Overclocking an android box

[Faisal A]

Would it be possible to artificially cool and overclock those cheap android boxes available on the internet

[Levent]

Depends on the kernel support and ability to root those. I wouldnt get my hopes up.

[SupaKomputa]

You can cool it by adding a bigger heatsink on top of the SOC, adding fans would be better.

These things are cheap, probably not worth it, better just buy the higher end.

[Letgomyleghoe]

11 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

You can cool it by adding a bigger heatsink on top of the SOC, adding fans would be better.

These things are cheap, probably not worth it, better just buy the higher end.

your home profile pic is an apple computer lol, by higher end do you mean more expensive??

 

[SpookyCitrus]

10 minutes ago, scuff gang said:

your home profile pic is an apple computer lol, by higher end do you mean more expensive??

 

Higher end usually means more expensive. The cheap android boxes usually only use a small heatsink to cool the processor and are typically not really capable of adding better cooling to them. Whether it's a fan or a bigger heatsink. For the most part the cases are too small to add anything to them without just taking it out of the case, or modifying it. In my opinion they aren't worth doing anything like that to. Most are not overclockable and usually depending on the model you get they already do what they say without overheating or even needing an overclock, I've bought a couple cheap ones to mess around with that are for 4K streaming and they work perfectly fine for that. It more or less depends on what OP wants to do with it.

[Faisal A]

@SpookyCitrus Just want to overclock for fun. Dont mind taking it out of the case. Thinking of the H96 max

[SpookyCitrus]

2 hours ago, Faisal A said:

@SpookyCitrus Just want to overclock for fun. Dont mind taking it out of the case. Thinking of the H96 max

The CPU that box uses is the Cortex A53, which is technically overclockable but voltage limitations are a big deal and from what I can find about it it's pretty intensive. It's not just slap a good cooler on it and adjust settings in bios, it looks like custom software and voltage mods are needed.

[SupaKomputa]

On 12/3/2019 at 4:45 AM, Faisal A said:

@SpookyCitrus Just want to overclock for fun. Dont mind taking it out of the case. Thinking of the H96 max

you have a Rockchip RK3328. Many Rockchips are overclockable go to https://forum.freaktab.com/ for infos.

[Moto Fox]

@Faisal A Just to close the loop and be clear, you can do this.

 

You have to modify the Device Tree Overlay File (*.dts) for the Armbian version specific to the Android box you are using.

In the Device Tree Overlay file you will find an OPP list.

This lists all the different CPU freq states for the processor, you can hijack this area and add more.

Although you need to know how to correctly set the Microvolt Speed (Basically raising CPU voltage) to be stable.

 

The values in the OPP table are given in hexidecimal, so you need to convert them to decimal (Just use an online converter) then figure out what decimal values you want for opp-hz (CPU Frequency), and microvolt speed (CPU Voltage in microvolts) then convert these values BACK to hexadecimal and add the new states to the table.

 

Then you just replace the *.dts file and reboot, I would suggest keeping on stable version on NAND and booting the overclocked version from a micro-sd card.

That way if it locks up too soon you can just pull it out and boot from NAND to change the values again.

I don't think you need to change the clock-latency-ns at all.

 

Attached is an example (did this quickly in paint)

This is for my Allwinner H6, got it to 2.14Ghz all cores and it hits around 42-45°C in Htop

 

 

If you have questions feel free to DM me.