I guess it depends on how good your heat transfer is? You’re making a shim sandwich:
CPU - thermal ransfer material (paste/pad) - shim - paste/pad - back of uConsole.
With this solution, it raises up the whole board to the level of the uConsole and that means it’s only ONE transfer through paste, not two.
That said, you could solder a shim directly to the back case of the uConsole and try it that way. That would evel allow you to get creative and spread out the heat before it tries to dissipate. Steal a heatpipe from a laptop
even though mine had a expected temperature, I’m not sure if I can fit this board because the termal pad I have is very thick and at least in my case dont have space to compress more the cm5 to the thermal pad. When closing it I can feel how it put preassure to the cm5
Maybe my pad is thicker or am I missing something?
yes but that’s my point, at least the version of uConsole (2025) I have works with cm5 and stock thermal pad, and the temperature is fine, so I dont understand why to use the board to lift the CM, previous versions came with a thinner termal pad? that’s my question
I switched to using the cheapest Thermal Grizzly putty (the pink stuff) and have no problems and excellent thermal performance, though a bit of a mess when I installed my usb board. Putty was way easier to clean than paste would’ve been.
This is still a low power raspberry pi, after all.
It’s better to go a little thicker than too thin. The board is still mounted on a spring-loaded ZIF angled connector with retention clips so a slightly thicker thermal pad will just push the board down a bit. My first experience with a 0.5mm thermal pad seemed to work, but I may have been mistaken on the actual thickness of that pad because others are reporting great success with thicker pads. My thermal putty doesn’t seem to be squishing down to 0.5mm, but again - spring-loaded board.
Could you help me understand, I’m confused about all of this.
From what I understand, you’ve found an adapter board that has the secondary advantage of pushing the core module up a bit, so that you can use a thinner thermal pad for contact? But now, you’re also saying you found a thermal putty and you advise to keep it thicker. Meanwhile, other people are claiming their thicker thermal pads are adequate.
If you’re now using a thicker putty, and other people are claiming they have found functional thick thermal pads (I think 1.5mm was mentioned) then what is the point of the riser to begin with? Or have I misunderstood entirely?
Are we saying it’s better in theory, or better in that it is necessary to achieve acceptable temps? I’m really questioning the threshold and the inconsistencies between different user reports on the issue.
