to be completely redone for each SOC. Unless ED lied in his original plans for the pyra it's supposed to just replace the cpu board for future versions. And if you're doing that, you can't after the fact add heatsinks to the case and get back space you don't have.
 
@133794m3r your laptop must not have very good battery life.

Code:
$ cpufreq-info
cpufrequtils 008: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2009
Report errors and bugs to cpufreq@vger.kernel.org, please.
analyzing CPU 0:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
  maximum transition latency: 0.97 ms.
  hardware limits: 400 MHz - 2.40 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance, powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 400 MHz and 2.40 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 892 MHz.
analyzing CPU 1:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 1
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 1
  maximum transition latency: 0.97 ms.
  hardware limits: 400 MHz - 2.40 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance, powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 400 MHz and 2.40 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 854 MHz.
analyzing CPU 2:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 2
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 2
  maximum transition latency: 0.97 ms.
  hardware limits: 400 MHz - 2.40 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance, powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 400 MHz and 2.40 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 632 MHz.
analyzing CPU 3:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 3
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 3
  maximum transition latency: 0.97 ms.
  hardware limits: 400 MHz - 2.40 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance, powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 400 MHz and 2.40 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 772 MHz.

admittedly i'm only doing some light web browsing...
 
If they still cost the same as the 350RAMAC did then not many houses would actually have one. I'm personally content that I can get a hard disc these days in the same form factor as I did in 1994 with 25000 times the capacity and it cost me about a tenth of the cost.
Considering that in the 1960s this was Space-Age technology and nowadays it's old hat, pretty sure it wouldn't cost nearly that much. It would still cost some, though.

The closest modern analogue would be something you're probably quite familiar with if you're well-versed with building PCs - a NAS box.
 
admittedly i'm only doing some light web browsing...
Even my quad 3.4ghz desktop likes to keep itself down around 1.5ghz unless something's happening. If I compile something -j6 and it takes more than a couple minutes it starts screaming about overheating and throttles down noticeably. I should probably check the fan, with adequate cooling I could improve that.
The point being that, while it can get up to 3.4ghz, that is not the normal usage, and while you can put all kinds of fancy cooling into it to maintain higher clock speeds for longer periods of time it doesn't change the fact that the are being designed to throttle automatically when they get too hot, and they get too hot when run at max clock for extended periods of time.
 
Multicore setups can also do things like throttle down or turn off most of the cores and then let just one run at max speed. I remember one of Intel's advertisements mentioning that for their turbo boost.
 
I don't get the argument in regard to desktop systems. I can run my 8-core CPU overclocked at full load for hours with air cooling. Sure, it does get pretty warm, but it doesn't throttle. It may also get too hot after a few more hours, who knows. It's not like it's designed to not run at that speed for more than 5 minutes though.

Mobile is a different story of course, but this put me off a bit.
 
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