Post
Topic
Board Hardware
Re: [ANN] US/North American Bitfury sales now open ***full prototype pics***
by
goxed
on 27/10/2013, 01:59:45 UTC
EDIT: I have heatsinks on back of all boards in regulator area, and 120 CFM fans!

Does the backside of the regulator even get hot? I have felt the top of the chip and its very hot but I don't feel much on the backside. Wouldn't putting a small heatsink on the chip do more?

For the hashing chips those thermal vias work well as even touching the vias themselves gets hot, even better with a heatsink.

Yes, it gets quite hot. I believe they are also constructed do dissipate the heat to the board, but I did not do any research in that matter.
In my opinion the regulator heatsink is much more important than chip heatsinks.

+1, the most important task before serious overvolting of the h-boards (0.8V+) is to first stick heatsinks on the back side of the board under the regulator. If possible, stick a heatsink on top of the regulator and the inductor. This way you can take them as high as 1V. The board will dissipate close to 70Watts at 1V.

If you're seriously at the point where you're heatsinking the coil, I'd suggest just getting a part with a higher saturation current as there are pin/footpring-compatible replacements in the same series. This version has  sat. current of 55A: http://www.digikey.ca/product-detail/en/PA0513.441NLT/553-2076-1-ND/3687452. FYI the stock part is a PA0513.441NLT which has a sat. current of 35A.

I don't know what other impacts this would have on the performance of the regulator, so don't try this unless you're willing to experiment.

Thanks for the link. I have to get back to the data sheet of the regulator and check the specs of  the inductor.