I installed the extension card with M2 SSD. Then VIM3 with the extension card does not fit to the DIY Case and this thermal solution with metal plate is useless.
The VIM3 gets really hot by even watching Youtube in FHD. It gets so hot on regular tasks that 3705 fan starts turning. This is a small turbo-loader, which makes a loud noise.
I also installed a heatsink on the SSD, because it gets hot.
@NicoD I was on Chromium and the video was 480p (see the screenshot in the first post), my display is 1080p but the chromium was in window mode.
What bothers me is that the brand showed off its performance under passive cooling in their ads, which turned out to be a false claim!
I saw the promo image and yeah i imagine it must be a bit frustating, i don’t understand very well how the individual cores load relates to the total cpu load but the board is definitively not loosing performance there. I hate noisy fans as well, what i would do is replace the thermal pad with some mx-4, cut some copper heatsinks to size so that they fit where the fan is supposed to be, brush the existing fins and the copper with some steel wool to increase area contact with the air then put the heasinks with some tiny amounts of themal glue on the corners and mx-4 in the for the rest so that you can take them of in the future with some force but they don’t fall easily. Shouldn’t cost more than 9$. I am not very familiar with android but if you look at the image the UI seems to be from an android benchmarking tool, probably that played a role as well.
specifically on this video, they demonstrate the operation of Ubuntu in active cooling mode!
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@Gouwa Please explain in detail how you performed the “very detailed thermal testing” and came out with the result.
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I mentioned in another thread that with the 5.3.0-rc4 kernel shipped with the Ubuntu server image, neither fan control nor thermal throttling were operational, with the SoC reaching 98C before I ended the OpenSSL benchmark.
Looking forward to the test results.
Although I spend all my time with newborn babies, I still try other ideas in my spare time.:咧嘴笑:
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I’ve done several 15 minute stress tests on my VIM3 using Antutu, here are 3 results that best represent the average of the sample:
- Bare Board, 60C (Ambient: 29C)
- @RRZC777’s Passive Heatsink, 46C (Ambient: 28C)
- 3705 Cooling Fan, New VIMs Heatsink, 36C (Ambient: 27C)
It is winter time now, and the ambient temperature drops quite rapidly in the evenings, you can see that as I perform the tests, the ambient temperature drops from 29C to 27C, in the course of an hour. As of this writing, it is hovering around 25C.
Interestingly, even with the bare board, I did not notice any CPU throttling during the Antutu test. We can see that the clock speeds remain stable throughout each test. The temperature probe was attached to the surface of the A311D SoC, and the other probe was left to sense the air temperature. I used a fresh installation of Android, so there aren’t any other CPU hogs or apps running in the background.
The best result was obtained with active cooling, with the fan in automatic speed mode. The passive heatsink also gave quite a satisfactory result, and I feel would be useful for people with sensitive ears.
Each picture was captured just after the test completed.
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Hello tsangyoujun! I have the same keyboard, but the temperature is 48 degrees! I smile, this is a joke, a beautiful job, thank you for your work !!!
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You have a cool keyboard! 
48C with the heatsink and fan?
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Interesting, can you make a test on Ubuntu? It seems like in ubuntu the temperature goes much higher.
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Hello! I have a 48 degree fan and heatsink. If I put Khadas Tone Board ES9038Q2M on my VIM3, will there be enough space for a fan and a radiator? I was looking for a video of the assembly of these parts on YouTube, but could not find. Now it’s Black Friday at Aliexpress and the price of the sound card is very good! Thanks!
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All the tests I ever saw on SBC showed that increasing the size of the heatsink only ever lengthed the time that the board took to come up to max temp and reach thermal equilibrium, The consequence of this is that if you are performing CPU intensive work passive cooling will still leave you with an overheating CPU. Look at the Odroid N2 to see what sort of scale the heatsink needs to be to get adequate cooling - the Khadas passive heatsink is no where near big enough. Passive cooling with a Khadas sized heatsink will only work if you only occasionally do CPU intensive work where it will even out the peak temps to a lower average.
If you intend to use you VIM3 for something like a Netflix decoder then passive cooling will be inadequate in many situations.
Fans such as the squirrel cage design supplied by Khadas are inherently noisy and not suitable for use in an entertainment system. Don’t waste your time with one.
However a decent heatsink coupled to a largish fan run at half voltage will be an almost silent solution to long term cooling. Run the fan down to the point where it almost stalls but still starts when powered up. A 12V DC fan run off the 5V USB rail is perfect. Make certain the case allows free air movement across the heatsink/fan and out of the case.
Shoog
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@Eurus okay I will find sometime for Ubuntu. I’m sure it will go higher too.
@cool0007 here’s the video that you’re looking for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDuYnVzqLuA
@shoog yup I agree with your observations. However the key idea is the “temperature at which equilibrium is attained”. Definitely with a CPU running at full-tilt, the heat output would be greater, so if this value is higher than what the heatsink can convect away, per unit time, the SBC will still overheat and never achieve thermal equilibrium.
For everyone else taking thermal measurements:
- Always measure your ambient air temperature as a reference point.
- Ensure the heatsink is thermally coupled to the SoC using those blue thermal pads.
- Always add time into your measurements, a thermal cam / probe with USB data logging is best.
- Be clear in stating which OS was running on your VIM3 during the test.
- Be clear on what test was used, and also check if there were any CPU hogs / background procs.
@tsangyoujun following this thread and the given temperature measurements it is quite obvious to me, that any shipment containing a diy case should include min of 2 themal pads. Reflecting that you have a passive cooling plate on the bottom of the diy, you want to have a thermal pad between the cpu an the heatsink as well as a thermal pad an the bottom. If the cpu is heating up under pressure, the rear of the board will also heat up. And with the second thermal pad, the gap between the rear cooling plate and the board can be filled up.
The price of the extra pad shoud be irrelevant (maybe a couple cents). But organizing this missing pad while assembling the box is very inconveniant.
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Do you have any advice, which concrete fan will fit and what price we have to calculate. I’d like to use vim3 for rendering and services that will put the cores under constant pressure quite regular …
@khadas team how are you going to solve this issue from the compony perspective? It makes a huge difference for your mark perceptionre if customers cognize this board as beeing temperature attained equilibrium for all use cases … Any remarks?
@RalfZ we do sell a thicker heat pad for the DIY Case separately, as not everyone requires it (or runs their VIM3s at full-tilt all the time) .
Shop Link: https://www.khadas.com/shop-vim3
Our SBCs are made for people who like to DIY things, so if you need to super-cool it you can just stick a large (and slow) 12V fan and it will cool down just fine. Regarding a larger heatsink (that sticks to the bottom side of the SBC), we are testing out @RRZC777’s design, and could have it in shop soon.
When i placed my first order, i tried to find out, what kind of accessories will fit my needs. It’s true, personal requirements are different. I wouldn’t call me “unexperienced” when it comes to SBC’s. But is wasn’t obvious for me, that your hight end product “Vim3” will need active cooling, if used under pressure. Anybody should be save to assume, the needed addons will be marked, for the common use cases.
Having said this, i did order the extra heat pad, just because i expected the need if cpu is under heavy load.
It does anoy me now, that the thermal pad (as shown on the picture) was missing in the shipment.
I did order three pieces including the HTPC pack.
Concerning the CNC radiator: i followed post with interest. But the price is simply inacceptable if it is 50 bucks. It’s also unclear, if temperature attained equilibrium will be fullfilled. I’d love to go without active cooling!
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming but looking for clear product positioning. Any new customer will benefit, espacially, if he/she isn’t that mutch technic-affin.
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