Aluminium case questions

[sheepishlyparallella]

Hi All,

I'm trying to get my Parallella (purchased late 2016) mounted into the aluminium case (just received) and am following this post/video: https://www.parallella.org/2016/12/21/t ... -paracase/

Two (or so) questions:

1. My board already has the included heat sink attached. Is there a safe way of removing this so I can use the case? How does one go about doing this?

2. My case did not come with the non-conductive adhesive thermal material mentioned in this video—should it have? If not, can I get one somewhere?

When I do get ahold of the adhesive, can I mount the thermal plate to the heat sink effectively? The heat sink is only making contact with 1 chip, however, so it may not be ideal.

Thanks,
sp

[mchampigny]

I'm not sure how to go about removing your existing heatsink. When I bought the case, I had not yet installed the heatsink on the board. What I was able to do however was to mount the heatsink on top of the thermal board using the two stickies the board came with. I have a picture of this elsewhere on this forum (just search for my posts I guess).

You don't need to the use the long strip of aluminum included with the case, and I don't recommend it. If you tighten the thermal board to the Parallella at just the right distance (unfortunately tricky since there are no usable spacers) you can just get the heatsink to scrape against the top of the aluminum case making perfect contact with the teeth. My case is running at a maximum of 55 C with this configuration and my understanding is that you should keep the board under 80 C. So it appears I'm in good shape.

[sheepishlyparallella]

Thanks for your reply. So your case—did it come with the non-conductive thermal adhesive?

[mchampigny]

Yeah, you should have gotten a square grey thermal pad (which you'd use to cover both the Epiphany, Zynq and any other ICs you can reach). Mine was tucked away inside the case itself (under the tissue paper).

[aolofsson]