Delidding the new Pi 5 to find the 'dark silicon'

The 2GB Pi 5 is cheaper with a smaller chip. Raspberry Pi removed the 'dark silicon'.

Does that make a difference in thermals, performance, or overclocking?

Contents:

00:00 - 2GB, $50, new chip
00:36 - Baseline performance
01:10 - Of course I overclocked it
02:18 - Not stopping at 3.5 GHz this time
03:22 - Delidding
04:34 - C1 vs D0 steppings
05:10 - Stability issues with direct die cooling
05:53 - For my next trick...
06:10 - Better efficiency (sort-of)
07:27 - Is the 2GB better?

[JeffGeerling]

Hello everyone! Our baby is on the way, so I won't be around to respond to comments for a bit :)

I'm still going to do more testing on the D0 chip at some point, and a few other people are also doing more testing, so for the latest, please check my blog or the GitHub issue linked in the description (but don't expect any updates from me soon lol).

I have a couple other fun videos in progress, but I won't be finishing them up for a couple weeks. Please go check out Novaspirit Tech and my 2nd channel, Level2Jeff, while I'm away!

[Edit: Baby is here, everyone's healthy and I am going to enjoy little naps while baby+mom naps.]

[slimhazard]

You underestimate the power of the Dark Side of the Silicon.

[JTCF]

"I am voiding my warranty and here's a sponsor that allows me to afford that" - I like how this turns around

[MarcoGPUtuber]

I delidded Jeff's channel to find the dark channel.

I found Red Shirt Jeff.

[youtou]

"if you want to protect your private data, send your private data to this private data-protecting-company"
lol

[NightHawkATL]

I kinda feel like the 2GB model is good for a single application that is happy with 2GB and requires high CPU utilization. Otherwise, it will be a good Docker host to run many small applications. 2GB won't get you much these days but still has some useful applications.

[dw]

A few years ago some friends and I fooled around with submersion cooling in chilled oil.

We put a motherboard in a plastic container, filled it with oil, and put it in a chest freezer full of ice... and it was awesome.

Bare CPUs worked OK but the best performance was with a large solid copper heatsink on the CPU and a pump instead of a fan to circulate chilled oil across it.

The biggest issue we had was finding a pump capable of actually pumping the chilled oil as it was very thick... we had to make sure the freezer wasn't set to cold of the oil would be too viscous, but even without the pump to circulate cold oil across the heatsink it still worked very well.

We tried mineral oil as well as some other thinner oils. We did find that a couple of the oils attacked some of plastics pretty badly. I want to say we ended up settling on either plain mineral oil from the grocery store or a thinner version sold as sewing machine oil.... but I don't remember off the top of my head.

Wonder what Pi in an oil filled container in the freezer would do....

[eldibs]

3:30 That first slice with the razor blade, when it slid too far, I took 1d3 Psychic damage.

[greentravels]

Good to hear everybody is happy and healthy! I was looking forward to a more in-depth dive on this two gig version, you didn’t disappoint. Ars Technica apparently liked the video as well, your name and findings got a couple paragraphs in an article.

[sandmanxo]

Good to see both a 2gb pi5 and the new stepping. I can't see a reason this new stepping doesn't make it to the larger memory models and using less power is always a good thing, even if the difference is tiny.

[Hope_Boat]

I ran an overclocked Celeron 300 with a Peltier back in the day. There is a side effect you might take in consideration: condensation of water due to humidity may build up ice around the CPU and create shorts when melting back.
The solution was to thermally isolate the cold plate from ambient air.

[tiagotiagot]

Maybe the heatspreader was doing more than just that, and perhaps the crash increase could suggest it was also serving as EM shielding?

[yaniv_akrish]

7:38 I liked the reference to the "glass is glass" from(i believe JerryRigEverything) in the subtitles.

[hannescampidell]

You could try to put a 8 GB memory chip on a 2 GB Pi 5 to test it to its fullest

[LostInThezone]

Congratulations to you, mom, and baby!

[mylittlevangoghcantbethisc]

I'm drunk and this video make no sense to me but it't still an entertaining watch nonetheless

[siberx]

Leakage is no joke on modern manufacturing nodes; even "inactive" silicon can consume significant amounts of power unless they're carefully power-gated, which is not always feasible depending on which segments are enabled/disabled.

[Jdbye]

You might've had hotspots on the die due to imperfect contact with the heatspreader removed, this is the problem heatspreaders are generally intended to solve, since neither the die nor heatsink will be perfectly flat and level and spreading out the contact area makes this less of an issue.

[Utkrant]

Glass is glass and glass breaks.
Power savings is power savings and power costs money.

[jesuslovesyoujohn-]

I was surprised to see that delidding didn't help but then it is a tiny chip with limited heat produced. I think liquid nitrogen would be cool to see but dry ice would probably work just as well.