Raspberry Pi tower cooler -- the cooler we deserve.
https://www.seeedstudio.com/ICE-Tower-CPU-Cooling-Fan-for-Ra...
The Raspberry Pi 4 needs a fan
11–20 of 293 posts
Re: The Raspberry Pi 4 needs a fan
#12I can recommend Pimoroni's fan shim. They provide a python project that allows you to set temperature thresholds to kick the fan in so it's not on all the time. It's not silent but it's pretty quiet. https://github.com/pimoroni/fanshim-python
I thought about getting one of these, as they are a little more turnkey... however I couldn’t find an easy way to purchase and get quick shipping in the US. Is there any other way besides ordering through the UK?
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Re: The Raspberry Pi 4 needs a fan
#13I can recommend Pimoroni's fan shim. They provide a python project that allows you to set temperature thresholds to kick the fan in so it's not on all the time. It's not silent but it's pretty quiet. https://github.com/pimoroni/fanshim-python
Indeed, the fan shim is insanely cool and I just bought one of these the moment that it was back in stock together with my Raspberry Pi 4. It also works on the Pi 3 and 2.
Here's the link if anyone's interested: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/fan-shim
Re: The Raspberry Pi 4 needs a fan
#14well yeah, this thing pulls 3 amps.
even though it's mostly to push amperage down the USB 3.0 ports, those electrons going across the board are gonna generate some heat.
Re: The Raspberry Pi 4 needs a fan
#15Even the previous-gen Pis would easily throttle under load without a heat sink (although usually installing a decent heat sink was enough to resolve the problem, assuming decent airflow). As the article notes, the heat was mainly from the SoC in the past. The Pi 4 is on a whole different level indeed. I imagine the logic here is the same as with many other Pi accessories: if you need it, you'll buy it or get it as pa…
That’s just it, though. The official Pi power supply is adequate and good for powering the Pi in any condition, but the case is a far cry from adequate. At best, it just toasts everything inside more evenly, at worst it contributes to throttling because now the heat from every other part of the Pi forms a hot thermal blanket over the CPU.
I’m amazed they didn’t at least add a few passive ventilation holes or slots, somewhere. It gets crazy hot inside the case.
Re: The Raspberry Pi 4 needs a fan
#16Has anyone made an RPi4 lava lamp yet? Extra credit if there is a camera built in that feeds into the camera connector that supplements the RNG.
Re: The Raspberry Pi 4 needs a fan
#17well yeah, this thing pulls 3 amps. even though it's mostly to push amperage down the USB 3.0 ports, those electrons going across the board are gonna generate some heat.
Worst case (headless, at least) with a USB SSD powered off the bus, I was pulling 1.8 amps. But I can imagine if you’re also driving some other USB devices, and one or two HDMI displays, 3A is not far off!
Re: The Raspberry Pi 4 needs a fan
#18I can recommend Pimoroni's fan shim. They provide a python project that allows you to set temperature thresholds to kick the fan in so it's not on all the time. It's not silent but it's pretty quiet. https://github.com/pimoroni/fanshim-python
Indeed, the fan shim is insanely cool and I just bought one of these the moment that it was back in stock together with my Raspberry Pi 4. It also works on the Pi 3 and 2. Here's the link if anyone's interested: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/fan-shim
Glad you like it! We think it's the best solution for cooling any model of Raspberry Pi that's available.
Re: The Raspberry Pi 4 needs a fan
#19I'd guess that heatsink and a case with heatpipes would be sufficient for most, though perhaps not all, uses and silent, which for me is pretty important on a Raspberry Pi
The problem is there are now a number of chips on the board—many of which are too small to pop a heatsink on them—which get crazy hot. If you have the Pi inside any kind of enclosed case, that heat just bakes everything else, even if you have heat sinks.
You could design a copper heat-spreader to pop over the heat-sensitive part(s) of the board, and then apply a heatsink to that. Maybe copper foil would do the job.
Another approach is to just run the Pi submersed in mineral oil, with liquid convection then taking the heat away from the board and shedding it to the surrounding environment. We usually don't run our electronics like this (even though the general approach is widely used for cooling needs of all sorts) because mineral oil is gross and might even impact the endurance of our hardware - but the Pi is tiny and cheap enough to make this a non-issue.
Re: The Raspberry Pi 4 needs a fan
#20Just a bit off-topic but what are you guys doing that you need to do CPU throttling? I just got a Pi4 and wondering if I'm missing out on some cool projects I can do with it :)