Heatsink
Inside Flipper One, several components generate a significant amount of heat. This heat cannot be trapped inside a plastic enclosure, otherwise some parts operating under sustained heavy load could reach high temperatures and gradually degrade over time.
The device also contains a Li-Ion battery, which should not be heated above 60 ยฐC, as excessive heat accelerates battery degradation and negatively affects its lifespan and safety.
Main heat sources
The main heat sources inside Flipper One are:
- RK3576 SoC. Up to 5.5 W under maximum load (CPU + GPU + NPU simultaneously).
- RK806S PMIC. Up to around 2 W at peak SoC load.
- DDR5 RAM. Up to 1.5 W during memory-intensive operations.
- BQ25792 charger. Up to 1 W while fast-charging the battery.
In real-world use, reaching the maximum heat output is difficult. During heatsink testing, we use a synthetic workload designed to push the hardware to its thermal limits.
Integrated aluminum heatsink
Flipper One dissipates heat from its hottest chips through a aluminum heatsink. In addition to thermal management, the heatsink also serves as a structural element, mechanically integrating with the enclosure and the main PCB.
Our preliminary simulations and real-world prototype testing at an ambient air temperature of 21 ยฐC show that this heatsink can maintain the radiator temperature below 50 ยฐC under realistic (non-synthetic) workloads with a thermal load of about 6 W.
At higher loads or higher ambient temperatures, the SoC will reduce CPU core frequencies, while the MCU will disable low-priority peripheral loads, limit charging power, and notify the user of these limits on the display.