Maybe some other component, like memory or some other, is also overheating…
Can you open the box and try running it open with the fan blowing on the board ?
I have put the fan with the cover removed, blowing air as seen in the photo. If I put it sucking, the temperature rises 2 or 3 degrees.
Looks like 80C is when the processor starts to thermal throttle. So that’s why adding a fan keeps the temp around 80C and the load is lower.
But Netflix SW decoder is single threaded, so your CPU must be running at max speed for it to be able to decode the video smoothly.
Btw, how did you make this SS, with what app ?
Well I can not lower the temperature, even putting the box inside my pc, with a fan of 180 at maximum rpm.
Then you’ll need to fully disassemble it and see why the cooling is so bad.
I’m thinking of putting thermal pads on all the chips in the box. Surely I can earn some degree, just enough to make it work well.
Thermal pads will not do anything without a heatsink on the other side of the pad.
Open the box and you’ll be surprised how bad cooling is solved. I have one old X96 box but with S905W SoC. Opening the box surprised me how bad cooling is constructed. First of all the board is mounted upside down in the box with the CPU on the under side.
What I did is first replace the cooling element (basically a metal plate) with proper heat sink that covered CPU and both memory chips using 0.5mm thermal pads. Drilling 8mm holes all around the box and placing it upside down (Logo facing down) with 2mm rubber feet I got the temperatures down to low 50°C during idle and 65°-70°C under heavy load with no fan used!
did you put heatsink on all the chips? memories, cpu, etc?
What size heatsink did you put? I have seen Amazon sell packs of various sizes, for raspberry pi, like these: https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Heatsink-iUniker-Aluminum-Conductive/dp/B076ZH6X9L/ref=sr_1_7?keywords=heatsink+raspberry&qid = 1567372955 & s = gateway & sr = 8-7
Can they be worth it?
On my X96_S905W box I used a much bigger heatsink that covers CPU and neighboring memory chips. Used old heatsinks for old Intel 486/586 CPUs cut to proper size. On my Mecool KM8 box i had to cut out top box cover for heatsink to fit. Same thing on my X92 box for which I found a proper size, but much higher hetasink, also cut out top cover to fit it in. I have some photos of this oversized passive coolers, but can’t find them now…
Edit: Found a photo of heatsinks i used on my X92 box just to show the necessary size needed for decent passive cooling.
good job!! Do you have the heatsink anchored in some way, so it doesn’t move?
You can get thermal pads with adhesive to secure the heatsink.
Nice, tomorrow I will receive some thermal pads that I buy. Although if I end up putting a large heatsink, is it not better to use thermal paste?
On my X96 box (photos cannot find) CPU and neighboring two memory chips have the same height. I put normal 0.5mm thermal pads on all three surfaces and that is enough area to firmly keep the heatsink in place. But adhesive pads would be better…
With thermal paste the heatsink can move, it does not stick firmly unless it’s somehow pressed firmly on CPU.
When you suck air you tend to create a vacuum around the heatsink instead of an over pressure.
Time and expense spent on improving the cooling of those small devices is not lost.
It improves performances and lifetime.
I prefer thermal grease.Pads tend to dry out and heatsink keeps cool but the hidden chip under is really hot.
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I just finished the Android tv mod. A friend has given me a heatsink of a dual core motherboard. I have put it in the cpu and in the 2 RAM chips, together with artic mx4 thermal paste. It also reaches 70% of another chip that has followed the ram (I think it is the internal memory). Temperatures have dropped, but not as much as I expected.
Since the temperature was still high, I decided to use a PC fan I had at home. I have soldered a USB cable, and this is connected to the box itself. When operating at 5v, and the fan is 12v, it operates at low rpms and does not make any noise. I have pierced the housing so that the air can enter well, I have glued the box with instant glue and put some pads to raise it a little. The result has been about 50 degrees of maximum temperature. Still, with those temperatures, in Tráiler Park Boys series, I have some lag sometime. I will try more series and movies to see if the same thing happens. This is the final mod:
I tried it before doing the mod, and it didn’t work for me either. Then I think it was automatically updated when I went to the latest version of the Netflix addon. I am also not sure if I installed it well. What I did was delete the new one and copy the old one with the same name. I will try again now that I have solved the high temperatures.