I just got my x86 in the mail yesterday and I was a bit surprised to see how hot it gets (it idles at around 70 c). so my main question is if this normal? Do I need get a fan for the heatsink?
What OS are you running on it? It's possible that the power profile is set to high performance and never letting it clock down or turn off cores not in use.... Check and make sure it's set to balanced or something like that. Or, yeah, get a fan if you aren't comfortable with the temps... Never hurts.
It's a passive cooling so depending on the work load, that can be a factor on the temp. The temperature of the room can also be a factor as well.
According to manual, heatsink temperature must never go above 60 C. Quote from manual: "Temperatures indicated are the maximum temperature that the heatspreader / heatsink can reach in any of its parts. This means that it is customer ’ s responsibility to use any passive cooling solution along with an application-dependent cooling system, capable to ensure that the heatspreader / heatsink temperature remains in the range above indicated."
I've recorded 87°C core temp today, as delivered and in free air. A fan should really have been delivered standard, the board as it is can not be used at its published specs. That's just BS, why supply a heatsink at all then if it's not suitable anyway.
I agree, the on board heat sink seems to be wholly inadequate for 6W TDP. Intel are quoting 6W at Base Frequency (not Burst): "Thermal Design Power (TDP) represents the average power, in watts, the processor dissipates when operating at Base Frequency with all cores active under an Intel-defined, high-complexity workload."
To the best of my knowledge, the manual refers to the heatsink when it specifies the temperature limit, not to the core processor. You measured the temperature of the processor, did you? I wanted to reasurre you anyway that we have made tests in a climatic chamber.
Manual refers to any part of heatsink, including parts which touch processor - so this means that surface temperature of processor must not ever reach 60 C, according to manual.
The maximum thermal junction temp for the Braswell SoC is 90 degrees celsius. The processor will automatically throttle so it will not reach that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junction_temperature
Yup, but it looks like at full CPU load the temp difference between CPU and heatsink is < 10°C. The CPU starts throttling once a core hits 86°C (when there is no GPU use).
It's not true that two bodies have the same temperature just because they are in touch: there is the thermal resistance to keep in account. So, if the heat sink is 60°C, depending on the thermal resistance and the generated power, the CPU could be quite more than 60°C. The important is just that CPU temperature doesn't reach 90°C, and this is guaranteed if the heatsink temperature is lower than or equal 60°C. In our tests with environment temperature up to 60°C with full CPU load stress test (100%) the CPU never reached 90° C.
Of course it will never reach 90° since it protects itself and throttles down, to a crawl if necessary. BUT the point is you then don't get the expected performance, i.e. the board doesn't perform to its specs without additional cooling.
FYI: Measured on my brand new UDOO-X86, Ubuntu 17.4, idling (a couple of top commands) using the sensors command: acpitz-virtual-0 Adapter: Virtual device temp1: +44.0°C (crit = +90.0°C) temp2: +44.0°C (crit = +125.0°C) coretemp-isa-0000 Adapter: ISA adapter Core 0: +45.0°C (high = +90.0°C, crit = +90.0°C) Core 1: +45.0°C (high = +90.0°C, crit = +90.0°C) Core 2: +46.0°C (high = +90.0°C, crit = +90.0°C) Core 3: +46.0°C (high = +90.0°C, crit = +90.0°C) Room temp is 20°C
I just got my board 2 days ago. I'm going to install win 10 on it. Anyone knows if I'm going to buy a CPU fan from a local vendor, what's the voltage?
It is 12V, for more connection details see the user manual (PDF) that you can download here http://www.udoo.org/docs-x86/Introduction/Introduction.html The fan connector is described on page 33.
See the manual: http://download.udoo.org/files/UDOO_X86/Doc/UDOO_X86_MANUAL_Rel.1.0.pdf page 33: 3.3.11 FAN connector Depending on the usage model of UDOO x86, for critical applications/environments onUDOO x86 it is available a 3 - pin single line SMT connector for an external +12VDC FAN. The Connector is a type MOLEX 53261 71 or equivalent, with pinout shown in the table on the left. Mating connector: MOLEX 51021 - 0300 receptacle with MOLEX 50079 - 8000 female crimp terminals. Please be aware that the use of an external fan depends strongly on customer’s application/installation. FAN_POWER: +12V_A derived power rail for FAN. FAN_TACHO_IN: tachometric input from the FAN to the embedded microcontroller, +3.3V_S electrical level signal with 10kΩ pull-up resistor.
