That looks great! For the 1" thermal tape, would something like this work? Or do you have better suggestions?
That’s the exact tape I used.
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could you include nvme and usb 3 support on that board?
I’m still running a CM4 but recently came accross the LMG Phase Change Thermal Pad video.
60mmx60mm is $20USD on their store and should work for several applications. It may be overkill but possibly worth testing. It’s 0.25mm thickness as well, so may help alleviate and provide more margin for some of the back cover pressure mentioned in this thread vs the 0.5mm thermal pads being used.
Down the road if I make the upgrade and source a CM5, riser, and some of this PCM I’ll take some temps and post an update.
I used the riser with the CM5 and 1mm pads on the chips. Due to the issue of this all pressing against the rear cover, I just added longer M4 hex bolts along with two thin M4 washers between the cover and case. There’s a 2mm gap all around, which I don’t mind. It’s not that noticeable and there’s no pressure on the components with the rear cover fitted any more. Not to mention the air flow improvement. Stressing the CPU to 100% never takes the temp too high to throttle or shut down any more.
I’m currently designing a 3D printed gasket to close the gap and see whether that makes a difference. Either that, or buy some gasket sheeting and cut my own to size.
So if I don’t want a riser how thick should the thermal pad be? I’d like to add a heat sink on the outside as well. I fear to break my cm5 as well if I get a riser just like how it happened to donwang.
How high does the riser lift the cm5?
Should I add thermal pad to other components as well like ram? Or maybe small copper heat sinks for those components that aren’t as high as the SoC.
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Welcome to the forum Tib.
The problem is the thermal pads need to be as thin as you can possibly get them. Thick pads are not efficient. The way I gauged how much of a gap there needs to be in order to prevent damage was trial and error…
I have the WaveShare board on the mainboard, the CM5 on top of that and the 1mm thermal pads on the chips. I put 4 M4 washers between the chassis and fitted the rear case. The thermal pad wasn’t touching the inside of the rear. I just removed one washer from each corner and as I lowered the case rear down, could feel the pads touching it inside.
Without the HackerGadgets antenna board fitted I was using 3 washers and a 10mm M4 hex bolt on each corner of the case rear, which gave me an almost perfect 2mm gap all the way around. The thermal pads were touching the case rear and the heat transfer kept the temps way down. When the pads don’t touch the case rear, it climbed to 80 degrees within a minute and shutdown every time when the CPU was put under stress.
Not very scientific, but it worked. It’s so hard to tell what the pressure on the boards is when you can’t see the case rear pressing against them.
The M2 heatsinks are a must for mine. They do make all the difference drawing the heat away from the chipset.
Sorry, typed all that and realised I’ve repeated a lot of what I said above. In my defense, it was a week ago and I’m old! 
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Thanks! That was very helpful.
I guess I’ll go with the riser then and get a 0.5mm thermal pad because I can stack them if I need to and that setup deals with the heat faster, makes sense a thick one wouldn’t deal with it as efficiently. Maybe I’ll get thermal paste as well if the cm5 SoC is near enough the case rear since it deals much better with heat than a thermal pad.
Will definitely get those heat sinks as well for the outside.
I’d rather avoid having to rise the whole rear case with washers because I’d have to put gasket paper around it to prevent things from going inside it.
Also maybe I’ll get a really thick thermal paste if there is too much space left.
I also wonder how much the heat spreads on the rear case so I know how big the heat sink should be so it gets all of it.
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even thin ones are absolute garbage: I had a bright idea to use thermopad in my laptop and had 70+ degrees vs 40+ on random paste.
there is some ‘phase shifting thermopad’ from Linus Tech Tips, but they are ultra thin and ultra expensive so I didn’t try.
Wow, thanks a lot. I will definitely go with a thermal paste then.
Yeah, thinner thermal pads are great for stacking and keeping control of how much you’re using.
Thermal paste may be more efficient, but if you’re a tinkerer, you are going to end up with a mess. One thing I’ve found myself doing repeatedly since getting the uConsole is removing and replacing the rear cover. Had I been using paste, it would have been spread all over the place 
I posted somewhere here a pic of some EVA foam board I cut into a gasket to give me 2mm clearance between the chassis and rear cover without leaving a gap open to the air. It worked really well and took 5 minutes to sort.
The rear case will get warm/hot, even with two M2 heatsinks. Once the CPU is running at a high percentage, all that heat will be transferred to the outside and you’ll definitely feel it if you are holding the uConsole. The heat around the battery cover is much lower though, so I’m not worried about the batteries getting hot. The uConsole will be great in winter as a hand warmer!
I was actually thinking of adding the thermal paste later after I know I wont be opening it again.
Also I’m a beginner with all this and I don’t know if I can use unprotected batteries in it or do they need to be protected ones like INR18650-30Q 3000mah.
I think I’ll maybe try doing different things to reduce heat, starting with the least messiest options first and if it doesn’t work I’ll go to the next one.
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The more I think about this the more the gasket paper with the 3x m4 washers make sense to me. Even tho its more work I will go with that. Thanks!
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Here’s the thread showing the EVA gasket I made in case it helps…
Wow that is so awesome, looks very neat.
I will save that post and use it if I don’t change my mind for something else until my uConsole arrives.
Did buy it yesterday after all, silver without the core. Order nr: 417xx. Hope I wont wait too long like others.
And thanks!
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I’m always interested in other solutions and what everyone else is doing, so would like to know if you come up with something different. It’s one of the draws of the uConsole for me, all that messing around with the setup and just tinkering.
I have an order for another uConsole with 37xxx from April. It might still take a while yet 
I see, did you order yours with the core? Black?
I asked support since I bought one with 4g and one just wifi and they said they almost caught up so that means theres almost no delay for that. They did say 90 days for it to ship but they always say that.
Also I just found out that the 4g isnt compatible with the cm5? If thats the case I will contact them and say I will get only the wifi version.
I work with copper and have a rolling mill for jewelry so I will try to make a spiral with thick copper wire and put it through the rolling mill to flatten it so it has good contact, then put thermal pads between it and the SoC module without a riser and if its too big inside I can just flatten the copper spiral again with the rolling mill so it has perfect contact with the rear case + heatsink.
I also thought about putting a copper plate inside with the same size as the cm5 module so it doesnt touch anything else because I dont know how much space there is. 55x40mm copper plate to cover whole cm5 inside and touches the rear case. If I knew space inside id put a bigger plate.
Also found Aluminium Heat Sink for outside, 100 x 35 x 10 mm. Saw other people using 100 x 25 x 10 mm. So this one should be even better since its much taller.
I did find copper heatsinks but they are ridiculously expensive, 17 eur for 1 piece that is only 70 x 20 x 10mm/2.75 x 0.79 x 0.39 inch. So I’d have to buy 2. I’ll stick with the aluminum one.
Thanks for the info. Using copper will probably be a great solution for heat issues, especially in addition to something external too.
Mine is the black version with no core and I believe if I’d ordered the silver version, it would have been sent out quicker. That’s anecdotal though, so pinch of salt needed
I have a thin copper sheet that was sent with an adapter board I ordered with my uConsole. It is meant for the DevTerm, but I could cut it down and fit it to the inside of the rear cover. I’d forgotten about that sheet. Small, thin Copper sheets are only a few pounds online and I toyed with using that before getting the M2 heatsinks. So many ways to do it. I am quite happy with the max 60 degrees I’m seeing now.
Another tip…whenever I re-fit the rear cover, I leave the bolts only partially tightened. I then execute a script which runs the CPU up to 100% until you quit. I can see the internal temps climbing really quickly and keep turning the bolts around 1/4 turn until things start to level off and eventually drop. It is an easy way to determine whether the thermal pads are touching the case and (hopefully) to prevent pressure on the boards.
I’ll measure the inside of the panel that sits over the boards when I take the cover off next and will let you know the dimensions.
The heatsinks I use are 70x22x6mm and are available on Amazon (I’m in the UK) here:
I have two of them on the case rear and they fit nicely.
Wow thanks for the tip, thats really useful to know.
Im in germany so im buying these: sourcing map Aluminium Heat Sink, 100 x 35 x 10 mm Radiator Heatsink Grid Shape Heat Sink Cooling Fins Cooler for IC MOSFET Component: Amazon.de: Computer & Accessories
One should be enough for the rear, even tho its gonna cover some symbols its fine.
I see yours are 70mm long, I think my 100mm long ones should fit based on the rear picture of the uConsole I saw.
And yea I dont know how big the copper can be that I can put on the SoC of the cm5 without it touching anything else. And I just remembered that the rear cover itself has different dimensions (its not flat everywhere) so I shouldnt go into the direction where the batteries are. So would need information of the inside of the rear case, the upper deep part. That way I can get the exact copper plate and just put it directly on the whole upper rear case where its deep. If the plate is too thick I can always polish it to make it shorter. And I see in some pictures that the USB would be in the way, so I would need to make the copper shorter there.
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I opted for several layers of the Arctic brand thermal pad you recommended + a 2mm rectangle of copper stock sandwiched between. On the exterior of the cover, I chose a very thin copper heatsink instead of one of the taller aluminum heatsinks.
In my home which is generally 22c-23c, my cm5 underclocked to 2100mhz tops out around 54c under 100% CPU load and hovers around 40c at idle.
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