We all know that the uconsole dissipates heat from the back of the handheld by going through a super thick thermal pad. I knew that the thermal pad was a bad idea but didn’t know how much (or how to solve it.)
I found a device called a “CM4 Adapter, Interface Protection Adapter Board for Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 Lite/eMMC, Physical Protection for Frequent Plugging and Unplugging of CM4 Socket” (that’s the listing name on amazon) or " Protection Adapter Board for Raspberry Pi CM4, for frequent plugging" (the listing title on pishop.us) which is basically a board with a male CM4 port on one side and a female on the other. It lifts the CM5 but still fits.
The good news is that it fits and gives good pressure to a 0.5mm thermal pad! I may even replace it with thermal putty. The heat is going directly from the cm5 into the back of the case and my temperatures went down from "70C and throttling with two incidents of hard shutdown) to “55C max, while GCC compiling box86.”
Right? The problem was obvious (the thermal pad wasn’t conducting heat fast enough out of the cpu so turned into a hot spot) but the SOLUTION was unexpected. I don’t even remember why I bought the CM4 riser from Waveshare. I stumbled across it again after my CM5 heat problems and thought “Why not?”
What I would really love is a board just like this, except it has breakout pads or ribbon cable connectors for some of the CM4/CM5 lanes that aren’t available to the uconsole board. Now that we know the board will physically fit, we can design other boards with better features.
I did use washers on every corner (between uconsole riser and the CM4 adapter, and then the cm4 adapter and the CM5) and everything seems plenty stable.
I hope it helps you and more people. I don’t know if others will get the same results I am getting, but it’d be nice to see such a simple solution to a dramatic heat problem.
Also, knowing that this riser physically fits will allow uconsole accessory developers to use sandwiched boards like this to tap into unused cm4/cm5 features.
This worked great and fixed my issues, though I replaced the pad that was directly touching the CM5 to be some thermal-paste instead, since it was bending out the back-pannel by just the tiniest amount.
Great to hear! Oh yes absolutely get rid of that winter coat of a thermal pad that came with the uConsole if you use a riser. I am using a 0.5mm pad I think. Maybe 1.0? I have some thermal putty that I may use. Still considering it.
Epoxy? Like cementing my CM5 to the backside of my the inside of my uConsole? That would work exactly once, then you open up the uConsole and it tears out the CM5.
