Is there any inbuilt cooling?

I am not seeing any passive or active cooling at all on this.
I wonder if I am missing something, and how thermal throttling is going to be handled.

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From the store page:

We are pleased to introduce all-metal construction that will bring beautiful texture and solidity while improving the efficiency of passive heat dissipation.

So im assuming some thermal pads will be used to fill the gap between the SOC and the case.

Buy your own thermal pads. And, thermal throttling? Definitely not on the CM4 unless you’re overclocking it, idk about the A06 or A04, but I doubt it.

sidenote: how does the A06’s performance compare to the rpi4?

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The A-06 core uses the RK3399 chip, which was RockChips flagship SBC CPU 4 years ago. And the RPi 4 came out around the same time as it. So, age wise they’re comparable. Powerwise, its pretty much a draw.
Geekbench 4 (not Geekbench 5) scores vary due to overclocking or underclocking. (the RPi 4 uses the same chip as the CM4 to be clear)
https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/search?utf8=âś“&q=Raspberry+Pi

ETA Prime testing multiple RK3399 SBC’s on the same Geekbench 4 tests

So as you can see from the single and multicore scores, the single core score is the same obviously because both have A72 cores, but the RK3399 AKA A-06 can get a somewhat higher multicore score with overclocking than the CM4 can with overclocking. Now, that’s the CPU scores. I don’t really know about the GPU scores. Or how other parts like the RAM compare.

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that is extremely detailed, thank you!

i bought the A06 for mine because i assumed it was the highest performance (i think i did some amount of research but it’s been months lol) and i can downclock it when necessary to get better battery life

can’t wait for this thing

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Yea yea, can’t wait to experiment with overclocking and battery life! I think I can get 6-8 hours battery life with the CM4 OC’d to 2ghz.
And of course to set up some emulators, see what kind of performance we can get with the CM4 vs the A-06, because I haven’t looked at how the GPU’s compare! I know they’re both capable of good 4K video playback.

Im not sure if it works the same on non x86 devices, but i usually use auto-cpufreq on all of my Linux laptops so that the CPU frequency dynamically ramps up/down based on demand, similar to how Windows works when in the “balanced” performance mode.

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essentially what i mean, yeah

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Just bought these 120mm x 20mm pack of 4 pads, Artic brand. When the uConsole arrives I’ll let you know how well they work. I think the thermal mass of the case will be enough to cool the CM4, as long as the CM4 isn’t running at max power for 5 or more minutes. I will keep you guys updated, maybe it’ll make the back uncomfortably hot or maybe not.

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you know ive just realized, you could easily 3D print out a custom backplate for the case with a hole and holder for a fan. Now, powering that fan would be the issue. Maybe a EE or someone good at soldering can figure out where you can solder the power and ground cables for the fan onto to get enough power for it.

I have the DevTerm with the A06 and run Grafana, Node Red and a Database server all at once … no discernible lag… or I can run a Software Defined Radio receiver on it again - no lag but it occasionally locks up (could be the SDR hardware) , also run Visual studio … Spyder IDE, etc… it’s quick…

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easy power is usually on usb… :smiley: Either go the safe route and use a usb cable, cut it open and solder the red & black wires to the fan, but then you lose the USB port.
Or solder the fan directly to the USB-A header’s power and ground pads / holes (the outer ones).

Since the fan draws so little current, there should be no noticeable voltage drop at all.
But I’d much rather just bridge the air-gap and use the chassis as a passive cooler / heatsink.

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