Show your Parallella!!

[greytery]

My Parallella Pair running linaro-nano. Note: these are E16 7010's with no Samtec "legs".

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The "case" is hacked (yes, with a hacksaw) from the Adapteva originals.
The Akasa 80mm 12v case fan is powered by a spare 12v PSU wall-wart, suitably/safely re-terminated to the fan plug.
The blue heatsinks are mentioned , with careful modification of fin spread to allow them to stand closer together on the Zync and Epiphany. They are not (yet) clamped on, but the paste seems sticky enough as long as I don't touch.
The thermal paste is "Antec Formula 7 Nano Diamond" - so these are running Nano on Nano!!
{ Tip: this paste is notoriously difficult to spread - so warm the tube for 30 mins, e.g. in your armpit or underwear}

I run the Parallellas headless, connecting from Windows via (Personal Edition). This allows me to run concurrent ssh, X, and VNC sessions on one or more systems. The 'Multiexec' feature allows commands - such as xtemp, or shutdown - to be kicked off at the same time. Really quite neat if you have a cluster - even if it's only a cluster of two!

Controlling the fan speed (via a Zalman FanMate) cuts the noise of the flat-out, so-called Akasa "Ultra Quiet" fan. The graphics below show Para01 (top) and Para02 (bottom) running xtemp, with the FanMate turned to low, high, halfway, and back to high speed. It's a statement of the bleedin' obvious that the more air flow the better, if your ears can take it. So those who use a 12v fan, but run from a 5v supply are probably loosing significant degrees of cooling.

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Para01 shows a temperature range of 50C/57C but annoyingly, at the same time, xtemp on Para02 shows 38C/44C !! I mean, that's great, and what I'm aiming for - but why the difference between the two boards? So far, have swapped boards up/down, but temp differences are same. No idea, but I'll be running more tests...

Pad vs Paste: On a previous run on Para01 with the supplied heatsink thermal pad, xtemp showed 56C/59C (full speed fan). The nano paste wins!!

HDMI vs Headless boot: The tests above were run with the HDMI devicetree/FPGA files. Re-running the xtemp test with the headless devicetree/FPGA files showed a further drop of 1-2 degrees C. Same difference between the boards though

Could do better - but currently running at sub-50C and sub-40C

[9600]

[greytery]

[marsee101]

My Parallella and case

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[didiersoft]

I am very happy I can finally start working on my project today... I just want to share couple of pictures... I will provide more later when I have more things to show for now I just need to go thru the whole process of installing the OS and fan and all that...

Best Regards

[mathiasx]

I ordered a cheap RaspPi case to protect my Parallella, since the weight of the HDMI adapter and USB adapters kept pulling it off the edge of the desk.



I also ordered a 40mm 12v case fan that turned out not to like 5V (I might use a linear regulator and an old USB cable to power it off the powered USB hub I'm using)



In the meantime I'm using a USB-powered thermaltake desk fan. The Tontec 20mm fan is cute but useless IMHO.

[penguin]

Case


Parallella rack system:
7 Port of USB hub, 1 TB USB hard drive.
I plan to use it as media server and secondary workstation.

[9600]

@penguin have you kept an eye on the Zynq temperature, e.g. with xtemp?

Using the board without a fan — note that this only ever suggested when fitted with the newer slab heatsink — is typically only possible when you: 1) have the board on its side; 2) have no enclosure. See:

http://www.parallella.org/2014/07/25/co ... mperature/

Just concerned that it may be running a little hot in that configuration.

Regards,

Andrew

[adexmont]

i would like to share my solution for the large heat sink that was aiming to a fanless system.
i did cut an old p3 large heat sink to the size of 50x55x25 mm (25 mm is the original height)
i recovered from a broken laptop the copper plane used for cpu and gpu (2 parallelepiped copper-made 18x18x2.5mm) quite the same size of the zynq chip.
find out some piece to make sure the plastic band press on the zynq (place second copper parallelepiped over the epiphany just for having a large plane of contact that limit the instability and accidental movement

!!! make sure the copper do not touch the electronic components !!!
!!! place a good thermal grease between every surface contact !!!
!!! when you place the plastic band watch out to not damage the small component on the back side of the board !!!





results are showing that fanless is not trusty enough for me: fanless temperature is 60/67°C in idle and reach 72°C on a small time in full load. (don't want to reach 80° and risk to burn my board, even if limit temperature is 85 i usually keep my chip at maximum 70°C)
I just tested with ambient temperature of the summer (around 25°C that is quite hot)
note: just turning on the classic room ventilator (50W fan) that is usually running on summer time the temperature readed by xtemp drop to 48/50°C that is a good point.

Conclusion: still need a fan but is enough to blow a little amount of air to keep temperature problem under control (natural wind is enough )

Hope this may be usefull for someone.

PS in the picture you can see a copper wire that is connected to the support screw (mounting hole behind the heat sink) that was thought to provide power for the board. I noticed a led intesity variation due to the contact of the micro HDMI cable so i'm using that wire as a ground that solve the the led intesity variation.

[DAB-Embedded]

Temperature is about 60 degrees.