Database Develop

Improve Nexus 4 thermal transfer with thermal pad

Hey guys, I have read many reviews where people complain about overheating and excessive amount of heat from the phone localized in one area. Based on the tear down provided by ifixit, there looks to be no EMI shield over the CPU/memory chip area unless it was removed before the photo was taken. But either way, I see that when assembled there is the metal backing to the LCD directly above it which would really dissipate the heat well.
Why not purchase some thin thermal pads and apply as necessary to transfer the heat to the metal frame directly above it. Even if there is an EMI shield over it, open it up (unless it's soldered making it harder) and put the thin thermal pad in there and on the outside of the shield.
Seems like a very simple solution to fix a pretty big problem. I don't have my hands on a Nexus 4 and am unsure if I will in the future but if I ever do I will definitely try this and provide results and instructions on how to do the same.

Or LG could design the phone better.

johnny13oi said:
Hey guys, I have read many reviews where people complain about overheating and excessive amount of heat from the phone localized in one area. Based on the tear down provided by ifixit, there looks to be no EMI shield over the CPU/memory chip area unless it was removed before the photo was taken. But either way, I see that when assembled there is the metal backing to the LCD directly above it which would really dissipate the heat well.
Why not purchase some thin thermal pads and apply as necessary to transfer the heat to the metal frame directly above it. Even if there is an EMI shield over it, open it up (unless it's soldered making it harder) and put the thin thermal pad in there and on the outside of the shield.
Seems like a very simple solution to fix a pretty big problem. I don't have my hands on a Nexus 4 and am unsure if I will in the future but if I ever do I will definitely try this and provide results and instructions on how to do the same.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is not a bad idea actually, but i'm not too sure if the display will soffer about it
If only had a n4 to test it XD (i have some thermal pad lying around)

Venekor said:
Or LG could design the phone better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

InvalidUsername said:
Venekor said:
Or LG could design the phone better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We hack phones to try and make them work better on this website, did you know that?

Venekor said:
Or LG could design the phone better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
While I agree with you, thermal pads are relatively cheap and the concerns about pressure on the LCD by another poster would be fine as long as you use a thinner thermal pad that doesn't compress too much after application. I have various thickness of thermal pads so as long as you use the correct one to apply just the right amount of pressure I can only see a large benefit from something so simple.
It would require opening the device and I am unsure if there are warranty voiding stickers in the phone. Some people are really happy with the phone and this is the only problem so I am merely just trying to provide a solution to the one problem remaining.

Thermal pads are to conduct heat from one surface (CPU) to another (heatsink). I can't say I agree with using the screen as a heatsink.

johnny13oi said:
While I agree with you, thermal pads are relatively cheap and the concerns about pressure on the LCD by another poster would be fine as long as you use a thinner thermal pad that doesn't compress too much after application. I have various thickness of thermal pads so as long as you use the correct one to apply just the right amount of pressure I can only see a large benefit from something so simple.
It would require opening the device and I am unsure if there are warranty voiding stickers in the phone. Some people are really happy with the phone and this is the only problem so I am merely just trying to provide a solution to the one problem remaining.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wasn't talking of the pressure but the heat that the backplade dissipate, maybe can damage the screen

I doubt it will help,
someone pointed out that the only trigger for thermal throttling is the battery temperature,
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=34224171&postcount=85

BakaPhoenix said:
I wasn't talking of the pressure but the heat that the backplade dissipate, maybe can damage the screen
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, i would guess the space there is to keep the heat from the screen...
If this phone runs hot it is most likely due to the glass acting as an insulator. Is there any venting anywhere? I bet much of the thermal issue could be solved with a well placed vent..
sent via xda premium with nexus 7-Xbox live-loneleppard add me

While I can see concerns about damaging the LCD due to the heat but I imagine heat spread over the entire surface of the phone is much better than localizing a much more intense heat in a smaller area. LCDs can withstand a decent amount of heat and a small arm chip spreading heat over the entire surface of the phone would be very minimal to no effect on the LCD. I can see great potential for damage allowing the heat to be confined to a small area (just the CPU and RAM sitting on each other) with no heat spreader or heat sink.

Well I guess we won't be overclocking this phone anytime time soon. And you know I was really hoping I could finally fry me some bacon strips on my way to work.

johnny13oi said:
While I can see concerns about damaging the LCD due to the heat but I imagine heat spread over the entire surface of the phone is much better than localizing a much more intense heat in a smaller area. LCDs can withstand a decent amount of heat and a small arm chip spreading heat over the entire surface of the phone would be very minimal to no effect on the LCD. I can see great potential for damage allowing the heat to be confined to a small area (just the CPU and RAM sitting on each other) with no heat spreader or heat sink.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Air is a very good thermal isolator, i read that many desktop ips lcs have a maximum teamp. of 35/40 C° so if if the cpu heats a lot it can create problems. I don't know how much is the max temp that this ips can withstand tough.

BakaPhoenix said:
Air is a very good thermal isolator, i read that many desktop ips lcs have a maximum teamp. of 35/40 C° so if if the cpu heats a lot it can create problems. I don't know how much is the max temp that this ips can withstand tough.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I really think this whole heat thing is a kernel issue at the moment. I remember owning the one x since very 1.26 or was it an earlier one? Either way, the phone would really get VERY hot. After a few updates i barely felt the heat. Maybe when playing games or whatever, all in all the updates solved the issue. I think google will manage to sort it out, i can't imagine them being that stupid.

I guess if you are concerned with the LCD becoming damaged then you could just put the thermal pad on the other side to make the whole motherboard (minus spring contacts) contact the glass back and spread the heat outside including the battery.
And yes air is a very good thermal insulator so all the heat is just getting trapped inside the phone. Gotta use some thermal pads to conduct that heat to a panel exposed to the outside.
These are all just suggestions that I would do if I were to have one in my hands right now.

johnny13oi said:
I guess if you are concerned with the LCD becoming damaged then you could just put the thermal pad on the other side to make the whole motherboard (minus spring contacts) contact the glass back and spread the heat outside including the battery.
And yes air is a very good thermal insulator so all the heat is just getting trapped inside the phone. Gotta use some thermal pads to conduct that heat to a panel exposed to the outside.
These are all just suggestions that I would do if I were to have one in my hands right now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The bottom line is if the SOC or N4 design is flawed internally which created thermal throttling, then there won't be much help for inserting thermal pads. I have tried this with HD2 when it had thermal runaway. There was a huge thread figuring out how to cure it by many methods as far as putting the motherboard in the oven to melt the soldering at exact time and temperature. The thermal pads method only decreased a few Fahrenheit which wasn't enough to cure if there was a thermal problems. My HD2's SOC was made by Qualcomm. Something definitely don't add up with bad benchmarks scores, thermal problems. Could future updates cure this? Only time can tell.

I've done something similar with my OCed Samsung i9000, but instead of using thermal pads, I used thermal paste. Similar to the Nexus 4 the cpu IC is sandwiched between the PCB and the metal chassis. The metal chassis becomes a massive heatsink for the CPU which dropped my CPU temp. by 10oC (~17oF) at maximum load.
After 9 months of use there hasn't been any damage or deterioration of the display screen (AMOLED).
Details can be found in the i9000 forum.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1605517
When I receive my Nexus 4 I plan to do something similar.

The only problem i can see with this method is warranty. I'm 100% sure that even if there is no warranty void stickers on the screws they won't accept to fix a phone that has been tinkered with
And try to wipe thermal paste without leaving any trace you will fail

Capt.PP said:
The bottom line is if the SOC or N4 design is flawed internally which created thermal throttling, then there won't be much help for inserting thermal pads.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is not flawed as such, it is just overdimensioned.
In essence it is a double APQ8060A + quicker (more power hungry) GPU + additional management circuitry. So it should not surprise, that under full load (benchmarks) it burns through more than double of the usual dual core Krait phone power. While having similar dimensions/power dissipation capacity.
In their marketing Qualcomm positioned this SoC for Tablets. Now you have it in the phone. Is it bad? Not really, full power quadcore tasks is not a realistic task for a phone. And for a second or two (after this it does not matter anymore since your phone "lags") the existing cooling is perfectly adequate.
One thing where Qualcomm/LG/Google could do better are the GPU drivers. Which currently seem badly tuned.

Nexus 4; Investigating thermal throttling [HardMod] [v1.2]

Post available in PDF [v1.1]
So it is a fact that Nexus 4 SoC throttles pretty often and even if it does not remove anything to this phone, it is one of its particularity compared to other phones using APQ8064 that are not known to throttle so strongly. So, question is why?
Symptoms
So first of all, what is thermal throttling, and what does it has for consequences for your Nexus 4 ?
Quick explanation is that when a chip (CPU, GPU or in our case a SoC) reach a limit temperature, it will reduce its frequency to reduce heat and temperature. For a more complete description, check Wiki.
Keep in mind that with or without throttling, the Snapdragon S4 in your N4 remains one of the quickest SoC on the market. However, it can affect performances on eavy duty applications like 3D games. Better than a long description, check below graph.
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So lets try to find from where this thermal throttling does come from;
After having a look at Ifixit teardown, I was pretty surprised by the low thermal inertia of my phone and the heat concentration under stress situations (mainly located on the right of the back camera). It looked to me pretty strange, especially after seeing following pictures;
Indeed, after “mentally returning” the 2 pictures, you understand that SoC is facing display and should be spread its heat on the whole grey frame.
So I decided to dismount my own Nexus 4, and performed some measurements with a calliper. I found the following;
Which is quite a surprise if you consider that the chips height is almost the same;
In other words, the EMI shield (left) may come in contact with the frame (in the 1mm depth pocket) while the APQ8064/DRAM Stack (centre) may remain isolated (no contact in the 1,5mm pocket). This is pretty sad if you consider that the below frame appears not to be plastic material but to be made of light weighted metallic alloy (Aluminium and/or Magnesium) and could be used as heatsink.
I won’t overflowed you with tons of pictures but if you look carefully at Ifixit teardown you will also notice that motherboard is pretty thermally insulated from the metallic frame, while at the same time it is pretty well thermally coupled to the battery with bronze housings/threads and wide copper band;
(Please note the 2 battery max temperatures, 40 or 60°C?)
So what do all these pictures show? That mainboard may evacuate its heat through the metallic bridge to the battery while it ‘should’ evacuate it through the metallic frame.
Diagnostic
After several stress test runs, it seem that Nexus 4 tries to keep its battery below 40°C, so it downclocks from 1512Mhz to 1242Mhz when reaching ~37°C and from 1242Mhz to 1134Mhz when hitting ~39°C, while it may completely shutdown when battery reach 60°C.
So after all these founding I made a small quick tendency study;
So, no need to be a genius to understand what is happening, the “insulated” motherboard spreads its heat to the battery which behaves like a heat capacitor all this through the ‘metallic bridge’. Unfortunately, battery thermal sensor is between heat source and heat capacitor.
The cure
So I first tried to apply some thermal paste (a lot! );
Which lead to an obvious result as you can hardly fill a 0.5mm gap with thermal paste;
So as second try I used a small piece of copper to fill the gap (Pre-installation pictures only for showing copper piece dimensions);
I used stability test to stress CPU and observed time before it throttles first @1242Mhz and then @1134Mhz. Please note that I throttling appear to happen when battery sensor reach 37°C. (EDIT: or when SoC reach 60°C)
As a result I obtained following delays before throttling; (EDIT: Other users results added)
Even the thermal ‘pad’ solution, despite its bad efficiency, induces a significant improvement, which gives credits to previous diagnostic/explanation.
Concerning the ‚copper solution, it seems that it solves completely the shutdown problem;
The asymptotic temperature appears to be below 50°C (it was ~41°C after ~15min).
We can also notice that phone temperature surface is more uniform, and hot spots almost disappeared.
Bottom line
So is it ideal solution to solve N4 throttling?
For sure not, because it does not completely remove throttling problem, but at least gives you much more headroom before it happens (especially under real world applications). Not to forget that the battery is deeply glued to the frame so it may collect heat pretty well, but at least battery sensor will now reports a more realistic temperature and not any more battery PCB one.
It also may increase cooling capabilities, as with this mod, you use the complete surface of the phone to cool down (front, back and even sides as frame goes at edges).
In other words, this mod allows you to use your whole phone heat capacity, which increases time before throttling. Using it with undervolting soft mod may bring you the best results.
I hope this could be useful.
Doing the Mod
_ Careful!!! Disassembly Nexus 4 is not difficult, as long as you keep cool, you have proper tools and enough time. Please do not forget to put back the black plastic cover before screwing the motherboard again, however you may damage your screen! (check Jiia posts)
_ Dimensions of the pocket in the aluminium/magnesium frame is about 15mm x 15mm x 0.5mm (with corner rounding ~0.25mm). The APQ8064 chip itself has smaller dimensions, more in the 13mm x 13mm range. So "perfect safe dimensions" would be 14.5mm x 14.5mm x 0.5mm for the pad, if it is a solid (metallic) one. Be careful and try to keep your shim as flat as possible to avoid any stress after montage. For sure you have more flexibility with a soft one (thermal pad, graphite...).
_ Concerning material; if we remain IRL (forget diamonds!) a list of possible material (with decreasing efficiency), may look likes:
graphite foil, Silver/Copper shim, aluminium shim, (most) other metal shim, thermal pad/paste, thermal tape.
Graphite foil: may give the better performances, but may be difficult to supply (not so expensive, but companies sale usually only big quantities).
Copper shim: DIY may not that easy (0.5mm is easy to bend), but you can buy finish products.
Aluminium shim: relative easy to supply and to manufacture (scissor may work), with very close performance than copper.
Other metal shim: may be the easiest to find (ask your local garage mechanic). Lower performance than copper or aluminium but better than pad (steel family). Check thermal conductivity for other possibilities (Bronze, brass, zinc...)
_ Where to find/buy;
Graphite Foil. or on Ebay (careful, Inches)
0.5mm Copper pads on ebay, or on ebay...
0.5mm Aluminium sheet. also on ebay
Thanks to all the regulars and helpful contributors to this post

awesome find. you might want to correct the title to say "Investigating"

praveenmarkandu said:
awesome find. you might want to correct the title to say "Investigating"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1.
When I read the title, I thought its one of the "Calling all Devs ... $200 etc etc thread" lol

I've lots of money to put in .
I also wanted to correct harDmod but I do not find where to edit title.
EDIT: I found it (go advanced), but edition is blocked for me.

Nice!
What about using a .5mm thermal pad as those used for transferring heat from gpu ram to waterblocks?

praveenmarkandu said:
awesome find. you might want to correct the title to say "Investigating"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
troun2000 said:
I've lots of money to put in .
I also wanted to correct harDmod but I do not find where to edit title.
EDIT: I found it (go advanced), but edition is blocked for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think you can edit the title. The post can be edited though.

While that makes perfect sense, problem and the solution, what if LG actually designed it this way and had their reason to not directly "connect" it to the frame? Either way, nice work for spotting this!
And also which hardware rev do you have? Something like this could be "easily" solved by LG with a different hardware rev, for example with a thermal pad (like the ones in GPU memory and stuff like that).

troun2000 said:
(Please note the 2 battery max temperatures, 40 or 60°C?)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
140°F and 60°C are the same.

narta said:
Nice!
What about using a .5mm thermal pad as those used for transferring heat from gpu ram to waterblocks?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you will get similar results to the ones I had using thermal paste. Pre-applied thermal pad are foreseen to be 'compressed' (they are only thick thermal paste), while the one you can cut with scissors have a 'foam' structure which is not as efficient as 'bulk' material.
At least it may be better than stock but not as good as the copper piece. Why not trying to use aluminium sheet? (light, 0,5mm sheet can be cut using scissors, high thermal conductivity)
Peter1856 said:
While that makes perfect sense, problem and the solution, what if LG actually designed it this way and had their reason to not directly "connect" it to the frame? Either way, nice work for spotting this!
And also which hardware rev do you have? Something like this could be "easily" solved by LG with a different hardware rev, for example with a thermal pad (like the ones in GPU memory and stuff like that).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Fair question, I also had it; why LG engineers designed it like this (as they are for sure not idiots and that I do not pretend to teach them their work)? I do not know. For me, the very unsatisfying but most probable answer is that a thermal pad was foreseen (there is a dedicated pocket!) but abandoned.
How do I check Hardware revision?

Rusty! said:
140°F and 60°C are the same.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried to use not too high resolution pictures, but if you check IfixIt pictures you will notice that both are mentioned.
My guess is that 40°C may refer to long term usability temperature (optimal Lithium battery temperature is ~20°C), while 60°C is more an ultimate 'survival' temperature before you seriously damage it.

You've misread the battery blurb
The picture shows both 140°F and 60°C (which is the same temperature), but not 40°C.

Rusty! said:
You've misread the battery blurb
The picture shows both 140°F and 60°C (which is the same temperature), but not 40°C.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes in Caution headlines, but you also have a logo showing 40°C/104°F.
Anyway that was not really my point .

Re: Nexus 4; Investing thermal throttling [HarMod]
So, would it be possible to put a thermal pad where it was originally supposed to be?
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app

Re: Nexus 4; Investing thermal throttling [HarMod]
troun2000 said:
Yes in Caution headlines, but you also have a logo showing 40°C/104°F.
Anyway that was not really my point .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh yeah, I completely missed that logo, and I treble checked the image to make sure. D'oh, sorry!
40°C can't be it's max temp, so I wonder what it's referring to...

i cant help wondering that this design was infact intentional.....
especially when there have been a lot of people having issues with yellow spots on the screen when the phone gets hot. This is maybe a reason to keep heat away from the back of the screen where the backplate is located.
i could be wrong though.
Either way, this is some great work by the OP!:good:

troun2000 said:
How do I check Hardware revision?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By booting into bootloader. Volume down and power button to boat into bootloader

Ya Mudda said:
So, would it be possible to put a thermal pad where it was originally supposed to be?
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes for sure, you can do it, but as already said, my guess is that bulk material is better. For a few $ you can get aluminium sheet that may give you much better performances (with two drops of thermal paste).
Opening for the first time a smarphone is quite stressfull, but this N4 is quite easy.
Rusty! said:
Oh yeah, I completely missed that logo, and I treble checked the image to make sure. D'oh, sorry!
40°C can't be it's max temp, so I wonder what it's referring to...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
NOP
troun2000 said:
My guess is that 40°C may refer to long term usability temperature (optimal Lithium battery temperature is ~20°C), while 60°C is more an ultimate 'survival' temperature before you seriously damage it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Eclipse_Droid said:
i cant help wondering that this design was infact intentional.....
especially when there have been a lot of people having issues with yellow spots on the screen when the phone gets hot. This is maybe a reason to keep heat away from the back of the screen where the backplate is located.
i could be wrong though.
Either way, this is some great work by the OP!:good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for thumb up!
I did not knew about these yellow spots and screen problems.
However I would say that with this mod, average screen temperature may be for sure higher, but I am pretty sure that its maximum temperature may be lower as you spread the heat on much bigger surfaces (if you prefer, temperature gradient may be lower with mod).
On last test, after 15min, battery (which is deeply glued to the frame) sensor reported ~41°C, I really do not think that screen may have seen temperature higher than 45°C.
So what is the best for lifespan; 10 pixels @55°C and 1 billion @25°C or 1 million of pixels @40°C ? I do not know.
stardusk said:
By booting into bootloader. Volume down and power button to boat into bootloader
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
:good: So it seems I have a Rev11.

Can you please run quadrant on your N4? I'm curious what sort of results you will get.

Re: Nexus 4; Investigating thermal throttling [HardMod]
sirbagin said:
Can you please run quadrant on your N4? I'm curious what sort of results you will get.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
I think you are in the wrong thread, here there is some quadrant benchs: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=33550610, about at the end of the thread...
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda premium

LG Optimus 4X HD P880 Cooling Mod *Update*

As you already aware, there is a throttling problem with this phone. Really killing its potential.
I blame nvidia for making this chip 40nm and LG, not making a proper desing to dissipate the heat released by the SoC.
At default state, P880 behaves like a 100m sprinter. Fast at start, out of breath after the finish. That "finish" depends on the workload of the device and ambient temperature.
At very demanding games I can usually play about 10-15 minutes before serious lag.
This is not all off it.
Because of restrictive governor policies, some games that run smoothly on two core devices, runs like crap on this device. Default governor disables all but one core when there is load on graphics part. I assume this is also because of the attempt to prevent overheating.
So, the device is not running as advertised. This is my thought.
It seems, without serious underclocking and undervolting, one can not get a smooth experience from this device.
With the end of my warranty, I've started modifying the device. My aim is to keep the phone under heavy load with the highest speed as long as possible.
Before hardware level modification, I've rooted and BL unlocked the P880, thanks to great members of XDA.
I'm currently on stable version of CM 10.1.3. Stock kernel.
From what I've read and comfirm with my own experiments, there are two temp limits triggering the throttling. One is the battery, which is 43°C. Other one is the core or the SoC which is 71°C.
With these limiters, device is reaching its lowest speed of 475Mhz under 10 minutes @ 20-ish degrees celsius room temp. I use stability test v2.7 for achieving this. Under real life circumstances, e.g, games, this time differs between 10 to 20mins.
There is a warning on the battery. Says 40°C max. Isn't that too low for this kind of device? With the help of this software I can increase "temp_throttle_skin" value easily to 50°C. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2306980
With more headroom on the battery side, P880 drops no more to 475mhz up to 20 minutes of stress testing with Stability Test 2.7.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.into.stability
At 20th minute, battery was 45.5°C. 4 cores running @ 1000Mhz. Core varies between 67-71°C.
After a small mod of applying some Gelid GC-Extreme thermal compound over the metal piece installed on the SoC, I've got slightly better results.
At 20th minute with Stability test 2.7, classic mode, battery increased to 47.5°C , 4 cores stayed at 1200Mhz and never dropped to 1000 but still hitting 70°C. There is slightly better heat spread over the device.
SoC is not touching the main frame directly. Different from nexus 4, there is a small metal shield covering the Soc and memory. (Strange thing is, metal shielding has a hole over the memory part. There is a thermal sticker on that chip.) Only a small part of the metal shield is touching to the main frame. That is a weird material I've never seen before. Its surface looks like sponge but very hard to touch. Like sand paper. I applied the thermal paste on this material in hopes of filling the small gaps and achieving a better surface but it doesn't help so much. I think that rough surfaced material is not ideal to be there in the beginning.
I think, cutting some parts of that shield piece and placing thicker cu or alu sheet metal will be better approach.
I'm also planning to wait for some time for thermal paste to cure. From my experience with this same compound on the PC parts, it takes some time for best results.
All suggestions are welcome.
I also wonder what's your solutions for this throttling matter.
Here are the pics.
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--UPDATE--
First, I want to say thanks to everyone who has send a reply to this post.
I'm back with more modifications and updates.
I wasn't satisfied with my previous modifications which was a simple thermal compound addition.
A proper test can not be done with lack of a custom kernel which has advanced software adjustment possibilities and of course a tool to make the adjustments.
Now I'm on CM 10.1.3 Stable with WerewolfJB kernel v009 [04-29-2014]. Making the speed adjustments with Trickster MOD app. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bigeyes0x0.trickstermod
As for the modification, my first approach was replacing the thermal sticker with a copper plate.
Disassembling the P880 second time.
Notice the touch points of the mainframe.
The metal piece covering the SoC area and thermal sticker removed.
This metal piece between the main frame and SoC is an EMI shield and a heat medium which delays the heat transfer to the mainframe. If you attach the SoC directly to the mainframe, it makes better SoC cooling but battery gets very hot in return. This will eventually make the battery die quickly because heat is the number one enemy of the batteries.
If I could improve the heat transfer from SoC to both the mainframe and metal shielding piece, that might improve the cooling efficiency. That was what I wanted to find out before beginning to mod.
The thinnest copper piece I could find is 0.8mm thick.
0.8mm is too thick for a device which has 8.9mm overall thickness!
I was able to reassembly the device but that put a lot of stress both to the mainframe which has LCD on it and of course the fragile, over engineered, tightly packed PCB of the device. This was a bad idea.
I couldn't find thinner copper plates. At least this small amount.
Final solution came from an old slider style switch which has copper strips touching on each other. I 've found it laying around so destroyed it to get some copper strips, thin enough to use. After cutting to proper size, I've dealt with the corrosion first.
They are 0.35mm thick. I think this is the maximum that can be used without serious concerns.
I've applied thermal paste to both sides of the strips, cut the thermal sticker in half and put the thick part back on to the memory chip. This is the final design before reassembling the device.
I've prepared a test video. 20 minute stress run.
https://vimeo.com/97050916
My settings are stock. 1500mhz max speed with interactive governor.
This is the most torturing test. CPU+GPU test with gaming governor is nothing compared to 4 core stress test.

KSH2014 said:
snip
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you could disable the thermal throttling via an app (there is one in themes and apps section)
tegra overclock has the ability to disable (or change) temp throttling, and some of the kernels have removed throttling completely (atleast battery temp throttling, the one at 43 degrees)

Flying_Bear said:
you could disable the thermal throttling via an app (there is one in themes and apps section)
tegra overclock has the ability to disable (or change) temp throttling, and some of the kernels have removed throttling completely (atleast battery temp throttling, the one at 43 degrees)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wouldn't that be dangerous? Removing the limiters completely?
Nvidia tegra 3 SoC limit is 85°C. LG adjusted this to 71°C. Maybe this is because of some other parts may be affected with such a high temp. All components are very tightly packed there you know.
Completely removing the limit not seems logical to me.
Operation within or close to the original limits should be achieved.
This could be done with undervolt/underclocking like many of the others did. But I want to get the most out of the available mass of the device as a heat sink.

KSH2014 said:
Wouldn't that be dangerous? Removing the limiters completely?
Nvidia tegra 3 SoC limit is 85°C. LG adjusted this to 71°C. Maybe this is because of some other parts may be affected with such a high temp. All components are very tightly packed there you know.
Completely removing the limit not seems logical to me.
Operation within or close to the original limits should be achieved.
This could be done with undervolt/underclocking like many of the others did. But I want to get the most out of the available mass of the device as a heat sink.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you could leave temperature for shutdown. on 10a version of our software, LG had put 120c as temperature of shutdown (atleast that's what some people claimed, my device came with 10d), so having shutdown temp at 85 or 90 is safe (plus, i only hit this limit once, and that was with werewolf kernel which seems to have very high mpu voltage tables)
however i think throttling is useless - if you hit too high temperature, auto-shutdown will take care of any potential problem

I'll try t buy a little fan and connect it to 2 1.5 V batteries and stick it with sth... or ill buy another back cover and make a hole and stick this fan to it

gerciolisz said:
I'll try t buy a little fan and connect it to 2 1.5 V batteries and stick it with sth... or ill buy another back cover and make a hole and stick this fan to it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why not?
If applied correctly, that may be the COOLEST solution.
Now imagine if someone takes this:
mugen-power-4400mah-extended-battery-for-lg-optimus-4x-hd-p880-with-battery-door (google it)
There is enough room between the camera and battery for this:
sunonusa.com/pdf/mm_fan_catalog.pdf(google it)
Take the blower one. Drill a hole and a side opening to the back cover. Add a thin micro switch. Something like you use with the tip of your nail.
So you only switch it on while you playing and not in your pocket.
Voltage is nearly perfect for direct feed with internal battery. A little resistance could be used. Power connection can be done with thin terminals placed between battery contacts.
No further heat sink modification may be needed. Because, simcard and sd card holders get really hot when CPU is hot. Cooling that part with such a method may be sufficient to drop the temps a little bit.
Feasible? Considering the price, effort and patience... Maybe not. But imagination is always good.
@Flying_Bear
I'll also look into that auto shut down idea. Thanks!

All chips can take up to 250 °C for short time. They are soldered on that temp. So don't worry.
Sent from my LG-P880 using Tapatalk

KSH2014 said:
Wouldn't that be dangerous? Removing the limiters completely?
Nvidia tegra 3 SoC limit is 85°C. LG adjusted this to 71°C. Maybe this is because of some other parts may be affected with such a high temp. All components are very tightly packed there you know.
Completely removing the limit not seems logical to me.
Operation within or close to the original limits should be achieved.
This could be done with undervolt/underclocking like many of the others did. But I want to get the most out of the available mass of the device as a heat sink.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've reached like 95 C after changing throttle temps using tegra overclock app and overclocking (GPU [email protected], CPU [email protected]) with no undervolts.
It screwed my LCD up for about 30 minutes.Since then I'm using 85 C as CPU throttle temp and 50 C for battery and I faced no problems so far.So there is no point in keeping throttle temp at 71 C.I barely hit 80 C after undervolting anyway.
I'm pretty sure LG did this to keep the battery from runing out, not because it would actually damage any components.

+ New updates and a test video added to the original post.

Hardware-Mod: Adding a copper heatpipe

Since we have no dedicated hardware modding subforum I just went for the mod section - feel free to move the thread accordingly if I am in the wrong.
Recently I broke my OP3 and bought two used ones with shattered displays of ebay, assembling a frankenstein sort of phone with my working parts. Now I have two working OP3s, my daily driver and one with a shattered display. In addition, I have one that is almost completely ruined and useless. That got me thinking.
I recently saw a lot of manufacturers incorporating heat pipes made of copper, filled with a little liquid into their devices to spread the heat from the SoC more efficiently along the backside of the device. Namely the Razer Phone, The Galaxy S8 and S9, the new Pocophone F1, just to name a few. Naturally, these parts come available at replacement shops for cheap. Like here for example: https://stellatech.com/en/samsung-sm-g950f-galaxy-s8-heat-pipe,a,828202.html/
Now, since my OP3 tends to get hot in the SoC/Camera area not only during gaming, I thought why not try fitting one of these to the aluminum back of the phone. The OP3 appears to have some sort of thermally conducting sticker, connecting the SoC under its shield to the aluminum back for heat dissipation.
My plan would be to Dremel a groove into the aluminum back, to fit the heat pipe. Then secure it in place with thermally conducting glue, alternatively thermal paste and some drops of epoxy along the way. Remove the shield from the soc, cut the sides off for easier alignment and solder it to the heat pipe.
Then add some thermal paste to the CPU and GPU and press the back/heat pipe/shield assembly on, closing up the phone. Paste would have to be replaced every time the phone is opened though.
I am open to any suggestions how to better achieve this as well as educated guesses on the effectiveness of my project.
I

Or better
Replace the shield with thermal pad copper joined with the heatpipe
Apply liquid metal instead normal thermal paste
Make many tiny holes in the back case
Make a custom build cooler pad with 11000 RPM fans
Build by yourself or ask some kernel devs to put a very high frequencies in the custom setting
Put it on youtube with a clickbait title even it's not working
$ Profit $

150208 said:
Or better
Replace the shield with thermal pad copper joined with the heatpipe
Apply liquid metal instead normal thermal paste
Make many tiny holes in the back case
Make a custom build cooler pad with 11000 RPM fans
Build by yourself or ask some kernel devs to put a very high frequencies in the custom setting
Put it on youtube with a clickbait title even it's not working
$ Profit $
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Someone give this guy a medal!!

Aluminium alone works also as a heat spreader. So I would maybe first try to polish the area on the case where the SoC is , to improve contact quality, and then use some higher quality thermal pad.
Run benchmarks before and after. (Like 10,x geekbench in a row.)

Heatpipes're used everywhere in tech these days. They work fine. I enjoy a snarky comment as much as the next droider, but really there's no reason you couldn't mod a case back to have a heatpipe running all the way down, although it might heat up the battery running past it.

Alternative
or you can try using this instead just copy paste on Amazon
Innovation Cooling Graphite Thermal Pad – Alternative To Thermal Paste/Grease (30 X 30mm)
for us, the PC enthusiasts its been working legit wonders while not having the downsides of paste

I think it would be unnecessary for already cooled device

General Thermal MOD (hardware) Galaxy TAB S8 Ultra

This might not be useful for many, but if anyone wondered why their TAB performs "bad" under heavy usage (gaming, benchmarks, etc...)
S8 series (all of them) have almost next to none existent "cooling" solution. Here is the S8 Ultra for example:
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As you can see on these photos (my own S8 Ultra), this is what Samsung is doing in their Flagship devices, this is their ultimate "cooling solution".
Anyone who understands a bit more about how cooling SHOULD be done, heat transfer/dissipation, thermal paste, copper vs aluminum, etc... won't need much of an explanation, these photos will be enough for them. lol
This is my OWN S8 Ultra which I opened after I got tired from the heavy thermal throttling. Keep in mind that NOTHING will save you from thermal throttling, not a custom ROM, not a custom KERNEL, nothing, this is not a software (code) issue, this is simply a SOC that consumes up to 20W and Samsung decided to troll us by implementing actually nothing but garbage "cooling" inside and obviously added GOS to limit the s*** out of the SOC to prevent from heating too much.
SD8 Gen 1 is a very power-hungry and inefficient SOC made by Qualcomm (one of the worse), and even phones which actually have copper heat pipes or vapor chambers (copper) still struggle with this SOC, now imagine what is happening to the S8 lineup with this kind of "cooling solution" and why is the TAB thermal throttling so heavily.
And here is my "simple" thermal MOD I did and the results after the mod (partially, I don't have all the screenshots/photos anymore).
If you're wondering what I did...Well, here are a few things:
Removed the Aluminium foil which was on the CHIP (SOC) itself, replacing it with a 0.2mm copper shim, and instead of using a thermal paste between the copper shim and CHIP, I added a thermal pad.
On the TAB frame itself, I removed the 0.01$ worth of "premium" thermal pad added by Samsung to our "flagship" "QUALITY" device, added a "longer" copper plate (0.2mm), pushed it under that plastic frame which is on the aluminum frame attached (holds the screws from the cover over the logic board) and added a thermal paste between the TAB frame and that copper plate since thermal pad was too thick and I didn't have much space to play with since I wouldn't be able to attach the logic board properly and the screen panel wouldn't be able to "fit" "flat" on top (it would be probably pushed, and potentially damaged by the logic board apply pressure on it).
I added the long copper plate there and used thermal paste between the frame for ONE and a very GOOD reason. The frame of the tab is FULL aluminum, basically, the WHOLE frame, and the copper plate through the thermal paste will transfer the heat to the frame of the tab, increasing the chance of better heat dissipation through the frame itself vs the stock mode was barely covering by those 2 small thermal pads concentrating the heat on a small area.
Now the heat on the back of the TAB is actually spreading over a MUCH larger (basically half of the back frame) area and this obviously results in far better heat dissipation and increases the cooling CAPACITY.
Between this copper plate and the actual SOC with the copper plate, I used again a thermal pad.
Wonder about the results? Sure. (I don't have all the screenshots or photos, but you can compare your results with mine, that will tell you "enough").
If you have any further questions, feel free to ask. Happy to help in any way possible.
(Ermm, removing the display was not a happy experience, FYI, it was difficult and the panel is VERY THIN, PROCEED WITH CAUTION, assuming that you have the necessary equipment/tools and experience)
Have fun modding. (Not my first thermal mod though).

Something similarly is possible with Apple M1 notebooks if i remember correctly.
This is very impressive

Fantastic project, but almost no one can do it as it is very difficult.. Didn't expect so bad work from Samsung regarding cooling..

quite disappointing to see we need to open that tab to get the full potential from it..
bought the S8 at 380€ (discounted price + trading old broken tablet) but still find it expensive for a device with supposedly the most powerful soc and sometimes lagging in games .
that reminds me of a video with a guy modding a mid-range phone and getting better perfs than GEN1..
Is the process for opening it very risky? I keep bad taste of opening a previous windows tablet to repair its screen and ended up completely breaking it..
Catmobile said:
Something similarly is possible with Apple M1 notebooks if i remember correctly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah on MBA you get same perf passively cooled as actively cooled MBP (like in this vid)
the difference is that it seems so much easier to open MBA than this tablet where you need to remove its screen to get inside..

Nice !
Thermal paste to the shield and then thermal pad to the whole aluminium frame ? If that's correct I'd say Samsung did a good job. They just didn't cover them fully that's all.
Do you happen to have the exact position of the SoC on the frame ?

I wonder what temps you would get with liquid metal.

Man this makes me angry. How incompetent are Samsung

mariasanchez said:
Nice !
Thermal paste to the shield and then thermal pad to the whole aluminium frame ? If that's correct I'd say Samsung did a good job. They just didn't cover them fully that's all.
Do you happen to have the exact position of the SoC on the frame ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Samsung didn't even do CLOSE to a good job. Yes, I can post some screenshots from the video of the disassembly and you'll see where the SOC is under that Alumium shield and how are the thermal pads positioned.
It's a JOKE whoever's idea was to do it like this. The SOC (the actual heat source) is not even touching the thermal pads, only the side of that shield is, hence why are there such high INSTANT temperature peaks when you launch something demanding, like a game or a benchmark test.

vangry2020 said:
I wonder what temps you would get with liquid metal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually nothing much. LM would only help with idle temps, they would be definitely lower due to higher thermal conductivity, but under stress/load you would be still hitting the thermal threshold due to the cooling capacity limit. LM doesn't increase the cooling capacity limit, it only increases the thermal conductivity and faster heat transfer.

I think Samsungs idea was to use back plate made of aluminum as a way to cool the galaxy tab s8 ultra down. By letting heat spread out into aluminum. Which is probably why.
If now back side was removed.
Update: NVM after checking pictures in main topic closer i saw now that it was glas and display that was removed.

Because i couldn't understand exactly what you did, i searched for a disassembly video. This one i think is the best. After 4th minute it shows the chip.

This is amazing. Thanks for sharing this, I'm probably going to end up doing something similar eventually but for now am trying to enable my simcard slot in the WiFi version ... I'm guessing they were too lazy to make 2 versions and just disabled the WiFi versions sim slot, they even glued a fake simcard to the tray .. it's hilarious

infinitist said:
This is amazing. Thanks for sharing this, I'm probably going to end up doing something similar eventually but for now am trying to enable my simcard slot in the WiFi version ... I'm guessing they were too lazy to make 2 versions and just disabled the WiFi versions sim slot, they even glued a fake simcard to the tray .. it's hilarious
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Thanks a lot for the detailed pics ! I'll give it a go as well but just for fun, I never experienced slowdowns on the tablet.

That is microsd slot not sim. Sim in wifi model probably also missing SIM chip and 4G chip and such. So you can't enable any SIM in wifi model.

I ended up grinding the frame on the back to expose the CPU thank to the pictures you posted. Extremely easy to do with the 1mm aluminium frame, it grinds even at low speed.
Then I put a 17x17x1.3mm copper spacer with thermal paste on the CPU, and finally a big but very thin copper plate taped on the back. This way you can even switch the copper plate with a small fan if you're a hardcore player/benchmarker.
I can fill its heat now when touching the plate. Home, Task switcher, Fennec and co feel extremely smooth and snappy but seriously it was probably already like that before.
Anyways again thanks a lot ! Thanks to your thread I was able to locate the chip to grind the frame (3 to 23mm from the pen and 10 to 36mm from the camera).

did you try undervolting your gpu? that might help too