Form the website I see there is no cooling fan like DevTerm have. And the A06 and CM4 both can get very hot with those A72 cores. Is there any measure to prevent overheating without compromising the performance?
Or is there a solution to add some even lower profile cooling fans in it and exhaust the hot air outside from expansion port slot? (btw I don’t want to give up LTE module for cooling fan, that’s why we need a extra lower profile fan)
I guess the only option to have a fan in it is cutting a hole to mount it, since there isn’t much space left at the backplane. So maybe the whole backplate can be used as a passive cooling solution with some thermal pads?
From what I’ve heard, the DevTerm’s fan was very loud so this will probably be better than that. AFAIK, there is a CPU heatsink which should help at least a little with cooling. I wouldn’t worry too much about it though. The Gameshell got pretty hot too.
The front and back panels are modular, I really hope they release a thicker back panel in the future which gonna compatible with the cooling fan and make the back thickness to be same.
I think the idea with these devices is: anything that you think could be improved upon, you are welcome to design and make your improvement as you see fit. I assume once its available for sale (not just pre-order) the 3D files will be available (as they are with DevTerm) and you will be able to design and make your own parts to suit your needs.
I highly doubt you can open a window on back plate and add fan without messing around its one piece aluminum.
However, you may can add a silicon heat press pad in between SoC module and back plate, make the back plate as a heatsink.
…Or you can make a new back plate, and break its aesthetics
With some good thermal pads between the SOC and the back this case becomes a passive heatsink. I already bought some Thermal Grizzly pads for this exact reason. I was also toying with the idea of pads between all the boards from the back of the CM4 under the SOC down to the bottom under the mobo so it can sink to the mid case and the ground planes in the other boards. This should be more than sufficient for passive cooling even heavy workloads.
Just received my A06 model, it also came with a thicc boi cooling pad.
And thermal performance is actually not bad. I did a stress test on CPU with maximum performance profile enabled (gearbox -s 6), maximum seen CPU temperature is around 72C. The backplate cooling is surely working.
