Rock Pi X Heat Sink Install

#21

I’m going to have to say that’s a manufacturing defect, unfortunately…

#22

Are you sure that you are using correct screws (that goes inside hearsink) for the front part? (Where usb type c is)

#23

yes, I tightened the 4 screws inside the heatsink using the ones provided in the package, and the 4 screws above the board. They can’t make the board touch the heatsink.

#24

Yeah I think it is :frowning:

#25

Hello Team RockPi (X)
Please create an official heatsink for RockPi X and have it pre-installed with a fan option.
Without that, it will be difficult to consider using it in commercial type of applications
Today Raspberry Pi has launched an official fan and heat sink!

#26

…you mean acrylic case with noise fan?

#28

hi
not an acrylic case, the board itself should be sold with a factory tested heat sink. one cannot use the board without a heat sink anyway?
In our case, for one use case as a controller example, we will be connecting the 40 pin to a base board which will have PoE power, digital inputs and relay outputs. the whole unit is then put in a DIN rail enclosure

#29

I think the official heat sink is pretty good. I only know him from the RP 4b and not from the RP X, but he does a very good job there. Since it’s the same concept, it should be just as efficient on the RP X. With a small fan connected to the GPIO connector, it’s a good team.

#30

Thank you Ron, good to know

RPi X should consider pre-installing the heatsink and have it as a standard SKU.

The heat sink can be installed and tested much better in a factory setting than one trying to a DIY job.

Personally I think installing the heatsink properly is very important. Done incorrectly leads to all kinds of problems later.

#31

My very personal opinion on the pre-installation of the heat sink:
Not a good idea, these are developer boards and, especially in commercial use, these are often built into special housings or something similar. The heat sinks would then always have to be dismantled and would be unnecessary waste.
I think it’s better that they are available separately, only the thermal pads should be included instead of thermal paste. The pads would be able to compensate for small deviations, as mentioned at the beginning of this thread, which a paste cannot.

But that’s just my opinion that always thinks a little about our environment. I’m not an active environmentalist, but I try to avoid unnecessary things.

#32

Hi @KrisP, I just wonder how are you going to control the 40 GPIO pins.

#33

We have a base board which will connect to the RPi X or similar boards

Petr, I can soon share the design, if you wish - the base board is a 108x108 or 108x158 which can fit in a DIN std case.
We have 3 stacked/4 board design - a top level has 2 boards - one for led indicators - other for PoE - the middle is the cpu/carrier board - the bottom is the base board. The PoE and the base boards are designed, so that they can be changed depending on the requirements for power and number of inputs/outputs. The design also allows for a data-bus and power-bus at the bottom, so that you can daisy-chain additional relay or i/o boards which can run on the same RPi X controller

Ron, your point is a good one for most of the use cases. However if ti can be similar to the industrial NUC from Intel, which comes with the heatsink preinstalled. So all one has to do is snap the board on to your design.

#34

But on the software side, can you program the GPIO pins of a Rock Pi X running Windows?

#35

yes, absolutely

we are using cross-platform .NET 5 and for additional gpio’s we are using expander - for e.g. all the led status indicators are driven by that

even if you run Linux on the device, you should be able to access and control all the gpio’s with the .NET 5 compiled libs

#36

I just received my RPX today and installed the standoffs and screws, and I can see light between the heatsink and the chips, using the supplied paste. Yes, the standoffs are screwed into the heatsink. In fact, one standoff is now stripped because I was making sure they were tight. The screws are screwed in tightly to the standoffs. This is not a one-off thing as seems to be the dismissive tone of some in this thread. This is a huge issue. Frankly, I’m tempted to turn the heatsink upside down and place the ribbed edge onto the chips to see if that makes a difference. (edit: Well, that won’t work because the heat sink has a “drop-down” section that is supposed to rest on the chips. Lovely.)

#37

Hey, I did have the same problem. But I solved mine with screws from my arduino acrylic case, it fits perfectly. The problem is the standoffs are longer than the contact surface height.