How Warm Does The Intel Compute Stick Get?

The Intel Compute Stick packs a lot into a tiny package: 2GB of DDR3L memory, 32GB eMMC storage, Intel Atom Z3735F quad-core processor with Intel HD Graphics, Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11n WiFi, USB 2.0, and a microSD card slot... All into a 103 x 37 x 12 mm package, but how warm does it get under full load? Here's some numbers.

As my latest article in a string of them about Linux testing of the Intel Compute Stick, after yesterday sharing some preliminary Linux performance results, here's some thermal data for this passively-cooled computer that's sized a little more than an HDMI connector.

The Intel Atom Z3735F SoC that powers it all is a Bay Trail-T part that consumes less than four Watts of power while delivering a 1.33GHz base frequency and 1.83GHz turbo frequency for its four cores. After running yesterday's Linux benchmarks of the Intel STCK1A32WFCR, I ran some thermal tests. First of all though, in order to get the coretemp driver working for reporting the CPU temperature, the Linux 4.1 kernel was a requirement. After that with the Phoronix Test Suite I set the MONITOR=cpu.temp,cpu.freq environment variable so our open-source benchmarking software would monitor the CPU frequency and CPU temperature during testing.

All of the test data is within this OpenBenchmarking.org result file.
Across the CPU and GPU tests run as shown in the result file, the Atom SoC temperature on the Compute Stick hovered between 52C and 61C with an average of 58C.... Better than I thought it would do considering the conditions. The Compute Stick plastic case does get warm when benchmarking, but not scorching hot.
It did hit its turbo frequency quite often too.

Again, go check out all of this Compute Stick temperature information via this OpenBenchmarking.org result file. Stay tuned for more Compute Stick Linux tests at Phoronix.