@blondu It makes perfect sense that connections only go halfway in the X16 socket, because it’s a X8 (8-lane) PCI connector installed into an X16 socket (made for 16-lane PCI).
If the PCI-to-OCuLink has coords halfway, it means it is connected to 8 lanes.
No it’s quite less than half way, for me it matches the length of an x4 connector.
Waiting for the AI PC Development Kit, it’s on its way!
Also solves the need for two M2 slots for two systems.
Yes, I found their low-profile PCIe-M2 adapter very nice. It’s even thinner than the one I modified myself for my macchiatobin, because the M2 connector is placed so that the SSD goes over the PCIe connector. And this will indeed permit you to have two M2 in the same machine and without changing the form factor.
The only thing is that is condemns an x8 slot for only x4. The top would be to have a second M2 x4 that would support an FPC cable to an auxiliary connector but if the bus doesn’t support bifurcation, a PCIe bridge would be needed, and a Gen4 x8 to 2x4 might not be cheap at all. Or we could have a 10/25 or 40G NIC + M2 adapter on the same board, but that wouldn’t fit in such a small form factor!
The problem occurs when I want to use the video card and the second SSD. I use two operating systems: Fedora 41 and Windows 11.
The PCIe x16 to Oculink adapter board we made is x4, this is because Oculink x8 connector is much wider, you can check:
https://www.amphenol-cs.com/product-series/oculink.html?page=1
What type of cable is used: SFF8611 or type?
From the construction of the cable and the plug, it can be seen that it is x4.
I ordered an Expc Oculink Gpu Dock until I get your AI PC Development Kit and I will be able to test the Oculink port.
I don’t know if it will work.
The AI PC Development Kit arrived and I installed it.
It is very silent and the temperature rises to 60 degrees Celsius at the most at the LAN chip. I encountered two problems, one when installing the screw on the motherboard in the area of the Oculink socket I could not install it (it does not fit next to the adapter socket and cannot be threaded). And the second is the wireless card antennas I do not know where to put them, the casing is metal.
Otherwise it behaves well and the design is beautiful.
@willy What millimeter dimensions does your copper plate have exactly?
So after adding that copper plate and thermal grease below and on top of it, the O6 has nice cooling and noise properties, no configuration needed?
What about taping some air vent holes on the bottom of the fan, did you keep that tape, why?
If you have some purchase URL (on Aliexpress Taobao Amazon Teemu etc.) for the copper plate please share.
It’s really not convenient to disassemble it all, so I restarted from the photos to take the measures. On this page, there’s a high-resolution photo of the board: https://docs.radxa.com/en/orion/o6/hardware-design/hardware-interface
I’m getting 965 pixels for 75mm spacing between holes. The die is 214px * 203px hence 16.7 * 15.77mm, and the inner space covering it is about 278px hence 21.6mm. On the photo above my pad is slightly too large, maybe 22mm. I think you should take 20x20mm and you’ll be fine. And it was 1mm thick BTW.
In my case, no config needed, though I slowed down the fan a little bit at rest (echo 15 > /sys/…/pwm) because I was hearing a faint buzz in my office that was attracting my attention (I’m extremely sensitive to fans and recurring noises). I also noticed that once it starts running faster due to temperature, it slows down at the default PWM speed which is a bit higher than 15, maybe 20 or so, so some times after running a build on it, I’m thinking “what’s this humm? ah yes of course” and I just ssh to it and echo 15 again. To be honest, 99.99% of the people won’t hear it at all.
I didn’t find it logical to suck hot air from the SoC to blow it through the heat sink, so I preferred to leave the tape. I have not made any measurement to compare with/without. Maybe it has no effect, maybe it’s counter productive, but the combined changes worked for me.
Unfortunately I don’t, I salvaged it from a larger one a long time ago (it has cut traces on two sides) and I had to flatten it a little bit (copper bends easily and when you pick it from your salvage tray, it’s rarely completely flat).
I think you can really take any copper pad of 1mm thick and around 20x20mm. Often they are sold in bags of 3, 5 or 10, and are aiming at GPUs, northbridges etc.
The thing I have not tried was to file the threaded holes to diminish their height and make it possible to press more on the SoC. I think it could be sufficient, but most likely the copper pad helps here by being larger than the SoC and spreading the heat into a larger area on the heat sink which likely has a moderately high thermal resistance due to not being very thick metal. But we’re talking about optimization and not something necessary IMHO.