Dave, I’ve probably had more experience changing finals and working with their heat sinks both for the DE and theV2 than most out here. I don’t think that most blown finals are because of heat sink issues. I use heat conductive paste anyway but I have no evidence that it’s necessary. The heat sink warms nicely and that’s a god sign. In my view the only way heat transfer could improve would be with direct metal contact without mica and of course that’s not practical.
In my experience finals are blown by inadvertent over driving and the V2 has some protection now against that. Follow the calibration instructions and take the time to tweak the hw_settings.ini file. It’s important. After that my V2 works nicely.?
If you take into account the cost of a Raspberry Pi 4 and a 7 inch DSI touch screen the radio is really very reasonably priced, IMHO.
See my message #102663.
Have fun!
Jack
N6LN
John Terrell, N6LN