Teardown: The Canon EOS R5 gets an autopsy

[skid]

Hi all, just got account approved and want to share some more information after dig into the shared video.

On the reply section of the shared video's original site, there's a link posted by the uploader which links to their taobao site (very large chinese site for e-shops, similar to alibaba but more reliable and focus more on individual needs). The link, are offering hardware upgrading service for r5's cooling ability for 500CNY, and the service will begin in mid August.

I not promoting their business, but this got my attention and found more information about this guy and what are they saying on chinese geeks site.

Again, I don't recommend doing the same thing, which might break your warranty, but you might find it interesting:

I found their discussion on this site: https://forum.xitek.com/thread-1894934-1-1-1.html about R5's hardware with overheating issue. The poster ( not the shared video uploader) saying that" it looks like a PCB is covering the CPU which does not help with heat rejection. The metal plate for heat rejection is designed between the mother board and CMOS. Only a small pice of paste is used between CPU and the metal plate which doesn't help that much." ALSO, " the guy (video's uploader) added a grease pad between the plate and CPU, made it absorbing the heat more evenly and helped a lot. Just by doing that, (In a different video) the R5 was able to record 8K for 15 minutes(without overheating sign), turned off, and let the camera to take a 10 minutes break. Then was able to record 8K, until the card is filled (512GB, 27minutes of recording --- found it on the post below)." Here's the uploader's original post btw: https://tieba.baidu.com/p/6848700307?pn=1

their conclusion: " - just simply adding the grease pad does help a lot.
-Might be better by using copper plate instead of aluminum for where the CPU is covering.
- CPU was around 40 ℃, which creates more heat than CF express card.
- the firmware is limiting the device. (since, after he added that pad. He was able to record longer 8K footage, but still overheat eventually. But after overheating, he left R5 under AC that R5's body is REALLY REALLY cold and still, he could only got 5 minutes of 8K or 10 minutes of 4K. "

that's pretty much what I got from the uploader's posts. Hope it could help or just ....entertain you a bit?

Oh, btw, they also found one cooling module originally designed for smartphone works very well on R5's back. One got an hour of 4K60 without overheating sign, and the body was still touch cold. Remember that fan module on the form a few days ago? That helps.

 

[nchoh]

As an EOS 5D Mark IV replacement, I assumed the the EOS R5 would be approximately the same physical size as the EOS 5D Mark IV. However, for some reason Canon engineers chose to make this new camera body more compact. It seems like a larger body would have allowed space for additional heat mitigation design.

Given that the thermal mass of air is not a lot, without any venting, more space would only mean a slightly longer time for the camera to heat up.

 

[SteveC]

And where would the thermal paste transfer the heat to??? It basically boils down to... if you don't or can't vent the camera, then you it doesn't matter how much or how good your thermal paste is.

It might, though, if the issue is that whatever part it is that is at issue can't even lose heat to the rest of the camera without it--in other words, if it cannot even access the heat sink that is inside the camera with it.

 

[Hector1970]

Hopefully Canon can get the overheating issue fixed. You'd get sick of listening about it.
I have a 1DXIII and the CF Express card hasn't overheated but I haven't done video with it.
It obviously has a much bigger body to dissipate heat
But in the Card Reader its gets red hot. It's metal and seems to heat up an awful lot.
I wonder would it be cooler if it the card was more plasticy.
I wonder about the longevity of CF Express cards.
It will be interesting if its just a software fix or whether they make a hardware fix.

 

[nchoh]

Speaking from the comfort of my armchair, I can say it’s clearly defective if just scrolling through menus can cause a device to overheat and shut down. Is there any product outside of this where anyone can site this as acceptable behavior? And if no, why is it acceptable here?

Which Sony camera are you speaking of?

 

[Aaron D]

This is a tangent, but what does an 8K camera cost that doesn't overheat? I really don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised at 5 digits. So add an Atomos or maybe buy a couple R5's (so one could be cooling while you're filming with the other) and I bet you're still ahead.

Yeah I know I should do my homework before posting.

 

[Glfrost]

There is a possibility that additional thermal attention on Processor may have been helpful, but the heat issue is from the CF Express card and a known issue. Comparing design of 1 DX Mk3 May be helpful for future.

 

[Vertex Imagery]

In 2018, did Apple fix overheating issues in a MacBook with a firmware update caused by a faulty thermal sensor?

 

[nchoh]

There is a possibility that additional thermal attention on Processor may have been helpful, but the heat issue is from the CF Express card and a known issue. Comparing design of 1 DX Mk3 May be helpful for future.

I believe that the heating issue is only speculative and if is true only contributes to main heating issue which is the heat generated by the CPU. In short, when the CF Express card is bypassed, the CPU doesn't have to work as hard to crunch the numbers required by CFE, so it can run longer without overheating.

 

[nchoh]

There is a possibility that additional thermal attention on Processor may have been helpful, but the heat issue is from the CF Express card and a known issue. Comparing design of 1 DX Mk3 May be helpful for future.

The 1DX Mk3 is only a 20 MP camera, so the CPU only has half as many pixels to process. Sony does a nice little trick which is to create the A7S3 with only 12 MP, so that there is no additional pixel processing needed which lowers the heat generated even more.

 

[arthurbikemad]

I'm gonna use a chilled cucumber, I think there is room, my plan is to open up the flux chamber and wedge the cucumber between that and the digicdudarthingymajig, this way the cucumber will soak up all the heat and I can remove and rinse later. No problem, well small problem, ain't got me pre order yet, balls to you Canon, wtf is taking so long, how am I going to be able to blog the crap out of this thing in the English winter, I mean it's never gonna overheat is it!

No I'm just kidding, but, on a serious note, I've never seen so much BS online about a camera ever, all these high end wedding togs moaning about this and that, heat warnings and so on, half of them didn't even know the effects of the shutter mode they use on gear they already own but have concerns about shit they will certainly never use, 8k being one of them, plus they fail to see that some of the R5 issues they raise are already in the camera they have been using for the last two years hahaha, kills me, it just goes to prove ignorance is bliss.

What also tickles me is these highend photographers seem to be on a budget too, not only do they not want to shell out a few grand on an R5 and suck it and see but they also can't afford to splash out on a dedicated video camera to shoot these high end wedding movies that are SOO much the norm these days, and in bloody 8k too, then they go on to say, well, I shoot maybe 1200 shots a gig and give 1199 to the customer, damm these guys are good, and all on a 1200D for 279.99.



Oh and one more thing, I tried to put minds at rest, with my well informed knowledge (Canonrumors.com) but they just call me a liar, or more to the point Canon a liar, I like to think you can't argue with drunk people no more than you can ignorance haha Personally I think the camera is performing exactly as documented.

 

[nchoh]

It might, though, if the issue is that whatever part it is that is at issue can't even lose heat to the rest of the camera without it--in other words, if it cannot even access the heat sink that is inside the camera with it.

And where would the heat sink vent to? If the camera is sealed, then the heat still stays in the camera. The heat sink can spread the heat around inside the camera body, but that only gets you so far before the entire of the inside reaches the same critical temperature. That the R5 is already so cramped, means that there is not a lot of space for the heat sink to work anyways.

Looking a bit further... you will notice that there isn't much space behind the sensor. There is that aluminum plate that is blocking (?) the heat to the sensor. If the heat were to be vented in front of the senor, then it would end up in the lens.Long story short; there isn't a lot of space to disperse the heat to, so really a fancy solution like thermal paste to conduct heat to a heat sink would be an expensive was of effort.

BTW, thermal paste is used to ensure heat connectivity between the CPU and the heat sink. Since a heat sink would be fairly useless, then thermal paste is moot. Some have mentioned seeing huge copper pads used a heat sinks which makes way more sense.

 

[genriquez]

Would adding thermal paste help the camera ?

I'm not sure how it works with cameras, but my gaming laptop needs to be repasted at least once every year.

 

[SteveC]

And where would the heat sink vent to? If the camera is sealed, then the heat still stays in the camera. The heat sink can spread the heat around inside the camera body, but that only gets you so far before the entire of the inside reaches the same critical temperature. That the R5 is already so cramped, means that there is not a lot of space for the heat sink to work anyways.

Yes, I understand that, but some heatsink is better than no heat sink at all.

 

[kten]

This is a tangent, but what does an 8K camera cost that doesn't overheat? I really don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised at 5 digits. So add an Atomos or maybe buy a couple R5's (so one could be cooling while you're filming with the other) and I bet you're still ahead.

Yeah I know I should do my homework before posting.

there are cheap options such as Z CAM E2 F8 which is nowhere near likes of RED Monstro sensor cams so you can get for significantly under 5 digits for the camera. However once you add on all the plates/handles/cage bits, batteries, monitors, storage, matte box, sound hardware and so on it adds up to silly money regardless. Most who need 8K on tap no matter if cam is coming from cold off state or has been used etc will be using such cameras and have all that stuff and the price is normal and factored in to budgets thus this is blown out of proportion as R5 isn't designed for use on set.

The R5 8K is more of an optional thrown in on top of the real bread and butter stills and low level video (think wedding guys or vloggers or whatever), just a gimmick and not really aimed at people who need it generally. A nice extra but not really core feature and if they left it out the marketing pitch no-one could have complained really. Most who need it won't be using such a camera [r5] on jobs that require "just works" 8K. Even if the r5 did it without overheating they'd still pale in comparisson on dedicated cine cam features and accessory concerns, battery and how it fits into workflow on so on.

 

[AlP]

Complete and likely useless speculation here, but:

I am fairly sure CFExpress uses SERDES 8b10b or 128b/130b encoding for AC line balancing. On some SERDES interfaces, idle characters must flow for skew sync and clock recovery which in this case would essentially be running the card when doing nothing. The data rate never changes even when idle and channel bonded. Perhaps there is a reason to stay in this idle mode at all times rather than disable interfaces to the cards completely. Also once hot, the cards are not going to cool just sitting there in a little toaster slot. Anyone an expert at the latest CFExpress application and physical layer? That would be actually a useful discussion since we know the cards in simple tests are part of the issue. In the end, even this will be speculating and just about useless compared to knowing the full details of the engineering compromises Canon was faced with.

A lot of Nikon users on various retailer reviews stated their CFE cards getting HOT in readers even with small transfers. I think CFE may have been necessary for the data rates needed, but a bad choice. Not sure if the SD slot is showing the same issues when doing 4K60 IPB. Mine overheated predictably, but did not seem to warm until placed in the sun and ran at high rate video. I don't even have CFE, readers or GPUs enough for 8K yet. 4K60 will be plenty for my needs. In most cases if I need slow mo, it doesn't have to be 4K or full frame, and I have several other products for that.

I'm fairly confident Canon can improve this situation, even more confident it was not deliberate (deliberate is a 30 minute recording limit). In the meantime, it is already a great camera for it's intended use, and the best hybrid on the market.

Likely 128b/130b as CFExpress uses a PCIe 3.0 bus. But as I am not working on PCIe bus implementations I can't answer about the idle mode part.

Anyway, maybe I should sue detergent companies because after using their detergent nothing looks as polished as in their ads...
Seriously, going to court because a product is within its specifications?

There are two common themes on those sites:

1. "What all EOS R5 owners have in common is that they have paid a lot of money for a professional video tool" (citing EOSHD)
2. Canon should have learnt from XY/used method XZ in order to properly design the camera

That is equivalent to saying Canon doesn't know the target audience of its products and that they don't have the engineering capabilities to design the product in a different way. Nonsense. Apart from overestimating the importance of one's own field (all R5 owners? seriously?)
The R5 is a stills camera first even im Canon marketing might initially have suggested that it has a different focus by pointing out capabilities no other hybrid camera has (it's marketing after all).

And after having received my R5 I can confirm that it is a formidable tool for photography (didn't test the video modes as I don't really care that much about video), even after the limited time I was able to use it. This is a no-compromise stills camera, and a massive upgrade from the EOS R (and the 5D4 as well)

And to go back to the teardown: It's packed with electronics, just compare the inside of the R5 to the sparsely populated circuit board of the EOS R, who is about the same size and had to deal with a lot less data and functionality. And, in my opinion, not having any heat spreading parts (the aluminum plates are shields, they would be ineffective as heat conductors) was likely a design choice. A 5-10 mm thicker camera weighing 100 g more would likely have had enough space for such parts, but that would not have been a good choice for a photo-oriented camera. It would have been in S1H territory, and I think Canon knows very well which is the larger market.
And, it could still be that Canon has been conservative with the firmware, or hasn't yet optimised it fully.
We'll see, in the meantime I will continue taking pictures while others complain.

 

[nchoh]

Yes, I understand that, but some heatsink is better than no heat sink at all.

Please look at my original reply and the comment that prompted it.

I did not say that there shouldn't be a heat sink. I asked where would thermal paste transmit heat to. In such a small enclosure, there are other ways of dissipating heat. As mentioned by someone, there are some copper pads attached to the CPU. A heat sink that would use thermal paste would be too big for the camera.

 

[tcphoto]

Wasn't it Peter McKinnon that took apart his 1DxIII...how many others will follow?

 

[marathonman]

Bring on the armchair camera designers.

It's almost like you see the future ;-)

 

[kten]

Likely 128b/130b as CFExpress uses a PCIe 3.0 bus. But as I am not working on PCIe bus implementations I can't answer about the idle mode part.

Anyway, maybe I should sue detergent companies because after using their detergent nothing looks as polished as in their ads...
Seriously, going to court because a product is within its specifications?

There are two common themes on those sites:

1. "What all EOS R5 owners have in common is that they have paid a lot of money for a professional video tool" (citing EOSHD)
2. Canon should have learnt from XY/used method XZ in order to properly design the camera

That is equivalent to saying Canon doesn't know the target audience of its products and that they don't have the engineering capabilities to design the product in a different way. Nonsense. Apart from overestimating the importance of one's own field (all R5 owners? seriously?)
The R5 is a stills camera first even im Canon marketing might initially have suggested that it has a different focus by pointing out capabilities no other hybrid camera has (it's marketing after all).

And after having received my R5 I can confirm that it is a formidable tool for photography (didn't test the video modes as I don't really care that much about video), even after the limited time I was able to use it. This is a no-compromise stills camera, and a massive upgrade from the EOS R (and the 5D4 as well)

And to go back to the teardown: It's packed with electronics, just compare the inside of the R5 to the sparsely populated circuit board of the EOS R, who is about the same size and had to deal with a lot less data and functionality. And, in my opinion, not having any heat spreading parts (the aluminum plates are shields, they would be ineffective as heat conductors) was likely a design choice. A 5-10 mm thicker camera weighing 100 g more would likely have had enough space for such parts, but that would not have been a good choice for a photo-oriented camera. It would have been in S1H territory, and I think Canon knows very well which is the larger market.
And, it could still be that Canon has been conservative with the firmware, or hasn't yet optimised it fully.
We'll see, in the meantime I will continue taking pictures while others complain.

I'd argue it does low level video, the very niche hybrids are aimed at, just as well as stills from the testing and content made on it I've seen (don't own R5 yet and happy with R for now). If most demanding thing you're doing is stuff like freelance ad spots kind of video then the R5 is more than enough camera and will work for you until the cows come home IMHO. People like Jeff Cronenweth are not shopping for R5's for use in work anytime soon which is the way the youtube influencer crowd act. The youtube drama drives clicks which is the real reason for the outrage. All the traffic and ad money along with competitors pay some of those influencers, or at least they don't want to bite the hand that feeds and would rather keep their sponsors sweet is real motivation behind this I suspect. Lets face it their business is youtube clicks and gaming the algorithm and knowing how to capture and grow an audience of consumers, they are not experts in the theme of their channels generally. Comp guy channels have very low knowledge compared to industry folks, vid and photo channel guys have lower ability than high production value set folks and so on generally, same for all the other niches but consumers are their market NOT really experts in those fields who generally don't take advice from youtube folks but rather from within their industry.