Hi all, today I used rsync to copy some music files from an attached USB drive to my NVME M2 SSD drive and noticed the Nanopi was getting very hot. I have it housed in an official metal case with a fan. The fan didn't come on despite the temperature of 80 + , the case was very hot to the touch. I turned it off in the end in case it got damaged. Any suggestions appreciated. The board is running the latest Buster from here.

 

 

Quote

running the latest Buster

We have multiple kernel branches available. Always provide armbianmonitor -u

5 hours ago, pkfox said:

despite the temperature of 80 + ,

Hi. This is normal with mainline. It is overclocked to 2Ghz on the big cores vs 1.8Ghz and 1.5Ghz small cores vs 1.4Ghz. So it does get hot.
But there's a safety that lowers your clockspeeds when above 80°C. This might be very hot to touch, but the device can handle it.
You can lower your temperature by lowering the clockspeed. Go to "sudo armbian-config" -> system -> CPU
At default clocks of 1.8Ghz/1.4Ghz it doesn't overheat in the metal case. 

There is also a script somewhere to use your fan. I connect my fan to the 5V pins on my GPIO's. This way it's nearly soundless. On 12V the thing makes quite some noise. 
Best to view your temperature contantly. Either open a 2nd terminal with htop (ctrl + alt + Fx), or like me put a temp control on the taskbar. 
Add a generic monitor -> properties -> command -> "cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp"

Also better to use the legacy images for now. Mainline is only better for GPU acc, all other tasks are better on the legacy kernel images.

Thanks Nico - what kernel should I use ? also if you can point me to the script that controls the fan it would be great

Sorry if this is an obvious question, but did any heatsinks or thermal pads come with it, and did you use thermal paste?

 

I got the other heatsink when I got my NanoPi M4 (V1), the huge one that you could buy with it. It didn't come with the acrylic top then. I found that my NanoPi M4 was overheating like crazy until I thermal pasted the thermal pad in there to improve contact with the main heatsink piece.

15 minutes ago, redbeardt said:

I got the other heatsink when I got my NanoPi M4 (V1), the huge one that you could buy with it. It didn't come with the acrylic top then. I found that my NanoPi M4 was overheating like crazy until I thermal pasted the thermal pad in there to improve contact with the main heatsink piece.

I replaced the thermal pad with a copper shim and thermal paste. It indeed performs a lot better than with the thermal pad. Those things ain't that good.

 

 

On 8/6/2020 at 2:18 PM, pkfox said:

Thanks Nico - what kernel should I use ? also if you can point me to the script that controls the fan it would be great

Sorry, I only now see your question.
I think this is it.

 

On 8/8/2020 at 12:34 AM, NicoD said:

I replaced the thermal pad with a copper shim and thermal paste. It indeed performs a lot better than with the thermal pad. Those things ain't that good.

T

 

Sorry, I only now see your question.
I think this is it.

Thanks Nico - nice little C program he wrote there

On 8/8/2020 at 12:34 AM, NicoD said: