It appears that you have made some good DIY tweaks. My philosophy is that if heat reduction is easy, why not do it? Your use of thermal tack material to provide heat transfer while maintaining electrical isolation seems to be an excellent solution for kits/projects with internal heat sinking and no provided thermal conductive connection to a metal case.
Heat - even lower heat over time - reduces the lifespan of electronic components. That is why, when I recently purchased an RPi3+ and HiFiBerry DAC+ for showing movies at our little local community players theater, I ordered the steel case for it. Enclosing electronics in plastic - an insulator - when heat-dispersing metal is available doesn't make sense to me. After playing a 2-hour 1080p/2-channel audio movie, with video to the projector via HDMI and audio to the sound mixer board/amp, the RPi3+/HiFiBerry unit is barely warm.
I also purchased a Ghent case for a future 70wpc ICEPower 200ASC + 200AS module amp build, but the modules have no heat sinks, so I assume that they don't generate much heat - and I will seldom push the amp to high loads. I postponed my Ghent/ICEPower project when I came across my mint condition 1993 Classé Model Seventy AB amp, but after I buy the modules and finish the Ghent/ICEPower unit, I might replace the traditional linear power supply of the Classé with a pair of good SMPS modules. The Classé barely gets warm in my system, so the PS mod would eliminate mechanical noise and transformer vibration issues, reduce the weight of the unit drastically, and probably reduce power consumption a bit.
Last edited:
