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Yeah, thermal insulation behaves in much the same way as electrical insulation. If you put a conductor in series with a resistor, the conductor doesn't conduct all that well.
Seems like the winning solution would be to do as Apple does and make the case the heatsink. Aluminum is a pretty good thermal conductor, and at the very least it'd get you lots of surface area.
I 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
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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 approac…
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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.
is the issue similar on PI? What component is at risk at these temperatures? 60-70 seems a little hot for a small device , but is it really TOO hot?
Has 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.
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Glad you like it! We think it's the best solution for cooling any model of Raspberry Pi that's available.
Does it have a standalone mode, where it doesn't need to be controlled by software? I'm interested in using it with prebuilt images that wouldn't be able to run the python to control the fan.
If you (optionally) install the daemon then it can use the Pi SoC's internal temperature sensor to control dynamically based on need.
I'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
That's what Apple used to do with their Macbooks. Heat pipes into the metal frame which conducts it over a larger surface area creating natural convections which carry the heat into the air. The real downside is that mass plays a substantial role. Meaning thicker metal, larger cases, are better than thinner/smaller. Whereas a fan can accomplish similar results for less cost and space (but not passively). If people do…
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Seems like the winning solution would be to do as Apple does and make the case the heatsink. Aluminum is a pretty good thermal conductor, and at the very least it'd get you lots of surface area.
Wouldn't that make it hard to touch?
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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.