Open backplate with a magnetic battery cover (copperblue)
bored99's one-piece replacement back leaves the CM5 heatsink open to the air and covers the cells with a magnet-held plastic lid for quick swaps.
What it takes
- 3D print
- Disassembly
Difficulty 2 of 3 — moderate.
Details
Designed when the author moved to a CM5 with vileer's AIO and adapter boards: a one-piece backplate with a cut-out over the compute module for a heatsink, and a plastic battery cover on magnets so the cells are reachable and the radios see less metal. Early testing with a CM4 and heatsink held 40–60 °C; on the CM5 a normal workload sat at 40–51 °C in a 32–36 °C room. The PLA prototype warped, and the follow-up was professionally printed in PA12 nylon for about $25.
The files are on Thingiverse under the name copperblue as 'uConsole Open Backplate'; the later 'Backplate for CM5, HackerGadget board' from the same designer — the nylon version, with a fan cover and NVMe LED hole — is listed separately in Enclosure.
Links
Open at Forum threadRelated mods
Lars Lorenz's remix of the stock back cover adds a magnet-held lid over the cells, so 18650s can be swapped without taking the cover off.
UJW's deeper printed back fits two 10,000 mAh 146074 pouches and a Waveshare CM5 active cooler over the HackerGadgets boards — designed in CAD, not yet built.
Any genuine branded 3,000–3,500 mAh 18650 works, flat-top or button-top; listings claiming much more than 3,500 mAh are fakes.
The 21700 version of HG's NVMe battery board fits the stock backplate and roughly doubles runtime: 4 h 31 min of 1080p playback against 2 h 27 min on 18650s.
hotellonely's Python script logs the PMIC's voltage and current every 0.1 s until the console dies, giving a real watt-hour figure for any cell or pack.
Swap the two 18650s for a single 10,000 mAh 9858102 pouch — 24–31 Wh measured — but only with a protection board that survives the uConsole's 5 A peaks.