over 70 °C

[ajb]

Running the fitlet-X for some time with 8GB RAM CT102464BF160B and mSATA CT256M550SSD3, the hot little computer runs quite hoter than 61 °C: the temp sensor of the SSD reported a range from 70 till over 100 ° - and I could not touch the fitlet for longer.

I put out the mSATA SSD and drove the fitlet from SD and without load to prove whether the mSATA drive is responsible; but the fitlet runs even very hot.

Personally I find temperatures over 70 degrees "uncomfortable", over 90 dangerous.

So what could be the solution?

the AMD Soc was contructed for tablets, right? I wouldn't like to have a such hot tablet burning my legs or hands

[irads]

fitlet does not incorporate a cooling mechanism for mSATA. There are mSATA SSDs with high power consumption that would run hot in fitlet. We received reports about 250GB models by Crucial and Samsung EVO 850 that reach a temperature of over 70°C regardless of CPU load. Other mSATA SSDs run cooler. We are working on adding information about that to our compatibility list.

Power envelope of the CPU itself can be adjusted in BIOS. In tablets the CPU power is likely set to a lower limit and the case itself is insulating, so the temperature difference between case and CPU is higher. In fitlet the temperature difference between CPU and the metal housing is normally 10°C - 20°C. Note that the CPU can work reliably at high temperatures.

[dhwalker]

I have a Crucial M550 CT128M550SSD3 mSATA SSD installed, and my system crashes semi-regularly when under moderate load (e.g., decoding MPEG video). Any chance this could be related to the Crucial SSDs running hot? Is there another mSATA SSD that would be better to install to keep the Fitlet cooler, even if the heat is not causing the crashes?

FYI, I also have a Kingston KVR16LS11/4 4GB DDR3 1600 1.35V CL11 installed, which is mentioned as unsupported in another thread. The system does run with that memory installed, but I've asked about my crashes in that thread, as well.

Should have read more documentation before going to the store...

[Arwen]

dhwalker,

You might try re-seating both the mSATA drive and SODIMM. I had a minor seating
problem with my fitlet-iA10 when I first started using it. Turns out I did not have the
mSATA drive seated well. After that fixing that, hundreds of uptime hours and not a
single crash.

Further, you might check your mSATA drive's model, and see if the vendor has a
firmware update. Mine did, (related to performance and longevity in my case).

[irads]

I suggest running memtest first to check stability.

[Griffon26]

I put out the mSATA SSD and drove the fitlet from SD and without load to prove whether the mSATA drive is responsible; but the fitlet runs even very hot.

Are you running a custom version of Linux on it? It could be that frequency scaling and other power saving features are not enabled.

[BergRD]

I'm having the same problem as the OP. I have a fitlet-iA10, using a Samsung evo 840 1TB mSATA drive and windows 7. The temperature of the SSD quickly rises to 60-65C without actually doing anything (in windows).
Currently I'm writing 50 MB to the SSD once every 5 seconds. After about 15 minutes the SSD is 73 C and the CPU 65C.

I've turned on ALPM, but it doesn't seem to help (much).

For now my workaround is sticking a 12V CPU fan to it, which obviously works but is not acceptable for standard use.

[irads]

CPU temperature of 65C should not be an issue.
It is worth noting that mSATA temperature is not distributed evenly, NAND chips run cooler that the controller where the temperature is measured.

msata.JPG (34.43 KiB) Viewed 23093 times

We will soon introduce an mSATA-heatplate for fitlet that will make mSATA SSD run cooler.

[BergRD]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I don't mind the 65C, only that it seems to reach that temperature when doing barely anything.

I've done a test for the past hour and a half without fan.
The fitlet was busy saving 50 MB of data to the internal SSD every 5s, and additionally appending a string to a text file every 5s.
The fitlet will be used to control and save data from sensors, so this is ultimately what I want to do with it, but with more data (more sensors).

The test was done indoors at approx 25 degress with a light breeze from outside. In production I will want to put the PC in a box with barely any airflow.

Test results are in the attachment. I used HWMonitor to log the temperatures.

[hassellbear]

Lots of reports of Evo 840s running hot in a wide variety of platforms. They seem to have a thermal limit feature which begins reducing performance at 80C,but that's quite hot.
OEM Sandisks don't seem to run quite so hot - at least in smaller capacities.

It seems that mSATA SSDs in general have difficulty dissipating heat. This problem plagued the early NUCs. Perhaps the drive OEMs might consider thermal modifcations to the form factor.