I bought a Canon EOS R5 - potential overheating solutions

[dr_jon]

Is this really the issue though, or does the CPU (presumably a SoC in reality) never get so unhappy it needs a heatsink (and they can run at 70C case temperature, 100C internally, probably way more than assorted other components in the camera body). (BTW 45C and above is not something you want to touch.)

As there are YouTube videos showing you can record 4k HQ for 4 hours to an external recorder provided no cards are in the camera that suggests the issue is:
(1) The super-whizzy cards get too hot and aren't rated to record reliably when hot, so the camera stops trying to record
(2) The SoC gets a lot hotter when doing H.265 compression
(3) Both

Someone needs to record 4k HQ to a fast SD UHS II card with the other slot empty, IMHO...
 

[illogict]

Who in their right mind puts a DC-DC converter right on top of the CPU and RAM?! Moreover, it feels a little too intricate for me…

There is something really fishy here…

[UncleBobsPhotography]

Regarding the most reason blog post, I wonder what would happen if you left the camera for 2 hours in the freezer, started recording and put it back in the freezer. With a starting temperature and ambient temperature of -18C, it should be able to run more than 20 minutes before overheating even with internal recording. If it stops at 20 it would be a clear indicator of a software limit.

It might not be too tempting to do with a new camera, but it shouldn't be any worse than bringing a camera inside during the winter.

[jgharding]

It's possible they set the time limits in firmware as an ultra-conservative "make sure it doesn't burn out" cut off, based on a worst case scenario... it's the kind of thing these large corporations do.

Quite why you wouldn't just design it well like the A7S iii though, I don't know. I think this is irreparable brand damage for this market sector.

[Matins 2]

If you're going to test for a possible timer, try focusing on the shutdown, not the recovery.

[jessedacri]

9 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

So going back to the actual internal design of the EOS R5...

The questions Canon need to answer are:

1. Why is a circuit board sitting between the main CPU and back casing, blocking the heat from spreading away into the chassis

2. Of course, why is there no thermal conductive material on the CPU?

3. And why does the RAM thermal pad overlap onto the CPU, but not entirely cover it? (It seems to spread the heat from the RAM onto the CPU which is never a good idea).

4. Why does ice not cool the camera and speed up recovery time? The firmware recovery countdown timer is so slow to go back up and always the same.

And indeed they will be asked via my contact at Canon UK.

And I won't let up until they answer.

If they don't answer, they have something to hide obviously.

 

Please also ask them why they decided it was necessary in the 1DX II to put a heatpipe/heatsink in but they are doing less than the bare minimum in the R5 where the camera is marketed with professional video features, in a market segment with competition delivering reliable professional video features (S1H and A7sIII). This quote from canon themselves is damning - why did they not feel the same need they did then, instead opting to release two pages of overheating documentation and ship a crippled product with clear-as-day poorly designed hardware?

 

 

 

[BTM_Pix]

Without pre-empting the next blog post too much, it is fair to say that we have noted some curiosities between the internal temperature status monitoring from the camera and the removal of recording inhibitors that have been previously triggered.

It is unusual but also quite frustrating from a testing perspective to get it back to a clean state for each iteration.

[Avenger 2.0]

Is it possible they never intended to release those big video specs and decided to do that late when the hardware was already in production. As like the hardware (and heat management) was only made for continues line skipping 4k and they later decided to also do HQ 4K and 8K?

[cameraeye]

I was wondering this too. What if the R5 was designed and ready a while ago when Canon were still conservative on the video specs side and changed course late in the day.

[dkovie]

Meanwhile, in Sony world, we've long since discovered much the same about our cameras.

The a6xxx series was thermal limited for the longest time by a lack of any heat dissipation.

Once we "hacked" away the artificial time limit with the help of the OpenMemories-Tweak project [https://github.com/ma1co/OpenMemories-Tweak], we found that the bionz processing chips were sitting bare in the cameras, with not even a thermal pad to help matters.

A bit of thermal paste and two copper plates made quick work of that. Now the a6000 and its older brothers are great little cmaeras with no heat issues in almost any temperature condition. 

Of course on their higher end models Sony claims to have solved  this, but I'm happy with my older stuff 😊

[Ed David]

Andrew and all: this is awesome reporting and a great find. Thank you for doing this teardown and an analysis of it.

[zerocool22]

1 hour ago, Avenger 2.0 said:

Is it possible they never intended to release those big video specs and decided to do that late when the hardware was already in production. As like the hardware (and heat management) was only made for continues line skipping 4k and they later decided to also do HQ 4K and 8K?

Sure thats a possible route, but why would you market it as a video camera that works great next to a c300 iii, if you can only use it for 1 take. Sorry no retakes on this shoot.

[Marcio Kabke Pinheiro]

2 hours ago, jessedacri said:

 

Please also ask them why they decided it was necessary in the 1DX II to put a heatpipe/heatsink in but they are doing less than the bare minimum in the R5 where the camera is marketed with professional video features, in a market segment with competition delivering reliable professional video features (S1H and A7sIII). This quote from canon themselves is damning - why did they not feel the same need they did then, instead opting to release two pages of overheating documentation and ship a crippled product with clear-as-day poorly designed hardware?

 

 

 

The "fun" part is that THIS heat pipe could be implemented in the R5  - I has never saw the picture above, never would thought that a heatpipe this small could work. A similar approach could work in the R5 - a thin metallic shield in contact with the chips with thermal pads, and this heatpipe conducting the heat to the bottom plate (it just have to avoid the connector for the board that sits above the mainboard).

Than you make the bottom plate with two "floors" (like the heat spreader on the Sigma FP1), with a gap in the middle to help in ventilation and to prevent the bottom to be very hot to touch.

Still in the engineering regard...the drawing of the internal heat spreader of the A7SIII looks VERY similar to the on in the R5. Maybe it is a common way to make cameras?

[Andrew Reid]

The main problem is the PCB circuit board on top of the CPU, sandwiched between that and the back casing.

It is utterly lunatic design or (more likely) on purpose.

The main CPU should have a thermal pad on top and direct contact to the chassis.

It is akin to Nvidia putting a second PCB on top of their graphics processor so it doesn't get into contact with the heat sink, and then telling gamers "sorry but your 2080 Ti only works for 20 mins of 4K Monster Hunter World then you have to go to 720p")

I find it hard to believe any engineer would be happy with this layout. The simplicity of the physics, your average 10 year old would understand. Even I understand that if I don't put my Intel CPU in direct thermal contact with a heat sink in my PC, it gets too hot.

So Canon can bleat on about using the magnesium alloy case as a heat sink all day long but they didn't implement it that way.

The big question is why.

[Marcio Kabke Pinheiro]

Just now, Andrew Reid said:

The main problem is the PCB circuit board on top of the CPU, sandwiched between that and the back casing.

It is utterly lunatic design or (more likely) on purpose.

The main CPU should have a thermal pad on top and direct contact to the chassis.

It is akin to Nvidia putting a second PCB on top of their graphics processor so it doesn't get into contact with the heat sink, and then telling gamers "sorry but your 2080 Ti only works for 20 mins of 4K Monster Hunter World then you have to go to 720p")

I find it hard to believe any engineer would be happy with this layout. The simplicity of the physics, your average 10 year old would understand. Even I understand that if I don't put my Intel CPU in direct thermal contact with a heat sink in my PC, it gets too hot.

So Canon can bleat on about using the magnesium alloy case as a heat sink all day long but they didn't implement it that way.

The big question is why.

Yeap, exactly my point. As I said, I have some electronics background, and a 2nd year student would never make that mistake. CPU and memory with a thermal pad to conduct the heat...to another board? And when you have a big heat spreader just behind the main board, but put the chips in the other side?

It is on purpose, or they have the dumbest engineers in the world.

[illogict]

Not only any circuit board, one that manages current, and which will obviously get hot by itself.

[TheBoogieKnight]

27 minutes ago, Márcio Kabke Pinheiro said:

Yeap, exactly my point. As I said, I have some electronics background, and a 2nd year student would never make that mistake. CPU and memory with a thermal pad to conduct the heat...to another board? And when you have a big heat spreader just behind the main board, but put the chips in the other side?

It is on purpose, or they have the dumbest engineers in the world.

As I said a while back on here, this is by no means unheard of. You see the same garbage on $$$$$ laptops with inadequate cooling, or poorly applied poor thermal paste etc. etc. Same in the music industry.

 

The great irony is that Canon made a point about all the heat generating components being strategically kept away form each other and literally the opposite is true!

[cameraeye]

At this point we know it’s intentional. They also made the 1dxiii which doesn’t overheat. The fact that Tilta released their cooling system says they both had preproduction units and/or schematics, and were aware the camera would SHIP with overheating and thus made a viable business decision on that knowledge- with canon in the loop.

[zerocool22]

I think the question is not why, but will Canon respond and how will they respond. 

Over a long period of time, perhaps Magic lantern can look into this. 

[David Bowgett]

3 hours ago, cameraeye said:

I was wondering this too. What if the R5 was designed and ready a while ago when Canon were still conservative on the video specs side and changed course late in the day.

I've been wondering that as well, actually - whether Canon were originally aiming for feature parity with the A7Riii and Z7, only for Sony to throw them a major curveball with the A7Riv, leading Canon to hastily beef up the camera's video specs in order to prevent it from being dismissed as yesterday's news as soon as it was announced.

But then again, that would only explain the R5. There'd still be no valid reason for the R6 to overheat as much as it does, other than Canon having some bizarre desire to continue the 6D family's tradition of being absolutely hopeless for video.