In Use (continued):

I hope to be able to feature the CompactPro in additional articles where we get back to analyzing the thermal properties of computer components and consumer electronics devices in action. With that said, I took a quick look at a couple of items to confirm my suspicions about their heat production.



Desktop PC Analysis:

My main desktop PC is now a very compact Mini-ITX system that houses quite a bit of higher end components... It has an Intel i5 CPU, 16GB of memory, a 960GB SATA SSD, a 240GB mSATA SSD, a Blu-Ray burner, and a PCIe WiFi/Bluetooth card. All of this is in a tiny Aluminum housing that has just the 90mm low profile CPU fan. I hope to dive in to more of a thermal analysis of my system in order to improve what I saw, but the pictures below really say it all...



The entire system glows red, with a skin temperature over 110F! That is warm, and we're not even measuring the heat directly off one of the critical chips!

Mobile Phone Analysis:

Getting back to the Sony Xperia M4 Aqua that let me down by not supporting USB OTG, I wanted to look at another occasional annoyance it offers up. The device is marketed as being waterproof (I'm not willing to confirm that), and I believe as such that the heat generated inside may have a hard time getting out. It has to be completely sealed to be waterproof, and there is only so much heat that can pass through the plastic / glass / metal body. It can get very warm while in use, and I feel most of the heat near the top of the device. The thermal imager does confirm that a larger area gets warm at the top, but a smaller area towards the bottom of the phone actually gets even warmer! Not much I can do about this, unless I want to take my calls in the freezer.