Heyho from germany.
From time to time I ordered some of these android tv boxes.
in hopefully order to crunch for many years.

I am very dissapoinet to tell you all, it doesn't pay off, even not in crunched
points.

On my side, approximatley about FIVE devices have died almost every device
in a time of 12 months.

3 time quad-cores an 2 times an NEW eight-core device.
And an Odroid 4-core (old release).

Whats the point ? Don't spend your money on these TV boxes..

Cheers !

In future i count on newer odroid devices etc. , and i don't try any tablets no more.
Two of them died the same death, too much crunching. Accumulators failed..

Again, cheers for germany. Keep crunching !

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I have some and works fine..... for watch TV not for crunching.

Since they are not intended to crunch, to use any of them for crunching you need to care about the heat generated that's is maybe why your's fail.

Not imagine anyone who build this low power usage TV boxes, build-ed to be cheap as possible, worry about the heat.

Something very similar happening when you crunch on a Cell phone. The extra heat generated by the crunching processing is an enemy of the electronics.

my 0.02

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I crunch on my old Android Kindle Fire tablets with no issues.

https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=8396838
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=8020627

Crunch on my Android phone too.
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/results.php?hostid=8396838

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Yes, unless you can do something to greatly improve their cooling then I wouldn't bother wasting $'s on them as they're not meant for what we do.

Cheers.

For sure i got an external cooling in summertime.

Now it's autum, heaters still off. 64°F here.

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In exchange for my buried 8-core android devices i'll now run my good old and durable Nvidia GT 640 1GB

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Yes, unless you can do something to greatly improve their cooling then I wouldn't bother wasting $'s on them as they're not meant for what we do.

That. All my Android devices are lying behind 120mm and 140mm fans spinning at 5V. I had one Huawei G700's battery bloat and pop out due to the increased heat. Gave it to a friend of mine who put a new battery in it and found it still worked. But since that time all my devices are aircooled.

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I crunch on my old Android Kindle Fire tablets with no issues.

Sure thing, as i wrote/said , only until it's really broken.

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Under the Android's Boinc managers I have you can set the temperature that it suspends crunching at. I have mine set slightly below the default and haven't had any dead devices (yet). Since I think it is battery temp I am not sure if that would work on Android TV boxes.

Tom

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).

good point, but there is no battery installed (with a sensor).
Browsing on amlogic cpu socs , there is no description found for the word "sensor" or "sensors".

The client support this settings but there are no batteries and no sensor. Any thoughts on that ?

Never found a thermal indicator on any tv box.

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good point, but there is no battery installed (with a sensor).
Browsing on amlogic cpu socs , there is no description found for the word "sensor" or "sensors".

The client support this settings but there are no batteries and no sensor. Any thoughts on that ?

Never found a thermal indicator on any tv box.

I don't have an Android TV box so I can "poke" around with it. There are some indirect ways you may be able "control" your temperature.

If the box has multiple cpu cores you can go from 100% (4?) down to 3. Another choice would be to set the amount of time devoted to processing to less than 100%. Last but not least if you are using those boxes for TV you could tell Boinc to suspend process when it gets very busy at all.

All of these MIGHT reduce the your high temps issue. Fans and putting space around/under each box should certainly reduce the operating temperature. If you want to be extreme about it I suppose you could try "liquid nitrogen" (Yup-per I have the fastest Android TV box in the world by benchmark.... ;)

Anyway, since heat is the enemy of electronics any successful effort to reduce your average temperature should help.

Thank you for bringing up the experience. I had no exposure so it hadn't even occurred to me a TV box could be used....

Tom

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).

Somerimes I degreed the numbers of used cores but on low effect
on crunching stability.

I't was allways the app that stuck crunching. But all tips are too late,
another box in 24 hour have been gone, sane type an modell.

T95Z say's good bye. I hab to reset this box, but low effect
not stable anymore.

Some v4 arm app was It on the end, u must read my last
tried crunching workunits, some 64-bits.

Sorry i didn't expect this loss of hardware.

Edit:

ok, i will reset that box again, and reduced core speed to 1.2 ghz, if it will start again, last try last chance,

NO, i't won't , direct freeze on restart, no chance...
I also tried a reflash for the rom, always going in reboot, no more new flashing possible.

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If you know how, check the box electronics for any signal of overheat, leak capacitor or similar.
That could confirm if the heat is rely the problem or maybe some kind of earth return current.
Several boxes with the same similar problem shows a patern.

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The heat would be a killer for components like power capacitors, even if the CPU was still technically OK.

I guess that, like mentioned above, they just aren't built to run 4 cores 24/7. Streaming a TV channel probably only uses one core and the little inbuilt GPU. Having the extra cores means the menu and browsing functions are snappy, but that's only intermittent work. Most of the time it's only making 2/5 ths of it's max heat.

If you wanted to try this I'd suggest butchering the top of the box and sticking a desktop fan ( + wire grill) on the lid. Maybe a little alloy heatsink stuck on the CPU with thermal epoxy? Like the guys using Raspberry Pi for any intensive use tend to add a heatsink .

There are probably some devices with lower power CPUs or a decent thermal design that would survive, but with desktop boxes, having some more cores and better clock speed is better for marketing. They never run at 100% in their intended use, so the $5 extra the spent on the CPU can be saved by not fitting a heatsink. If your whole thermal testing program is "Watch Netflix for an hour, and if the CPU isn't too hot to touch, it's a pass", isn't the same as "Crunch SE TI for 24 hours and see if it melts"

This isn't just a problem with Arm devices. I have on old Toshiba AIO machine that has decent specs on paper (i30-3110M and a GT630M GPU) Problem is they skimped on the heasink. Both the CPU and GPU heat pipes connect into one little laptop sized radiator and fan. It can cool the CPU on 4 threads, or the GPU. But if you try and run both, it thermal throttles after about a minute. It's not the heat sinks on the chips that's faulty, the heat is getting to the heat pipes, it's just you can't touch the radiator fins as they can't shed that amount of heat. Because it's an AIO 99% of owners would never push it to 100%, so they got away with selling them.

Over night the device cooled out.
I was able to install it again. I lowered the freqency by 500 Mht.

I was wrong, it's really gone...

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