Thermal Considerations
Bengal (VL-EPMe-30) Reference Manual
52
EPMe-30 Thermal Characterization
The EPMe-30 board underwent the following thermal characterization tests:
Test Scenario 1: Single core EPMe-30EAP + HDW-406 heat sink
Test Scenario 2: Dual core EPMe-30EBP + HDW-406 heat sink, with/without HDW-407 fan
Test Scenario 3: Quad core EPMe-30ECP + HDW-406 heat sink, with/without HDW-407
fan
Table 30 describes the thermal testing setup for the board.
Table 30: EPMe-30 Thermal Testing Setup
Hardware configuration
EPMe-30 (Bengal) single/dual/quad core CPU with:
4 GB of DDR3 DRAM (VersaLogic part number VL-MM9-4EBN)
HDW-406 (passive heat sink)
HDW-407 (heat sink fan)
One attached DisplayPort device
Two RS-232 ports in loopback configuration
Two active Ethernet ports
Three USB 2.0 ports in loopback configuration
BIOS
ID string: Bengal_3.1.0.334.r1.101
Passive thermal trip point setting: 105 ºC
Critical thermal trip point setting: 110 ºC
Operating system
Microsoft Windows 8.1 Enterprise
Test software
Passmark BurnIn Test v7.1 b1017
- CPU utilization ~90%
Intel Thermal Analysis Tool (TAT) v5.0.1014
- Primarily used to read the CPU core temperature
Test environment
Thermal chamber
The test results reflect the test environment within the temperature chamber used. This particular
chamber has an airflow of about 0.5 meters per second (~100 linear feet per minute). Thermal
performance can be greatly enhanced by increasing the overall airflow beyond 0.5 meters per
second.
The system power dissipation is primarily dependent on the application program; that is, its use of
computing or I/O resources. The stress levels used in this testing are considered to be at the top
of the range of a typical user
’s needs.
