There are some heatsinks for the Raspberry Pi and I wanted to evaluate if I need one.

So I decided to take some thermal images of it under typical load. I used my FLIR camera. Here are the first results.

After 10min in idle mode (96% idle): 39°C CPU temperature

After 50min in idle mode (96% idle): 42.4°C CPU temperature

The hottest spot is not the CPU, but the companion chip.

In the next days I will post some thermal images of the Rasp.Pi working under heavy load.

Update: 27.01.13:
Here is the stress test thermal shot: Link