A bunch of pictures


Well, an insulated, adhesive standard piece of the PGS is 60 USD... so not cheap. No idea how much it'll change when mass ordering.
Alibaba has cheap ones as well: http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/pyrolytic-graphite.html

Even if we'll take a 50$ per square meter sheet it's not that expensive.

I suppose it'll last for more than 20 Pyras (5$ per unit).

If it'll last for 30 Pyras it'll be 2$ per unit for the cooling.

Pretty good price I think.
 
Well, an insulated, adhesive standard piece of the PGS is 60 USD... so not cheap. No idea how much it'll change when mass ordering.
These ones are 22.24 EUR for a single piece (115x90mm) of 1600 W/mK PGS:

http://www.digikey.de/product-detail/de/EYG-A091203V/P14467-ND/2499990

Not quite the right dimension (should be ~140x80mm, right?), and no idea if they get much cheaper in larger quantities.

But it does not have to be actual PGS. There are far cheaper things that are probably still good enough. For example this one:

http://www.digikey.de/product-detail/de/T62-150-150-0.13-0/1168-1411-ND/3042240

is 'only' 400 W/mK (still better than aluminium or copper) and it costs 4.29 EUR for a single piece of 150x150mm, 2.57 EUR per piece if you buy 100, 2.18 EUR if you buy 1000.

This one:

http://www.digikey.de/product-detail/de/T68-1A-120-90-0.04/1168-1753-ND/3460910

is 1600 W/mK (as good as PGS) and for a 120x90mm piece you pay 14.65 EUR for a single piece, or 8.85 EUR if you buy 250.
 
Sounds nice.

Thought about plastic mixed with electromagnetic insulator thing.

Maybe there's also some thermal mixing ?
 
Will there be an opportunity for ED to actually test heat buildup in the currently planned case?

I am thinking once the fully populated prototype PCBs are available, it should be possible to build these into a prototype case and test heat buildup in actual use, before finalizing case design. Or am I wrong?
 
Those fans are absolutely adorable :­3

Question: When you think about possible heat issues and cooling solutions, are you taking into account the fact that 2 years down the road or what have you, we may have a different SoC available for the Pyra, such as that Mediatek(i believe) octacore beast? In such a tiny and compact area that SoC might produce too much heat, which may require a completely different cooling solution than the one you devise for the currently planned SoC.
 
are you taking into account the fact that 2 years down the road or what have you, we may have a different SoC available for the Pyra, such as that Mediatek(i believe) octacore beast?
Actually down the road we may have something with more performance, yet run cooler than today's SoCs.. New semiconductor technology like fin-fets may make a huge difference once it gets more widely adopted..   
 
are you taking into account the fact that 2 years down the road or what have you, we may have a different SoC available for the Pyra, such as that Mediatek(i believe) octacore beast?
Actually down the road we may have something with more performance, yet run cooler than today's SoCs.. New semiconductor technology like fin-fets may make a huge difference once it gets more widely adopted..   

True but they also might not. And in any case, it would be nice to have a cooling situation that could be easily adapted with minimal redesign just in case don't you think? ^_­^

Or how else am I supposed to play WindWaker on the go without my hands melting off :­D
 
As playing wind waker is a stationary target, once you acheieve it, you are always able to. The efficiency of newer SoCs go up, so you will be able to do more on the same thermal envelope. Even if its not the capability of the SoC.

With that said, it seems like graphite is really nice in transporting heat away from the sandwich, instead of storing heat there, because its hard to offset heat right between the PCBs.
 
Keep in mind that future SoCs will also be designed for fanless applications (phones, tablets).
 
Unless battery technology would suddenly make an order-of-magnitude improvement (unlikely), a handheld device battery will not store much more than 25Wh anytime soon. That means that if you want a battery life of at least 5 hours, you cannot generate more than 5 Watt of heat.

Such considerations put an upper bound on the amount of cooling needed, even with future SoC modules. It's not like anyone is going to put a 100 Watt desktop gaming GPU in there or something, even if you could make it fit.
 
With scaling each target isnt stationary, its dynamic. Who wouldnt want to cook food on the back of their tablet given the chance.

And lets not kid ourselves, people would heat up their internal organs to have faster loading times.
 
I've burnt myself on an external radiator from a laptop that fan burnt out. Not a myth, and fear mongering because it hurt.
Night, meet day.

Your laptop, especially if it also has a dedicated graphics chip (Nvidia?) is going to generate something in the range of 25-30W.  It will have a set of heat pipes going from the CPU and graphics chips straight to a block of copper fins that are supposed to have a fan running on them.  The objective of that design is to move heat TO that spot and dissipate it very quickly (fans) from a very small surface area (small fin block).

The designs I/we have been proposing are for dissipating <5W of heat over a broad surface area.

Do you really not understand or are you just trolling?

To much text here, to few pix, more pix guys!!!  :D

I only have the Pandora case files and not the right PCB measurements so it's just an sketch of what we may have. Size and position of the CPU daughter board may vary, same for the distance to the mainboard. but maybe you still can get an idea of the space and the room that is there. So, actualy it's not much. Above the CPU there is maybe room for an thin copper/alu heatspreader (under the mainboard).

More room would be the innter bottom of the battery area, that's where the underside of the daughter PCB is near. mayber some heatspreading materials could be included there. So the small PCB has touch to heatsinks above and under it#s position.
Your pictures show a good heat sink position, but fails to actually get the heat OUT of the unit.  Extend it right out the front of the unit under the SD card slots.  Bend it down over the lower face then back to the battery door.  (My solution.)
 
Well, an insulated, adhesive standard piece of the PGS is 60 USD... so not cheap. No idea how much it'll change when mass ordering.
These ones are 22.24 EUR for a single piece (115x90mm) of 1600 W/mK PGS:

http://www.digikey.de/product-detail/de/EYG-A091203V/P14467-ND/2499990

Not quite the right dimension (should be ~140x80mm, right?), and no idea if they get much cheaper in larger quantities.

But it does not have to be actual PGS. There are far cheaper things that are probably still good enough. For example this one:

http://www.digikey.de/product-detail/de/T62-150-150-0.13-0/1168-1411-ND/3042240

is 'only' 400 W/mK (still better than aluminium or copper) and it costs 4.29 EUR for a single piece of 150x150mm, 2.57 EUR per piece if you buy 100, 2.18 EUR if you buy 1000.

This one:

http://www.digikey.de/product-detail/de/T68-1A-120-90-0.04/1168-1753-ND/3460910

is 1600 W/mK (as good as PGS) and for a 120x90mm piece you pay 14.65 EUR for a single piece, or 8.85 EUR if you buy 250.
OK, from that article these materials work miracles when transporting heat along their length (pipe/transport), but don't do such a great job of adsorbing heat (sink).

Another Design idea:

1.  use a small 10x10 or 20mm X 20mm? copper or aluminum pad to lay/mount/adhesive directly on the SoC to act as an immediate heat sink/spreader.

2.  Lay/mount/adhesive one end of a sheet of this material to the heat sink.

3.  Route the other end down around the battery to the battery door.

4.  Make the battery door (simple part) out of anodized aluminum.

5.  Interface/lay/mount/adhesive the other end of the miracle material to the battery door to act as an additional sink/spreader/radiator.

I think that the thin aluminum sheet through and out the front is likely more practical, but those new materials are wicked.
 
I've burnt myself on an external radiator from a laptop that fan burnt out. Not a myth, and fear mongering because it hurt.
Night, meet day.

Your laptop, especially if it also has a dedicated graphics chip (Nvidia?) is going to generate something in the range of 25-30W. It will have a set of heat pipes going from the CPU and graphics chips straight to a block of copper fins that are supposed to have a fan running on them. The objective of that design is to move heat TO that spot and dissipate it very quickly (fans) from a very small surface area (small fin block).


The designs I/we have been proposing are for dissipating <5W of heat over a broad surface area.


Do you really not understand or are you just trolling?
Just because someone doesn't believe you or agree with your nonsense doesn't mean they're trolling.

What is it again you do for a living? You sound extremely sure of yourself to the point of telling people they are wrong.


Maybe there's a reason there's no solution in the wild like the one you're suggesting. A first for a mobile device.


How many of these cooling solutions have you designed? Degree in thermal dynamics or something like that? I feel your wrong also, but I'm not going to talk down to you...
 
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He's right though, although accusations of trolling are a bit rude. The laptop is designed to funnel all the heat to that one point, and the fan blows it away. The Pyra will be designed to do the opposite, spread the heat out as much as possible.
 
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I read some netbooks use the keyboard to spread the heat, but I also read Intel (probably) has a patent on this :-(
Anyone worried the Pyra will receive patent claims and such?
 
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