Played with overclocking the Raspberry Pi a bit

[neiroatopelcc]

Done a bit of testing with openelec.
Turns out I needed 1Ghz to do playback of a youtube music video while staying below 100% cpu (usage 95-98%).

For this I tested some cooling setups using cheap chinese heatsinks.

The setup and results were as followed:
A raspberry stock running the openelec menu : 55C (131F)
A raspberry with heatsink on memory module: 51C (124F)
A raspberry with cpu and memory heatsink: 50C (122F)
That raspberry running 1Ghz showing a video: 55C (131F)

Not sure how much higher I can go, but turns out adding two cheap passive heatsinks seem to lower the temps to the same 55C with an overclock as the stock runs the menu without. That's not too bad.

I haven't tried this with a closed case as I'm lazy, but I'll try it out with the overclocked unit soon.

Can't overclock the other two as they belong to my company and not me.

What's everyone else seeing as temps and max stable appearing overclock ?


Update: Photos of the devices linked

ps. menu test was 10 minutes idle time. This seems to be tougher than playing a video.

Edit: Done some boxed testing.
stock boxed reference: 66C (151F)
overclocked boxed with two sinks: 71C (160F)
overclocked boxed with one sink: 73C (163F)

So. Overclocking in a cramped case predictably bad. However not lethal as the lan chip's allowed up to 70C and the cpu 85C

 

[madcratebuilder]

The case you use effects temps a lot. Open side cases run a lot cooler. My streaming RP is in a case that is pretty closed up, vents top and bottom but nothing on the sides. I hacked a $5 40mm 5V fan, Velcroed to the bottom, hacked into the 5v usb and it runs very cool now. Cooler than my open cases.

The copper heat sinks with the tall round fins work better than the aluminum flat fin sinks I have. The home theater rig is the only one that ran hot, the other two do not get pushed very hard, one is for time lapse photo's and the other a cat toy.

I ended up running the medium overclock on all of them, 850mgz if I remember correctly.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

Ye I tried the trick with a 5v fan myself. But I guess I was sleeping, cause I forgot to check I used the right pins and blew the usb I tested it on (just a monitor's hub).
If I get around to it some time I'll check what I did wrong and add the fan the one I found was a 50mm one, but I guess that makes little difference.


By the way, the measy RC11 keyboard/mouse combo works great even with the raspberry