June-24th-2021, 06:59 AM
Hello Tad,
no there is not such a specification and it depends on the use case fo sure.. What I can tell you about the heat tests we made is, that we tested a netPI alone in the cabinet with an natural air flow of v = 0.5m/s up to +62°C ambient air temperature under fully CPU load of all 4 cores. There was no other device, unit, wall or anything next to it.
The cooling of netPI happens through the metallic housing. Especially the space around the CPU is heatening particularly which is located on the left hand side from the front views angel. If there will be another device located adjacent to netPI without any space in between the units and would heat up this area/space this will have a negative impact on the heat dissipation of the netPI housing.
So if it can be avoided that a unit is positioned left to netPI without space then this should be preferred with a distance of 1cm between both. If it cannot be avoided then the following points need to be considered:
But in the end if it cannot be avoided to place units adjacent to each other ... the worst thing happening is that the CPU throttles its clock from 1.2GHz down to 600Mhz and this will lower the own inner temperature. It is a self protection mechanism.
no there is not such a specification and it depends on the use case fo sure.. What I can tell you about the heat tests we made is, that we tested a netPI alone in the cabinet with an natural air flow of v = 0.5m/s up to +62°C ambient air temperature under fully CPU load of all 4 cores. There was no other device, unit, wall or anything next to it.
The cooling of netPI happens through the metallic housing. Especially the space around the CPU is heatening particularly which is located on the left hand side from the front views angel. If there will be another device located adjacent to netPI without any space in between the units and would heat up this area/space this will have a negative impact on the heat dissipation of the netPI housing.
So if it can be avoided that a unit is positioned left to netPI without space then this should be preferred with a distance of 1cm between both. If it cannot be avoided then the following points need to be considered:
- What is the maximum ambient air temperature expected? All temperatures up to 40°C I see as uncritical if other units are installed next to netPI.
- What is the average CPU load based on the running application? A normal application causes a CPU load of 10-20%. With such a CPU load level the temperature of netPI is totally uncritical and other units can be installed next to netPI without space
But in the end if it cannot be avoided to place units adjacent to each other ... the worst thing happening is that the CPU throttles its clock from 1.2GHz down to 600Mhz and this will lower the own inner temperature. It is a self protection mechanism.
„You never fail until you stop trying.“, Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
