Impact of Board Placement on Thermal Performance of Handheld Devices (tablets)

Thermal performance of handheld devices, like tablets, depend on placement of the board in the device in the plan-view. A comprehensive study of thermal performance of tablets, based on board location, is presented. CFD models of tablet devices have been developed for this study. Long, rectangular, single sided pcb, with BGA SOC, and copper shield can, have been used. For a given platform power distribution, display and case temperatures have been monitored, to determine the comparative merits of different thermal architectures. It has been found that a board placed near the middle of the device in the plan-view (mid-board configuration) performs thermally better than a board placed near the edge of the device (side board configuration), for the exact same vertical stackup.