Heatsink modding

[albmart]

Could anyone help me choosing the heatsinks please?

What of these 4 options would be the better???

Thanks in advance!


1- 28 mm x 28 mm x 15mm
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/28-28-15mm-Heatsink-Cooling-Fin-Aluminum-Heat-Sink-for-Graphic-Card-Router-LED-IC-Transistor/1764732745.html



2- 100 mm. x 30 mm x 15 mm
http://www.****.es/itm/201264857306?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p398 4.m1423.l2649



3- 5 pieces of 20 mm. x 21 mm x 15 mm
http://www.****.es/itm/190710367954?...84.m1423.l2649



4- 5 pieces of 30 mm. x 30 mm x 15 mm
http://www.****.es/itm/200802075410?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p398 4.m1423.l2649

[hey69]

Last ones?

[albmart]

Last ones?

Thanks for your answer, but, why the last ones? Any special reason?

Thanks in advance

[hey69]

Cheap and kinda the right size.. i dont think there will be much differance between them all
check delivery time and price

[albmart]

Finally I bought this one:

http://www.****.es/itm/200802075410?...84.m1423.l2649

[hey69]

My thermal pad arrived from china. 1.5mm thick. I folded few times and put it on the back so it has concact with the cover. Since i had some left i also used on another small metal block on my gpu coolblock so it has also contact with top cover.

Stress tested my pipo for 100%cpu for an hour . Tops at 66c.. i think im sattisfied now

[JoEy28]

Hi everyone,

First of all thank you for all the effort what you made to share your information. It was very helpful for me to do my own modification.

I bought this box:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/PIPO-...269926375.html
It has a board v1.3, everything went good the shipping took about 10 days to Hungary.


I bought two extra for the mod:

Arctic Silver ALUMINA to glue the heatsink on top of the aluminium plate:
http://www.****.com/itm/111629472718...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Phobya 1MM thick and the size of 120x20mm ¨ 7W/mk ThermalPad
http://www.****.com/itm/121159893475...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

I found two heatsink at home, which I used. The first one is aluminium and it is taller in the middle. It has a height of 15 mm.
The second one is from an old laptop and made from copper. I don't know the exact height but it is around 3 mm.


I disassembled the box and got rid of the nets from the sides. I took off the aluminium plate and tore down the sticky foil. I used some nail polish remover to get rid of the glue.
I glued the heatsink on the aluminium plate with the ALUMINA. Some of the ALUMINA went through the holes what I removed with a scraper after it dried out. There is a plastic on the top of the box from inside what is glued to the box. This holds the screws. I had to remove a big part of it which was in the way. I used a scalpel to scratch it where I wanted to cut the plastic and after that I used a screwdriver in the groove what I made with the scalpel and another screwdriver to stain it up. It was a bit tricky but the plastic broke in the right place. Below the plastic there is this white glue which was very hard to remove. I tried to solve it with different solvents (like gasoline, white spirit, brigeciol without success) and I think the nail polisher helped a little, but not that much. With warm water I could scratch glue down with a plastic card. It was a hell of a work but it worth it because there remained nothing just the aluminum box itself and my heatsink can touch the box directly. On top of the aluminium heatsink I put some thermalpad to let it touch the box when I screwed pack the board in place. The rest of the thermalpad was placed between the board and the copper heat sink on the bottom of the board. I tried to position heat sink right below the CPU. I had some Cooler Master E1 thermal grease what I put on top of the copper heatsink just in case and screwed the box back together.


Results:

I have picture only from before the mod in idle state but when I stressed the system it went up easily after 70‹C. In idle state I had between 54‹C and 58‹C.
After the heat sink mod I stressed the system for more than 10 mins and have the same temperatures as before the mod in idle state. I am preatty happy with the result. :-) In idle it is around 44‹C. The most of the heat goes to the bottom of the box becauese the bottom is much warmer than the top if you examine it by hand.
You can check the pictures for results also.

Good luck everyone.

[geppetto61]

Hi everyone,

... The most of the heat goes to the bottom of the box becauese the bottom is much warmer than the top if you examine it by hand.... Good luck everyone.

Hi and thanks a lot for the very informative explanation
Are you saying that the bottom is much hotter than the top ? this is strange
I thought that the main heat generator is the cpu and it is mounted on the top of the board.
And actually i am addressing this side mainly.
I am about to go active with this little fan here i bought ...

Aluminum Heatsink with fan for 5W/10W High Power LED Cooling Cooler DC12V

http://www.****.com/itm/331396825150...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

http://i.****img.com/00/s/MTMzN1gxNjAw/z/8hoAAOSwD0lUd1Ej/$_57.JPG

it works with 12 VDC i can take from the power input
Under this a biadhesive thermal pad will keep it in place ... i hope
But this thing of the heat also under the board puzzles me a little ... could i leave the bottom of the case open ?
Thanks again, geppo

[kenman345]

Hi and thanks a lot for the very informative explanation
Are you saying that the bottom is much hotter than the top ? this is strange
I thought that the main heat generator is the cpu and it is mounted on the top of the board.
And actually i am addressing this side mainly.
I am about to go active with this little fan here i bought ...

Aluminum Heatsink with fan for 5W/10W High Power LED Cooling Cooler DC12V

http://www.****.com/itm/331396825150...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

http://i.****img.com/00/s/MTMzN1gxNjAw/z/8hoAAOSwD0lUd1Ej/$_57.JPG

it works with 12 VDC i can take from the power input
Under this a biadhesive thermal pad will keep it in place ... i hope
But this thing of the heat also under the board puzzles me a little ... could i leave the bottom of the case open ?
Thanks again, geppo

No, he is not saying that. The bottom just has holes. Holes let out air. And if you flip the unit over, then the hot air thats rising is able to escape. Simple life hack.

[JoEy28]

Are you saying that the bottom is much hotter than the top ? this is strange

You can read in earlier posts that the most important thing is to put a thermal pad beneath the board because this gives you the most effective result. I found this also strange because the CPU mounted on the top of the board but it looks like somehow the heat goes down. After I checked the with my hand I felt that the bottom of the box is warmer than the top, so I can confirm that it is important to put a thermal bridge between the board and the bottom of the box.
You can leave the bottom of the box open, but then you have to put something under it to lift it up otherwise there will remain no room between the box and your table.

I am curious about your solution with the fan. It looks a bit noisy. Keep updated.

[geppetto61]

No, he is not saying that. The bottom just has holes. Holes let out air. And if you flip the unit over, then the hot air thats rising is able to escape. Simple life hack.

Hi and thanks a lot for the very helpful hint. I would do it for sure. But i am also hopeful for the fan. Hope noise will not be an issue.
Thanks again, geppo

[geppetto61]

You can read in earlier posts that the most important thing is to put a thermal pad beneath the board because this gives you the most effective result.

Hi and thanks for the kind advice. But as the other Member is saying the bottom case has holes for the ventilation
Unfortunately i did not check the T with the unit flipped over ... maybe the situation was better ?
However as you say if with the pads the case gets warmer it means that the heat exchange is working (but you close the holes).
The top stays cold because there is absolutely no contact with the hot parts in the unmodified unit. There is a plastic frame supporting the board.
Therefore there is no thermal contact between the board and the case (bad design indeed).

I found this also strange because the CPU mounted on the top of the board but it looks like somehow the heat goes down.
After I checked the with my hand I felt that the bottom of the box is warmer than the top, so I can confirm that it is important to put a thermal bridge between the board and the bottom of the box.

if i understand correctly you are referring to the unmodified unit ? this is very strange indeed. However the T of the cpu is the sign of bad cooling.

You can leave the bottom of the box open, but then you have to put something under it to lift it up otherwise there will remain no room between the box and your table.

Yes. I have already noticed that the distance between bottom and the table is very small. I will increase it with small rubber feet. Not a problem at all.

I am curious about your solution with the fan. It looks a bit noisy. Keep updated.

yes that is right and i do not know . I have to try one and listen.
a way to lower the noise could be by putting a small value resistor in series with the fan i think. This should reduce the fan speed and then the noise.

Anyway passive cooling with limited space is very very challenging. I am looking at the video cards to get some idea.
But this Atom has a metallic surface, i think the one more active for the heat exchange, of just about 11x11 mm ... is nothing.
I will try to put the fan over the cpu, flip over the unit and check the temperatures.
Thanks again, geppo

[JoEy28]

Hi and thanks for the kind advice. But as the other Member is saying the bottom case has holes for the ventilation
Unfortunately i did not check the T with the unit flipped over ... maybe the situation was better ?
However as you say if with the pads the case gets warmer it means that the heat exchange is working (but you close the holes).
The top stays cold because there is absolutely no contact with the hot parts in the unmodified unit. There is a plastic frame supporting the board.
Therefore there is no thermal contact between the board and the case (bad design indeed).

I tried to avoid any high temperature before the mod, so just checked the idle temperatures only that time.
I am not sure if we understand each other correctly so I redraw my pictures to make it clear. I have not closed the holes because the copper touches the bottom only in a small are. (See pics.)

if i understand correctly you are referring to the unmodified unit ? this is very strange indeed. However the T of the cpu is the sign of bad cooling.

When I said the top stays colder I already had done the modding, so I had thermal bridge to the bottom and the top also.

[Mariner]

Interesting reading in this thread.

I've got a Pipo X7 on the way to me on the slow boat from China which should hopefully arrive during the next week or two. I have to admit I didn't read the reviews fully before ordering so didn't realise the X7 suffered from heat issues!

The X7 won't be getting a huge amount of usage (mostly streaming VOD such as Netflix and Sky Go) but obviously I'll still want to ensure it is a bit less toasty in operation so will need to make minor mods.

However, I don't want to spend a huge amount on modding and, after searching around, I see that it is difficult to find the good-quality 5mm cooling pads here in the UK at a decent price. Paying an extra 30% or 40% of the cost of the X7 just too cool it seems a bit too much! What I have been able to find is one of the strips of the Phobya XT 7W heat pad (120x20x1mm) and I've had a thought about how I could use this.

I can obtain a small 3mm aluminium sheet cut to an appropriate size very cheaply. If I were to sandwich this between strips (cut as required) of the Phobya, this could be used as the heatsink to connect the bottom of the board to the bottom of the case. Probably wouldn't be quite as effective as one of the 5mm pads but should still work, I'd have thought? If nothing else, it is certainly going to be several orders of magnitude better than air cooling as a quick search on google tells me that the thermal conductivity of air is just 0.024 W/mK! I could then use the one strip of Phobya for both the cooling of chips under the alumnium heatspreader and also underneath.

IANAP (I am not a physicist!) but this seems as though it should work OK. Does anybody have comments as to why there would be any problems with this plan? I'm assuming that the Phobya would be soft enough to compress a little onto the pins on the bottom of the PCB. Would a 1mm strip be enough to clear these, or would I perhaps need to have two layers of the Phobya directly underneath the PCB with the aluminium sheet below having direct contact on the bottom of the case?

Also, could somebody who has the X7 already recommend what sort of dimensions the aluminium plate should be cut to? Say 70mm x 50mm?

If this wasn't feasible, my other option would be to order a cheapo 5mm thermal pad from China/Hong Kong as quite a few sellers have some with claimed conductivity of 3.2 W/mK, but this would obviously entail another delay.

Cheap aluminium heatsinks for the top of the heatspreader should obviously be easy to arrange though I'm kicking myself for throwing out some old motherboards last year - no doubt I could have cannibalised them for some small heatsinks!

[Kyrie]

Here is my cheap (less than 10$) and simple mod of my dead Pipo X7 (X7S bios flashing). It is about 40 °C at idle. 65 °C with 30 min AIDA64 (all stress tests enabled, except HDD). And it is only 69 °C with LinX (1,3 GB RAM for test) for 15 mins.








AIDA64 results http://freaktab.com/forum/tv-player-...714#post493714