Heatsink support for Raspberry Pi 3 - Overkill Cooling Solution by Skorium

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

A large cooling solution for Raspberry Pi 3.
I'm using one as CCTV for 2 USB camera with full HD video capture and the Pi get way to hot, causing it to throttle and ending up by a beautiful crash of the Raspberry Pi. I needed to cool it down, I have tried with a small heatsink but it doesn't cool it enough. So I ordered 40x40x18mm heatsink online (Farnell.com) and stop to a local electrical workshop near my town to ask a cut of 6mm tick and flat copper bar. They had one in their waste bin waiting for me :D
Oh and don't forget to put some thermal paste between CPU and copper block, and also between copper block and heat sink... (never know who will complain if I don't mention that)
Files are:
PCB isolation for the piece of copper (way larger than the cpu on the board)
Copper alignment and raiser
Support to clamp the cooler down on the copper and keep everything tight (using the flexibility of the PLA, so printed part will slightly bent).
I wanted to remix a thing from Snille (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2469031) but he worked with Sketch Up (I'm not using it) and shared original design with me. But enable to work with SketchUp, I ended redesigned everything by myself on SW.
The RPi is now running at 50degC with 2 of its core running at 100% speed at all time. Nice and cool, now clock speed is not reduced and the RPi doesn't crash anymore.
I wrote this very quickly if you want more pictures, or more details comment out, I will do my best.
Please note the "CD flat cable" used in the picture is only to show there is clearance for such connector. Be careful what you are using here some of these cables can cause damage.