When I got my Xiegu X6100, I noticed that it could run fairly warm on a long CW QSO. Following the suggestion of some of the folks on groups.io, I purchased the ZZHZSM 80mm heatsink from Amazon. Even though I was skeptical that a heat sink on the back (where the batteries are located) would help much, it fits so well and looks so impressive that I installed it.
The real heat seems to be along the bottom of the rig’s case. The “2 pack PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD Heatsinks” (ASIN B07DNC4YP8) are low profile heat sinks and exactly the same width as the existing heatsink on the bottom of the rig, so I recently installed those. (The thermal pads that came with them had virtually no stickiness, so I used thermal paste to attach the latter.)
But the real solution is limiting the DC input voltage. At 13.8v, the voltage regulator in the rig is dissipating a lot of heat. At 11-12v, the X6100 still puts out its maximum 10W and runs much cooler. I’m doubtful I needed any of the heatsinks for CW mode, but extra heat sinks don’t hurt. The one on the bottom is potentially the most useful. If the one on the back gets in the way, I’ll remove it.
The other important point is to make sure charging is turned off while operating.
An aside: I power the X6100 from solar-charged power pacs with a 12v USB-C PD trigger cable (Amazon: JacobParts; ASIN B08NRM6X2Y). I’ve described these cables in earlier posts here.
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