Thermal Design - Seco Qseven CQ7-A42 User Manual

Carrier board for rel. 2.0, compliant modules on 3.5" form factor

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4.1 Thermal Design

A parameter that has to be kept in very high consideration is the thermal design of the system.

Highly integrated modules, like Qseven

the counterpart, the miniaturising of IC's and the rise of operative frequencies of processors lead to the generation of a big amount of heat, that must be dissipated

to prevent system hang-off or faults.

Qseven

specifications take into account the use of a heatspreader, which will act only as thermal coupling device between the Qseven

dissipating surface/cooler. The heatspreader also needs to be thermally coupled to all the heat generating surfaces using a thermal gap pad, which will optimise

the heat exchange between the module and the heatspreader.

The heatspreader is not intended to be a cooling system by itself, but only as means for transferring heat to another surface/cooler, like heatsinks, fans, heat pipes

and so on.

Conversely, heatsinks in some situation can represent the cooling solution. Until the modules are used on a development Carrier board, on free air, just for software

development and system tuning, then a finned heatsink could be sufficient for modules' cooling. Anyhow, please remember that all depends also on the workload

of the processor. Heavy computational tasks will generate much heat.

Indeed, when using CQ7-A42 carrier board with any Qseven

scenario of utilisation.

Therefore, it is always necessary that the customer study and develop accurately the cooling solution for his system, by evaluating processor's workload, utilisation

scenarios, the enclosures of the system, the air flow and so on. This is particularly needed for industrial grade modules.

SECO can provide Qseven

modules' specific heatspreaders and heatsinks, but please remember that their use must be evaluated accurately inside the final

system (electronics + mechanics), and that they should be used only as a part of a more comprehensive ad-hoc cooling solutions, which also keeps the surface

temperature of all carrier board's components in the temperature range specified for the specific carrier board configuration (industrial or commercial grade).

CQ7-A42

modules, offer to the user very good performances in minimal spaces, therefore allowing the systems' minimisation. On

module, it is necessary to consider carefully the global heat generated by the system, and the

module and an external

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