Dingoo A320 forum

When overclocked the Dingoo A320 can get very warm.

I noticed that there is also a big piece of double-sided foam tape attaching the battery to the circuit board of the Dingoo -right on top of the main chips that get warm during overclocking.
This not only insulates the chips but also partially transfers that heat into the battery, which will shorten the life of both over time.

My first modification to help fix this is to simply open the Dingoo up, unstick the battery from the circuit board and [carefully] remove the foam tape from the top of the chips. (it comes off pretty clean if you are careful)

Now I use a fresh piece of thin foam tape to attach the battery to the back of the dingoo case, being careful to center it.

Now upon re-assembly there is a little space for the chips to radiate some heat, and there is no direct contact with the battery!

I've only done some initial testing but I can already tell the case isn't heating up like it did before.

Stay tuned for part II: The Heat Spreader!


(Professional driver on a closed course with a voided warranty. Please mod responsively. Modding sometimes leads to broken toys.)

Found a picture online that illustrates what the mod looks like, although I've centered the battery more precisely.

This not only insulates the chips but also partially transfers that heat into the battery, which will shorten the life of both over time.

You wrong dude! Air is a good heat insulator (that's why heat spreads more easily into the battery rather than on the surrounding air, gotcha?), so what you did is basically remove a sort of raw heat dissipator. Don't know about battery lifetime though, but surely your jz4732 isn't more happy with your mod. I wouldn't have done it if I were in you (especially if you like boost overclocking).

See "List of thermal conductivity values"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_conductivity

Wow looking @ that pic - my black dingoo looks alot cheaperly made than that - plus the silver resistor as come off mine, the one on the right closest to the card slot.......theres also one near the power switch,
That looks the same - my dingoo is dead

Hey guys,
I dropped my Dingoo and it went completely dead! Upon opening i found that the battery had been double sided taped to a few of the surface mount components and had lifted one of the crystals (x2) and its loading capacitor. A bit of soldering and some hot glue and all is well again. Seems the heaviest part of the dingoo glued to one of the more delicate components could be a bit of a design flaw??

Good luck ruffnutts, and a steady hand!

Is that what is called - I will post a pic of mine - yeah same happend here - only when I put it back together I realised somthing was wrong, whats the crystals and was the capacitor as I thought it was a resistor lol - my battery was stuck the same - now me Dingoo is dead I thought it was to do with the power maybe its the loading capacitor the (long silver component) theres 2x in the dingoo...

cheers ruffnutts

I've begun work on a template for a possible heat spreader addition that will lay across those chips and spread out the heat like you see on RAM modules and such.
I'm also looking at some other options.

It looks like if nothing else getting the battery off of the circuit board might help protect Dingoo against shock-related issues.

batman52: thermodynamics aside, "Lithium battery as heat sink" is just crazy, unless you can show me even one other application where this is being done.

Next time it's cold try this experiment:
Go outside wrapped in nothing but plastic foam and then go outside wrapped in nothing but air, and tell me which makes you feel cooler.

Also: not thermal tape.

EDIT

Speaking of thermal tape, I've put in an order for some.
The template will have to be double-checked when I get the tape in, but I'm really just down to finding a piece of copper sheet and the snips to modify it.
Pics will follow when it all comes together.

batman52: thermodynamics aside, "Lithium battery as heat sink" is just crazy, unless you can show me even one other application where this is being done.

I know it's crazy... i just wanted to warn you (and everyone who could think the same reading your post) that you wrong when you think your chips will be cooler after that you removed the contact with the battery.

Next time it's cold try this experiment:
Go outside wrapped in nothing but plastic foam and then go outside wrapped in nothing but air, and tell me which makes you feel cooler.

That's because of heat convection: a phenomenon that happens because of a moving fluid (air in that case). It won't work into dingoo since it's a closed environment and air is (mostly) still , unless you want to put a fan into the case, or you want to blow while you're playing your favourite emu. Things would surely get better because of it, if you started to drill all over the case anyway.

If you don't believe me, next time you have a barbecue with your friends you can try this:
1) Make sure the barbecue is into a metallic enclosure (good heat conductor).
2) Get your finger as much close to it as you can from aside: even if you are very near to the burning coal, you feel warmer but you don't get burnt. That's because you are surrounded by a bad (almost still) heat conductor (air) aka insulator.
3) Touch the enclosure --> you get burnt. That's because you are touching a good heat conductor which is touching a mass at a very high temperature. You just experienced HEAT CONDUCTION.
4) Get your hand closer from above --> you get cooked. That's because hot air (=moving fluid) is moving from down to up transporting heat --> You just experienced HEAT CONVECTION.

BTW: conduction has tipically higher heat transport efficiency than convection, that's why we often put heat sinks in contact to electronic chips avoiding air gaps with thermoconductive glues.

This said, do whatever you want with your dingoo, after all i suppose that it wouldn't change much, and anyway i hope that these jz chips have a thermal protection such that it would just freeze the system if it gets too hot. Just I praise you to don't give misleading advices to others. How do they say it? Do at your own risk!

That's all folks!

Layers of insulating foam and plastic coverings and battery do not a heat sink make. -nothing misleading about that.

Implying that mess is ACTING as a heat sink however...I dunno.

I'm going to try trimming down one of these PC slot things for a spreader as they are accessible to many.

Here's a disclaimer:

IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THIS STUFF OR DON'T AGREE WITH IT THEN DON'T DO IT.

Maybe i took this project to the wrong web site. Possibly my mistake.

Update.

Looks like it's the Ingenic chip (the square one to the left of the group of rectangular chips in the white Dingoo photo) that's getting hot, being the CPU and all, so that's the one that'll have the thermal tape and heat spreader attached to it.

Pics soonest.