a6300 Overheat Issue Solved / 3 Hours Continuous Recording

Greetings All,

First post here. I just want to share some information with other a6300 owners with overheating issue shooting 4k. Not sure if this has been addressed before.

***Please note I'm not an expert or technician and I am not responsible for breaking your camera or setting your house on fire and voiding your warranty if you copy what I did. This is for information purpose only***

Recently I purchased a used a6300 with Sigma 30mm f1.4 DC DN and Commlite EF-NEX adapter combo deal from private party. Its 4k is fantastic except the overheating issue. I tried mounting it to a smallrig cage with heat sink pads to help. It did extend the recording for 8 extra minutes. Nothing to write home about.

I decide to open it up and see what could be done. I found its cooling design flawed. It uses two metal plates, one copper and one steel to transfer heat from the circuit board to the tripod mount.

The copper plate is mounted directly over the processors but it's not immediately grounded to the casing for proper heat dissipation, instead it's connected to a thin steel plate. To make the matter worse they placed black insulation plastic sheets and foam pads between the plates, the type that prevent short circuiting but it served no purpose here. Furthermore there's also an air gap between the steel plate and the casing just trapping heat inside. Not sure if the air gap was intended to prevent ESD someone could chime in.



I remove the plastic sheets and foam pads between the metal plates and replaced them with 1mm thick heat sink pads. I also added another layer of heat sink pads on the steel plate directly onto the back casing. The camera casing now essentially acting as a large heat sink and gets warm on extended recording.







With this mods I was able to record continuously without a single temperature warning for 3 hours 4 minutes until my 128GB SD card ran out. I have the OpenMemory tweak installed to remove the 30min recording limit. Room temperature was 72-75F. Battery door was left open. LCD was pull away from the back. Camera was mounted on a tripod next to a running radiator for added stress test. Camera setting: Firmware version 2.01. 4K super35 24p 100mbps. Auto Pwr OFF Temp set to High. AF-C Wide. 5V 2A usb charger was plugged into the usb port. OEM Sony NP-FW50 battery. 128GB sd card 150mb/s. Lens Sigma 30mm f1.4 DC DN. Overall I am very pleased with this mod.













Cheers,

Jay

I Have some little electronic background and still wouldn't dare to do this, i just wanted to say thanks for the post and still appreciate this amazing old Sony APSC camera

Thank you very much for your report. I would never do this to my camera , but I appreciate your effort.

More simple, but expensive alternative is to buy A6400

I assume, that Sony made this design to not have too hot camera chasing for users. Do you shoot long videos handheld or on tripod/stabilizer?

LKFX_House said:

I Have some little electronic background and still wouldn't dare to do this, i just wanted to say thanks for the post and still appreciate this amazing old Sony APSC camera

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Yes, there's a high chance of permanently destroying it. I got a great deal, only paid $300 for the body, lens and adapter. I figure I give it a shot

4jhanas said:

Yes, there's a high chance of permanently destroying it. I got a great deal, only paid $300 for the body, lens and adapter. I figure I give it a shot

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Wow that was cheap - I can see why, there looks like some serious corrosion going on there on the steel plates and in the bottom of the ! , hope the Circuits are clean or you cleaned them .

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** Please ignore the Typos, I'm the world's worst Typist **

AdamT said:

Adam-T said:

Yes, there's a high chance of permanently destroying it. I got a great deal, only paid $300 for the body, lens and adapter. I figure I give it a shot

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Wow that was cheap - I can see why, there looks like some serious corrosion going on there on the steel plates and in the bottom of the ! , hope the Circuits are clean or you cleaned them .

--
** Please ignore the Typos, I'm the world's worst Typist **

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Previous owner probably had a battery leak. Fortunately the main board wasn’t affected. I cleaned it up pretty good.

4jhanas said:

Previous owner probably had a battery leak. Fortunately the main board wasn’t affected. I cleaned it up pretty good.

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I`ve never seen a Li-Ion leak. looks like its had salt water ingression through the battery door (a weak spot) but so long as you`ve cleaned it up that`s great

That's a really cool hardware hack, thanks for posting! I too wonder why they left the air-gap in the first place... either transferring heat away was not their focus or it was deliberate addressing some other more important issue than heat.

Not sure I have the guts to try this with my a6500