Rock 5 - Case + Cooling

Yes, Michael videos are quality content with some interesting ideas and for sure he is inspiring creator with expensive workshop that allows him to use materials that are not easily available to many of us :slight_smile: On this video - itā€™s just quick snap showing that itā€™s quite easy to change just few things and You can get almost same case for slightly bigger sbc, but in fact ROCK 5B is not rpi.
Each project has it own goals, time was key feature here, maybe some design line to put that next to rpi case, which BTW is now professionally manufactured now by pironman. For pi it was great idea and with few small addons, mainly LCD and massive cooling it become huge success.
ROCK5 version is not encouraging that much, radxa original case is compact and whole acts as passive heatsink - if You care about size then itā€™s just much better but also - nothing more can be extended here. On Michael case You can easily put big LCD, maybe some HAT with replaced heatsink (poe?), probably sata ssd, rtc and camera (why not?), ups? everything should fit inside that box :slight_smile: This would be complete project that all we hope to see in future :slight_smile:

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is there any good tutorial (prefer ā€œarticlesā€ to videos) on creating custom case using 3D printing? basically I want to learn how to create those STL files correctly, like what software to use? any things I need to be very careful of? I can use otherā€™s STL file here as baseline and modify? my plan is to create one that works with a 5" LCD + vertically mounted fanā€¦ I can create a stand to mount both using PMMA ā€œboardsā€, but thatā€™s not cool :stuck_out_tongue:

For what its worth there is an official aluminum case now, tho passive heat sink via the actual case lid and not supporting a fan

the kksb looks a bit more solid. no plastic end caps, tho i do realize if you have too much metal you will need external wifi/bt antenna so the plastic did make senseā€¦ ( i do have one of the ones from allnet. It does do the trick. )

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Very nice. I like the Power button construction :slight_smile:
Greetings

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My KKSB case arrived today. This thing is gorgeous. Nice thermal pad, rubber bumps for the bottom, fits together nicely. So tempting not to buy one for personal use now.

Excuse the wifi antennas lol.

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It really is ! I still havent ordered itā€¦ not sure if I will but I admitā€¦ its rock n roll baby! KKSB on Rad-a-Xa! :grinning:

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Only thing that could be better would be a door on the bottom. I donā€™t use anything on the bottom of the board, yet at least so not an issue for me but, would be nice

Well, quick note,

with the passive cooling, this thing gets HOT. Just brushed my finger on it plugging in a USB and wooooow.

Probably going to get a fan.

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I want to do something similar, but sadly a case for such use case is hard to find.

I might just end up buying a x86 nas build as we have so many arm hardware but rarely any case and accessories around it.

Been searching for almost 3 days now.

Iā€™m using x3 20-20-7mm copper heatsinks(aliexpress.com/item/1005004428388306.html) 2 for the ram chips it peaks at 59c on the stress test, before was 67c
8c lower might not seem like much but 5c likely doubles the lifespan of electronic chips

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I am using an alternative version of this now which is has more height to fit the bigger fan on the side, which now cools both CPU and NVME

I can upload 3d files on demand

one thing with heat, when iā€™m using the standard metal case, it can get very hot if you just leave it on a non metal surface

but if you flip it upside down (so the fins make contact with metal) and put it on something metallic like for instance 4-5 port usb drive bay , huge difference in heat

send it, i noticed the nvme here hovers around 70C which is double the temp i get with it installed on the desktop