Not sure if this is a promo for Black Friday but it seems that the Khadas VIM3 board with some addons to make it a proper CoreELEC solution are very reasonable priced now:
After AliExpress (select) coupons and a $7 promo code (e.g. ALIEXTRA) the total price for the set comes down to about $90, if you go through a cashback site maybe even $85.
Do I have everything I need to run CoreELEC properly with those accessories? I’m concerned about heat so I have few questions:
Is the heatsink sufficient without fan? I prefer passive cooling because of noise and I don’t even see the fan listed on AliExpress.
Is it useful to add the heat pad and metal plate to the case in terms of passive cooling (adds about $8.50-$11 to the total)?
The VIM3 has a fusb302 chip which allows it to take advantage of PD chargers and use more power hungry devices on the USB bus if you do buy it or already own one.
5V2A is obviously limited to 10W with the board consuming 5-6W.
Thanks, I think I read that in their guide as well. I won’t hook up anything other than a 2.4GHz airmouse/remote dongle so I should be fine with 5V2A. I do have QuickCharge 3.0 chargers btw but unfortunately I don’t think the fusb302 chip can take advantage of that, meaning those will be limited to 5V2A as well.
So how do you guys cool the board? With or without the fan? Does it keep cool enough to prevent throttling, even when playing 4k?
Same situation as myself. I run the Vim 3 via just the cable straight into my TV USB port.
I was running the Vim 3 with the heat sink only then i purchased the thermal pad which i got last week. My case had the metal base. I inserted the pad and noticed a 10 to 15 % decrease in temp.
Noticed also that using wifi increases temp by nearly 5 celcius as opposed to ethernet.
All my content is 1080p n0o 4k
That’s cool, I’m not sure if my TV can supply the required 1.5A or so though but definitely gonna try that. And does the board stay powered when the TV is turned off?
Alright thanks, sounds like it might be worth the investment then, especially since I would like to use Wi-Fi as well. Would be even better if they had an actual heatsink and thinner thermal pad available to be fitted on the bottom of the case though.
Also, is bl301 injection needed on the VIM3 for proper CEC wake-up?
I’ve got a VIM3 running bare-board no case no fan no heatsink and it idles at around 58C with the max I’ve seen going up to 70C in very rare cases. The A311D spec sheet says the max rated temperature for the chip is 105C so throttling should not occur until you get close to that limit. As for playing 4K content, I actually see the temperature drop during playback as the cpu/gpu does more work drawing the GUI that playing back video, after about 30 minutes of playing back 4KHDR the temperature stabilises at about 54C.
However if you are putting your VIM3 in a case then the heatsink is definitely recommended.
