ASUS Tinker Open Case DIY Kit

Recently I let the magic out of one of my development boards, a Tinker Board S. The culprit was my messy desk space, my dev board of interest sits between my keyboard and screen, and some stray cables/wires/etc make it dicey if you’re running without a case. I had something ground a pin that shouldn’t have been grounded. I’m not sure what I broke, but given all the microscopic components around the RK808 PMIC, I think it’s safe to say I can’t fix it.

I gave the board a proper sendoff on Twitter with a warning to others, and was contacted by ASUS for the purpose of trying out one of their accessories, the Tinker Open Case DIY Kit.

Not cutting my own out of acrylic sounded great, so I said yes of course. Starting off, it of course came in the typical themed box, well presented.

Smart looking box, no question what’s in there.

All components out for inspection

Nice heavy base, well-written instructions, tiny little fan (I need more of those)

That heat sink should be standard on all Tinkers in my honest opinion, or at least be available to purchase on its own, quick comparison to the one included with every Tinker:

Even without the fan, this cooler is likely to perform better than the default solution

The Tinker fits as expected on the base, there is a nice amount of space underneath and the screws are nice and low-profile:

installed on the base

Now to look closer at this heatsink, it has an adhesive pad for the SoC, and a pad to isolate it from the electrical components it has to lean against near the HDMI:

Remember this is likely a sample, don’t judge too harshly on the sticky placement

And in place:

And final assembly with fan:

Even put on the little vanity sticker, which is also thick aluminum with adhesive.

Impressions:

Well, more heat sink is always better than less, a quick test with a 5.0 Kernel doing cpu mining (100% load) at 1.6 GHz (yeah, something isn’t quite right in my dev kernel build) is sitting at 62 C the whole time writing this. Downside: That little guy is loud. It’s significantly quieter running 3.3V, but is of course slower. If you’re ambitious, make a script to monitor temperature and PWM this with a small transistor. Or let it rip, in most heavy load situations the noise isn’t a concern.

The base is solid. Like the case I wrote about on the Armbian forums, it is properly stamped to provide rigidity without undue mass. all the holes lined up as they should, and my Tinker can sit on top of my mess without fear of dying.

I have no idea about the availability of these, they are on ASUS’s web page at least. For a dev that wants to avoid a full case, but doesn’t want to kill boards, this is nice, I recommend it (pending price of course). For ASUS: Sell us the cooler as it’s own item, that would be awesome.

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