Will Arctic Silver mod give me better FPV?

burlbark said:
It will be plainly obvious when you take the top off. If the silver colored wifi unit does not have exposed holes you will need to open it up and confirm the bottom processor in the wifi unit has a thermal pad or thermal compound. Here is a pic showing what not to see.....The processor to the left of the case should have a generous layer of thermal past on it so that it should match up with the case and its raised area with white paste. This processor could not heat sink to the case and failed.

Lol that processor on mine had zero anything on it. No pad no paste no nothing. I guess I am lucky that mine survived till now. I added plenty of arctic silver to it before putting it back together.
 
BlackTracer said:
burlbark said:
It will be plainly obvious when you take the top off. If the silver colored wifi unit does not have exposed holes you will need to open it up and confirm the bottom processor in the wifi unit has a thermal pad or thermal compound. Here is a pic showing what not to see.....The processor to the left of the case should have a generous layer of thermal past on it so that it should match up with the case and its raised area with white paste. This processor could not heat sink to the case and failed.

Lol that processor on mine had zero anything on it. No pad no paste no nothing. I guess I am lucky that mine survived till now. I added plenty of arctic silver to it before putting it back together.

Well you saved yourself $230 by checking. They seem to fail randomly, its probably dependent upon ambient temperatures. The one thing we can be sure of is.. No thermal paste equals dead wifi.

Happy I could be of help.

Jeremy James
 
Mori55 said:
Do you guys replace the tape underneath the wifi module ? Or just stick it back on.

I usually just stick it back on, but I make sure to put a nonstick protector on the adhesive while working on it.

Jeremy James
 
burlbark said:
Well you saved yourself $230 by checking. They seem to fail randomly, its probably dependent upon ambient temperatures. The one thing we can be sure of is.. No thermal paste equals dead wifi.

Happy I could be of help.

Jeremy James

Just opened my Phantom today and I couldn't see any holes in the module :(
When it was open, I turned it on and tested for 10 minutes with the 640x480 15fps to see if it became incredibly hot, but it didn't. I think it won't be much of a problem if I use my poor two batteries with this live feed quality. But who knows, gonna do it anyway by watching your video :D
 
Finally got around to heat sinking the various places inside of my PV2+v2 wifi unit with the Arctic Silver paste. My wifi components had either zero heat sink paste on them or so little that it was just making contact with the metal cover at a single little spot. I saw no signs of excessive heating, so I think I caught it in time. It was pretty easy to do and I thank all who have posted information on how to do the procedure. One less thing for me to worry about in the air.
 
MapMaker53 said:
Finally got around to heat sinking the various places inside of my PV2+v2 wifi unit with the Arctic Silver paste. My wifi components had either zero heat sink paste on them or so little that it was just making contact with the metal cover at a single little spot. I saw no signs of excessive heating, so I think I caught it in time. It was pretty easy to do and I thank all who have posted information on how to do the procedure. One less thing for me to worry about in the air.

Yep thats how I found most of the WIFI units that I have heat sinked, nearly zero heat bridging. They where all going to fail eventually. Glad you caught yours in time, be forewarned though that the damage may have already been done....However.

My own craft was cutting out and it had 30 minutes of flight time on it before I fixed mine, now it has more like 200 hrs. So it is really luck of the draw.

Jeremy
 
Just by looking at some of the comments about amounts and generosity, pics, and videos throughout a bunch of threads I wonder how long the birds will remain airborne.
Without bashing or commenting, before you run out and blindly follow the tutorials, remain critical and learn, here some basics:
http://www.pcinside.info/en/how-to/60-c ... mal-grease

Only apply a tiny, tiny amount, so that the imperfections of the surface are removed, not so that you create another thick layer of isolation on top of your chip, and never put any paste if there is no actual heat sinking surface contact (heat sink does not mean thermal paste, it means a dissipating metal element placed on top of the chip, which increases the size of the surface for the heat to actually dissipate).
If I remember, except the bottom chips, none of the other ones have actual heat sinks on them, if you smear them with however expensive compound you've decided to buy, you'll not be improving their life expectancy.
 
It will improve on both - Longevity and performance. The cooler you keep the module, the better performance. This can be seen on CPU's. The only difference is that CPU's have a safe guard when it overheats.

catchingchrome said:
Sarcasm is justifiable with a ridiculous post.

Have you done this preventative measure?
 
BioTeq said:
If I remember, except the bottom chips, none of the other ones have actual heat sinks on them, if you smear them with however expensive compound you've decided to buy, you'll not be improving their life expectancy.

You must not remember. The top processor is also heat sinked to the top of the case. Of the 100 or so wifi units I heat sinked, or for your sake, applied thermal compound, only one has now failed. And this unit had hours on it beforehand and had just been updated.... more than likely that was the cause of failure not the thermal compound.

The EMF shielding also in the top board was previously heat sinked to the case. The final output mosfets underneath it where not, this left no thermal bridging to allow cooling of these amps.

Countless others had wifi over heating signs, such as the wifi FPV feed dropping out, they applied thermal paste or heat sinked the processors and now they too no longer have an issue. If you look back through the posts on this subject I showed thermography pictures showing the advantage of using gooped thick thermal paste vs silicone heat pads and various other measures. Please do the research before claiming things such as the above.

Jeremy
 

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