Building Charlize, two questions

[lanierb]

I'm a complete newbie in DIY, am building a Charlize, and have two questions:

1) I want to put in a heatsink. I was thinking of getting a piece of aluminum and using thermal epoxy to attach it to the chip. Am I on the right track here?

2) The binding posts I bought seem like they require a hole with a "key" slot (presumably to keep them from rotating after installation). What is a good way of cutting these key slots?

Thanks!

Lanier

[DocLorren]

A small aluminum heatsink is just fine, although I would not recommend glueing or screwing it to the chip without a firm attachment to a casing, baseplate or whatever the Charlize PCB is attached to. The weight (and manipulation) of even a tiny heatsink can work loose some of the Tripath pins from the PCB and will cause all kinds of trouble. Ask me how I know.
Regarding binding posts, it depends on the case you put them in but with a small Dremel bit you will be able to make this keyhole dent in most enclosure materials.

[Buckapound]

Many find that small computer memory chip heatsinks fit the Tripath chips pretty well. Most have a "thermal" press 'n stick which seems adequate--meaning the sinks do get nice and warm. The really cool setup would be to remove the self-adhesive tape and glue the sink to the chip using a silver-bearing epoxy (also sold at computer stores), but hard to say if it's worth the considerable expense for the silver glue. Probably not. JB Weld is a metal filled epoxy sold at hardware stores, and that might me a middle solution.

As for irregular-sized holes, drill as large a hole as you can, then remove any additional material using files (slow) or a Dremel-type tool with a carbide burr (fast).

--Buckapound

[Code]

If your heatsink came with thermal paste you can mix it with a few drops of superglue to make it stick.

Ive found after a day of continuous use the 2020 chip has only become 'warm'. [no enclosure, heated room]

Are there any advantages to running the chip cooler?

[Buckapound]

If you're getting close to the voltage limits, a heat sink might be very helpful, as the chip can run pretty hot. I would think not a problem if you're using a "matched" (or onboard) power supply from the same maker as the board.

Some people have expressed the idea that running cooler, the chip may have a longer lifetime. Don't know where this effect might start to become important.

Buckapound

[lanierb]

Thanks for all the responses. I don't know for sure if the heatsink is needed, but I've heard about some tripath chips getting hot and it should be trivial to add so I thought I would give it a go. (In the Super-T thread some have complained about overheating the chip.)

Lanier

[vt4c]

Lanier,
A heat-sink will not be needed when listening to Charlize.