We all Love gimmicks but when your gimmicks trun out to be the near perfect cooling solution for a small system such as the Odriod XU4 from http://www.hardkernel.com/ its becomes even more fun. The Odroid XU4 is a 8 core mini PC running 4 cores at 2Ghz and 4 cores at 1.2 Ghz. The onboard active cooling ram up and down like a yoyo and when the system hits its maximum heat load of a whopping 98c the system will then throttle down to 900Mhz. this is annoying when your pushing the limits of the system. With that in mind i decided to water cool the mini PC with the intention of just using what i had on hand and not spending a penny. Now this is fine for me since o own a company and to be as humble as possible i have direct access to lots of broken / tore apart systems and AIO's. Any way after 4 hours worth of thinking and about 2 hours graft i present to you a water cooled Odriod XU4 running now at 38c (on full load, all 8 cores running hard). Im still working on my concept design as we need to do some more adjustments but my final goal will be to get it cool further and also have a better way of reading and controlling the voltages. this is for no other reason but the pleasure of doing it and the fun involved. The coolant inside is a new Nano coolant ive been working on for AIOs to make them much better at cooling... and it seemingly is doing a dammed fine job...
While I applauded the use of water cooling, see there's me clapping, I cannot help but think you might have achieved similar results just by up sizing the heat sink and still managed to maintain some of the small form factorness of the computer. As it is now the computer is dwarfed by the radiator. I look forward to seeing any adjustments you have for the design.
A heat sink and fan do not get the temps down and do not stop it from throttling. This has been tested over and over again and is the major "flaw" with these. How ever this does! but not only cooling the CPU from above via liquid but also from below. This runs at 38c Full load (remember there are 8 CPU cores and 3 GPU cores). http://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=97&t=15252 Odroid mag showing the temp issues -> http://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=74&t=5085
Size issues aside, I like it. How is the underside cooled? Is it by the AIO's fan, via a hole in the floor beneath the CPU? What kind of temperature improvements are you seeing when using your new coolant over water (or whatever the stock coolant is)? Now for the obvious question - can these things be overclocked?
Yes the underneath is cooled from the air flow from the AIO from the back and then is vented out the side so it doesn't create noise. Temp improvements are running on stock realy noisy heat sink and fan it goes to 98c @ 2Ghz then throttles down to 900mz (like a yoyo). With this Mod it stays at 2ghz and runs are 38c and doesn't throttle down. Ambient is 22c (important to know this). Under prime we can hit after 1/2 an hour 48c max. Can it be over clocked .... yes it can but im still learning so no point saying any thing till we have it fully stable and ive finished the mods. Im adding in a 12v to 5v 4amp converter, a LCD and hopefully a extra powered USB hub. All trying to utilize what i have and still keeping it low cost. So far i have spent £0.00 on modding this. These are basic plans not to scale (just to show were im up to so far) Plans include 1) Set of fins to lift the PCB away from the Radiator so more air flow around the base of the PCB. 2) Housing with no side for the LCD (side plate will come later once i have the power converter). 3) Fan Grill for the 120mm Fan at the back 4) Stand off and Brace for the back of the XU4 to stop it from bending when under pressure. More to come later once i get time. Some have suggested adding a case around it how ever this whole thing is encased and doesn't need one, I may encase the actual Odroid XU4 it self at a later date. For those wondering how i have attached the Corsiar AIO tubes to the push pull fittings its actually quite simple. I cut down some 10mm hard tubing, inserted it into the push pull fittings leaving an extra 1/4 of a inch, then warmed up the corsair tubing and pushed it over the 10mm tubing. This has created a good seal and allows me to take off the tubing with no messing around. The Push pull fittings i cut down and used PTFE tape on them so they fit perfect. They cost £0.95 each (i have a few lying around so no cost to me) so much cheaper than using fittings from water cooling manufacturers and complement the build very well. (think out the box you do not have to spend a fortune to water cool). The whole system uses 95mls of Mayhems XT1 fluid with silver NM tubes as the rad is aluminum and the block is copper (you need decent protection). The silver NM tubes aid in heat reduction by 2 to 8c depending on heat loads how ever will need changing out at least 1 once a year. So what can i do on my Heterogeneous Multi-Processing (HMP) Octa Core Linux Computer. Well Here is a small list to wet you appetite. 1) Stream Steam games to my Main TV from my PC 2) Run Kodi 3) Brows the net and play YT videos 4) Run Android and run all the latest apps no problem at all 5) play 3D Android games 6) Play All my emulators and roms 7) Access my outlook and do my MS word work (via android and its free) 8) Do my cad work and run my Laser cutter from it via Linux 9) Duel / tripple boot at a flick of a swich from Andriod to Debian or Ubuntu The list goes on...... The future is in these little PC's and you can mod the hell out of them.
The XU 4 and Water cooling unit (corsair) Inc the 120mm Fan are powered from a single 12v 5 amp line. The Power controller knocks the line to 5v 4 amps for the XU4 and keeps the 12V 1 amp line for the pump and fan. This will save having two power leads to the system and allows full control and monitoring of the power usage of the XU4 its self. Ive replaced the corsair fan with a Darkside 120mm Nidec - Gentle Typhoon Performance Radiator Fan - 1850rpm so a lot more air is pushed through the system once again cooling it even further. Once all tests are run ill rebuild and re do the laser cut parts to incorporate it into an all in one system with a single power lead running the lot. In the Vid you can see me pushing the chip to its limits via android and CPU burn in test.
A Barking mad and brilliant mod . It seems incredible that the SoC runs so hot even on serious air cooling that its performance remains impaired. I'm not into watercooling, but this is something, and actually allows the board to run properly. A whole world away from the Raspberry Pi that only needs a small spiky heat sink on some versions...
You are right the PI 3 only need a small flat heat sink and can be overclocked with no issues even on water cooling.
