Parallella Community

Great! That's exactly what I want!

That still requires removing the caps. The other alternative I've considered is putting aluminium risers above each chip and the heatsink on top, to clear the caps; I think it would be easier than cutting/drilling the heatsink.
I'll do that if we don't get more information about the cap removal possibility.

Cheers,
-- Alberto

Fitted the AB Open Parallella case this evening, would recommend it for non-cluster Parallella setups (note the built-in fan):
http://shop.abopen.com/

I gave it a try without removing the capacitor; instead I drilled a well for it in the base of the heatsink and covered its sides with tape to avoid shorting the capacitor if it slides sideways.

That hole is exactly in the right place. If it was around twice as big I could have used the standard clip, but anyway there is no hole for the opposite side of the heatsink.

heatsink-alignment.jpg (52.61 KiB) Viewed 24235 times

heatsink-general-view.jpg (91.03 KiB) Viewed 24235 times

You can see the capacitor peeking from under the heatsink in between the other two. The clip is held in place by pressure from the top cover.

heatsink-clip.jpg (56.16 KiB) Viewed 24235 times

The result is not great. It still needs a fan which brings down the temperature immediately as you switch it on.

My advice is not to bother until next version when the caps go away, just use a fan in this one.

Gold Standard!!

(Just need a Parallella sticker to fit on top).

tery

Great!

I've removed that heatsink, just realizing that I should have paid attention to the thermal image from the Kickstarter page:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ad ... sts/703717

You can see that there are two small chips north and south of the Epiphany that get quite hot, and one of them was under the heatsink without touching it. I have the fan blowing from that side so some air was getting there, but I suspect that it was worse than having the whole area open with the air flowing freely over it.
The image I had in mind was this other one, but it's for the Gen0 board, not the Gen1:
http://s.radar.oreilly.com/wp-files/8/2 ... 00x232.jpg

I might have been transferring heat from the ZINQ to the Epiphany, which is probably as bad an idea as it sounds.

There is another problem: the ZINQ chip is slightly taller than the Epiphany. I had adjusted it with a piece of aluminium foil slightly thicker than the kind used for packaging food, plus a thin layer of Arctic MX-2 thermal grease, but then the HDMI chip is again a little bit taller than the ZINQ, so there is no way to have it completely level unless you start piling risers or thermal pads.
(Edit: ZYNQ and Epiphany are level as far as I can see. The one tilting the old heatsink was the HDMI chip)

I've put now a different heatsink similar to the original but 20x30x30mm big that rests only on the ZINQ and touches the back of the Ethernet plug. The temperature with the same fan on, but without the top side because it won't fit, is a couple of degrees lower: 45C to 43C. I don't know the ambient temperature but it's a warm day.

With the fan blowing I can touch the Epiphany without issue, it feels hot but it's no problem keeping the fingertip on it even after it has been computing things for a while.

So again, if you are thinking about doing this, don't.

Can you send the link to the old schematic. I thought we had purged all old copies.
Thanks,
Andreas

The most up to date schematic is at parallella.org/docs and is dated Jan 2nd 2014.(except for first sheet which is labeled Dec 30th, 2013)
Andreas