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Hardware Technology

'The Raspberry Pi 4 Needs a Fan' (jeffgeerling.com) 314

Posted by BeauHD from the too-hot-to-handle dept.
Author and programmer Jeff Geerling explains in a blog post why the new Raspberry Pi 4 needs a fan. Unlike previous Pis that didn't require a fan or heatsink to avoid CPU throttling, the Pi 4 is a different beast and "pretty much demands a fan," writes Geerling. "Not only does the CPU get appreciably hot even under normal load, there are a number of other parts of the board that heat up to the point they are uncomfortable to touch." After 5 minutes at idle, he recorded the CPU/System-on-a-Chip (SoC) was around 60C, and it climbed to the 60-70C range when using the USB ports.

"[I]magine if you're truly using the Pi 4 as a desktop replacement, with at least one external USB 3.0 hard drive attached, WiFi connected and transferring large amounts of data, a USB keyboard and mouse, a few browser windows open (the average website these days might as well be an AAA video game with how resource-intense it is), a text editor, and a music player," writes Geerling. "This amount of load is enough to cause the CPU to throttle in less than 10 minutes." So, Geerling did what any programmer and DIYer would do and decided to add a fan himself to the official case -- and in addition to the blog post describing the process, he made a 22-minute-long video showing you what he did. From the post: Without any ventilation, it's kind of a little plastic oven inside the Pi 4 case. A heat sink might help in some tiny way, but that heat has nowhere to go! So I decided to follow the lead of Redditor u/CarbyCarberson and put a fan in the top cover. [...] After installing the fan, I booted the Pi and ran "stress --cpu 4" and let it go for an hour. The entire time, the CPU's temperature stayed at or under 60C (140F), a full 20C lower than the throttling point.

There are some other options which may be even easier than modifying the official case, like the Fan Shim from Pimoroni or purchasing a 3rd party case with a fan built in. But this option was easy enough and all I needed to complete the project was a $4 fan and a $7 hole saw drill bit (which I can use for other projects in the future).
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'The Raspberry Pi 4 Needs a Fan'

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  • They need better silicon (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @11:11PM (#58943676)

    Having 4x the CPU power, while only doing 1 jump in lithography ends up like this. Almost a disaster.

    Going from 40nm to 28nm is a nice improvement, but can't compensate for a 4x performance gain. Not even with more efficiently architected ARM cores.
    All the mid-tier phones in the last 3-4 years can deliver this kind of performance for half the power, so they should optimize the power consumption both of the SoC and all the other chips onboard.

    • Re:They need better silicon (Score:5, Informative)

      by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @11:30PM (#58943734)

      $35. That’s why they didn’t go with a smaller lithographic size as it would cost more per chip. Mid-tier phones cost more than $35 the last time I checked. If you want more performance and less power, you can certainly pay for it it that wasn’t the design goal of the Pi 4

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        $89 chinese phones come with:

        -a 16-14nm SoC comparable or better than what the Pi has
        -chassis
        -high resolution IPS display
        -2500-4000 mAh battery
        -charger
        -GSM modules
        -an OK camera module
        -3 gigs of RAM

        All this packed together for $89. Does it still sound impossible? I guess not.

        You can always argue it's too expensive to go for 16 or 14nm, but I'd rather call going for 28nm a mistake. A decision for short term cost savings which backfired, because the board is borderline underengineered.

      • If you compare it to a phone: those include a case, AC adapter, and flash memory, which would make $60-$70 in case of a Raspberry. Add a battery, touch display, and two cameras and you end up with something that's not really cheaper than a mid-tier smartphone.

        On.a related note, I've wondered many times why it's impossible to build a small headless pc (fanless mini-ITX) for less than a laptop with similar cpu and storage that includes keyboard, battery, and screen.

        • It's scales of economy. laptops are mass produced in very very large numbers and production is highly integrated. This allows the per unit cost to drop quite low. Mini-itx on the other hand is a niche form factor with lower production numbers and production beyond the board itself is not integrated at all.

  • Imagine (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @11:14PM (#58943686) Journal

    "[I]magine if you're truly using the Pi 4 as a desktop replacement..."

    Yes, and imagine if you were to use a tricycle as a Daytona 500 competition stock car....

    Anyone that uses a Raspberry Pi as a "desktop replacement" should seek psychiatric help from a qualified medical professional.

    • Re:Imagine (Score:4, Informative)

      by Mashiki ( 184564 ) <mashiki@gmail.cBALDWINom minus author> on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @11:34PM (#58943750) Homepage

      Anyone that uses a Raspberry Pi as a "desktop replacement" should seek psychiatric help from a qualified medical professional.

      Let's be realistic. It's not a 16 core CPU supporting branch prediction and multiple threading events, but compared to the older CPU's of 15-20 years ago, you can without too much trouble make a Pi into a desktop replacement as long as you don't mind the occasional wait times and heavy thread thrashing.

      • Re:Imagine (Score:5, Insightful)

        by wierd_w ( 1375923 ) on Thursday July 18, 2019 @01:45AM (#58944118)

        Depends on what you are using that desktop for.

        An rPi is quite capable of handing wordprocessing, and simple (SIMPLE!) spreadsheets. What it isn't so hot at is dealing with the epic fucktons of dynamic content every webdev seems hell bent on jizzing all over the net these days. (That and the obscene numbers of cross-site script gagglefucking going on these days if you dont use noscript), or anything that needs to use swap. (the USB3 interface is just not good for that, and the Pi has too little RAM and no way to add any,)

        There's only so much you can do with zram backed swap you know.

        But for very light duty, it could suffice. It would make a fine thin client.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          We use PI's in our office as rdesktops to Windows VM's. Beautiful setup and works like a champ. Literally have no issues, and we just used the SD cards no USB drives. Just keyboard, mouse and monitor.

      • Or, as long as you only browse the web pages that haven't been redesigned in the past 15-20 years.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Mashiki ( 184564 )

          Yeah that's not a problem with the CPU in this case. It's a problem with the massive amount of cross-site scripting, overzealous amount of javascript and insane amounts of webm being pulled from half a continent away in order to make the page look pretty. Start pulling that out, blocking ads, gutting the piss out of scripts and things start to get pretty fast again.

      • compared to the older CPU's of 15-20 years ago, you can without too much trouble make a Pi into a desktop replacement as long as you don't mind the occasional wait times and heavy thread thrashing

        Well the programs and the web aren't what they were 15-20 years ago. I am posting from a Pi now (although used a thin client, the browser runs on a honest x86 machine). The "normal" light programs included work just fine and multi-window CLI work is fine too, so is to some extent video watching. But otherwise even

      • ...you can without too much trouble make a Pi into a desktop replacement

        Yes, you can. And you can wipe your ass with a toothpick, too.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Mashiki ( 184564 )

          Yes, you can. And you can wipe your ass with a toothpick, too.

          And people also believe that Stadia isn't going to be a gigantic colossal failure either.

    • I use ARMs as desktop replacements (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I use ARM based TV boxes all the time. Surfing and youtube and netflix and games, they don't need a fan for media consumption. The main reason people use desktop computers.

      It depends on what you use the desktop for.

      It's a bit disappointing if that Broadcom chip gets too hot. I suspect its the dual 4K display that's taking all the power.

    • The Raspberry Pi 4 is likely slower than my Celeron powered Chromebook flashed with Linux I bought used for $75 over 4 years ago. Oh, and it's !@$!'ing x86/x64, so it actually runs software.

      And yeah yeah, that's an exaggeration. But if you're expecting to run most software (even FOSS) without recompiling it, good luck--because most software vendors don't even offer an ARM binary.

      And I'm saying this as someone who owns two Raspberry Pi's. Use the right tool for the job. Saying "desktop replacement" is just i

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        What software are you running on your linux box that hasn't already been compiled for ARM? Distros like Debian have pretty much the same set of packages available for multiple architectures.

    • Re:Imagine (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tangent3 ( 449222 ) on Thursday July 18, 2019 @12:33AM (#58943908)

      Most people do not need a competition stock car to get from A to B

      • Very true. The more apt comparison would be to a moped (Raspberry Pi) to a regular car - something akin to a Toyota Corolla.

        The moped will get you (almost) anywhere if you're patient, but realistically they're not on the same playing field, and if you have deadlines to meet you need to hop into the Toyota.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bert64 ( 520050 )

          A moped will get you many places a lot faster than the toyota if there is significant traffic.

    • The Pi 2 / 3 with 1GB of memory is mildly usable for basic desktop needs for simpler users.

      The Pi 4 comes with up to 4GB of memory, dual display support and a faster processor.

      For developing countries or very very simple users, (read internet, check email, print, maybe youtube) the Pi 4 is more than capable. There's currently, to my knowledge, some small issues with video acceleration and drivers, causing issues. I've also seen an article indicating Wayland will make huge improvements for the Pi but is

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Company I worked for deployed RPi 3s as desktop replacements. They were fine for office and technical stuff. They ran LibreOffice and Firefox. VNC for a few Windows-only apps running on a server (for licencing reasons). The technicians mostly used them to display PDFs and browse Facebook at lunch time.

      They bought some brackets that let them attach to the VESA mount on the monitors.

      Engineering and accounting staff had Windows machines.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • "[I]magine if you're truly using the Pi 4 as a desktop replacement..."

      Yes, and imagine if you were to use a tricycle as a Daytona 500 competition stock car....

      Anyone that uses a Raspberry Pi as a "desktop replacement" should seek psychiatric help from a qualified medical professional.

      I would agree with you for previous iterations, but the RPi 4 with 4GB of RAM is pretty capable, I've been using it for the last few days and it's really been fine. Which isn't something I would have said previously.

  • Well that sucks (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ukoda ( 537183 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @11:21PM (#58943704) Homepage
    My Pi 4 is on back order but this is bad news. My experience with fans is they fail before anything else and the smaller they are the quicker they fail. Plus the noise annoys me a lot. Yea, you can call me a grumpy old man, but it sounds like I will stick with the Pi 3 unless I can find an effective passive cooling solution for the Pi 4.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zuriel ( 1760072 )
      There's a difference between needing a fan and needing a *fast* fan. Adding just a little bit of airflow helps a lot. If you buy a 5V fan and connect it to the 3.3V pin, it'll be basically silent. That's what I did with my Pi 3B+. Just make sure the fan has a split connector, because 3.3V and ground aren't next to each other.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by stooo ( 2202012 )

        >> If you buy a 5V fan and connect it to the 3.3V pin, it'll be basically silent

        Yeah, but it will overload the 3.3V regulator, and this will crash the PI.
        So it will be silent, but not for the same reason.

    • > . My experience with fans is they fail before anything else and the smaller they are the quicker they fail. Plus the noise annoys me a lot.

      Smaller fans have to spin faster and therefore die faster, and are much noisier. Larger, slower-moving fans make much less noise. A ceiling fan on low or medium is silent, while moving more air than a blow dryer.

      So solution: use a big fan, spinning relatively slowly. It'll be quiet and last a long time.

      Also update the firmware.

      This is mostly an issue if you use yo

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sad_ ( 7868 )

        This is mostly an issue if you use your rPi as if it were a desktop.

        no it's not, even just using the USB ports raises the temp 10 degrees (this fact is even mentioned in the summary).
        knowing that a lot of people use raspi's for kodi or emulation, this is a real concern and not only an issue if you use it as a desktop.

  • You know what else doesn't need a fan? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bjwest ( 14070 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @11:30PM (#58943732)
    The first PC's. For quite a few years, PC's didn't require a fan, then they became powerful enough to generate enough heat to need one. Hell, the Model B is purported to be compatible to the Pentium 2, and it's smaller than the CPU itself. You guys have at your disposal a complete computer smaller than the CPU of something your parents/grand parents used and you complain that it needs a frigging fan? The RPi is intended as a low-power device for hobbyists, if you don't want a fan, don't use the RPi 4. Don't bitch because "OH MY GOD IT NEEDS A FAN!!" and "fucking hell! It'll take me 22 minutes to modify the case and install a fan".

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      The official case should probably have had a fan though, right?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lsllll ( 830002 )
        The fan in the power supply was the only fan, moving air through the whole box.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bjwest ( 14070 )

          The fan in the power supply was the only fan, moving air through the whole box.

          That was more of a requirement to rid the case of the heat from the hard drives than from the motheboard. That, and to move the heat from the power supply out

          • The IBM Personal Computer (PC) did not come with a hard drive, but it did have a power supply with a ventilation fan. The first IBM computer to come with a hard drive was called the IBM Personal Computer XT, released about a year and a half after the PC. Other than the additional hard drive and controller the IBM XT was similar to the IBM PC.

            • Here's a fun fact: The first PC 5150 had a fan that blew IN instead of out, it was to cool the power supply, primarily. The XT 5160 had a redesigned power supply that blew out instead, and would draw hot air in the case out which the newly present HDD generated lots of.

              We used to say XT's suck, but PC's BLOW.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bjwest ( 14070 )

        And I'm sure it will now that it's seen as a problem. That, or someone will design one and sell it on Amazon, eBay or wherever.

        The USB-C issue is more of a problem than this, but it's easily worked around by using a cheep USB cable.

      • I can confirm that the official case is a no-go. Mine overheated idling at desktop, until I removed the top portion of the case. At a minimum, I recommend getting one of the aluminum cases.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sad_ ( 7868 )

        kodi has a raspi 4 case available, they say it is designed with heat dissapation in mind.
        i don't know how much it will actually help, but at least the case is channeling the heat outside, compared to just a heatsink which keeps the warm air inside the case.

    • The first PC's. For quite a few years, PC's didn't require a fan, then they became powerful enough to generate enough heat to need one. Hell, the Model B is purported to be compatible to the Pentium 2, and it's smaller than the CPU itself. You guys have at your disposal a complete computer smaller than the CPU of something your parents/grand parents used and you complain that it needs a frigging fan?

      YES. It's 2019 not 1999. Today there are numerous low cost SBC options in a competitive market.

      The RPi is intended as a low-power device for hobbyists

      RPi4 is quite power inefficient for what it is.

      Don't bitch because "OH MY GOD IT NEEDS A FAN!!" and "fucking hell! It'll take me 22 minutes to modify the case and install a fan".

      Why not?

      Recently purchased an SBC that costs $25 more than RPi4 (less if you factor in added cost of special HDMI cable). It's a beast. Entire frame is one gigantic heat sink. More cores, several times faster, way better GPU and video. Half power consumption at idle. Can sustain 100% utilization flat out without thermal throttling using only passive cooling.

      If I

    • The first PC's. For quite a few years, PC's didn't require a fan,

      You can buy motherboards with fanless CPUs right now. Usually, they are in the Mini-ITX format. For example, an Intel J3455 has a TDP of 10W, so it doesn't need a fan. It's powerful enough for most non-gaming applications.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The issue is that the Pi 4 has a number of flaws that are likely to be fixed in an up-coming revision, and we should add any other big ones to the list.

      People who bought existing models with the official case are now in a situation where there are known faults and they really need to start hacking up the case and buying an additional fan. Maybe the manufacturer should address that, since it's their mistake.

      Also it changes the basic nature of the Pi a little - adding a fan has consequences. It makes more noi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Layzej ( 1976930 )

        Also it changes the basic nature of the Pi a little - adding a fan has consequences. It makes more noise, and it gathers dust which is going to be an issue for long term use. A lot of people use Pis running 24/7. It also increases power consumption.

        Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ will remain in production until at least January 2023. The introduction of the Pi4 just adds one more option (for now anyway). The Pi3B+ will remain the best option for many use cases.

        • Bullshit weasely excuses don't change the fact that they fucked up bigly. The raspi foundation has earned its reputation for half-assing designs. They obviously don't do meaningful testing, period.

    • Moving parts are bad for a lot of hobbyist projects, as is the added bulk and weight. We were shown the specs and thought the device would run the within the same constraints as the others. I guess we can underclock it but that will scale back the computing advantage some. Hopefully a revision will run cooler.

      This will be nice for folks who like emulators. I'm happy they're being produced, happy the raspberry pi line exists, but I can understand why some are seeing this as a negative for their particular ne

    • ". For quite a few years, PC's didn't require a fan, then they became powerful enough to generate enough heat to need one. "

      The IBM PC-1 model 5150 had a fan in its ~65W power supply, and the air was drawn from within the case. So, no, and also no.

    • You know what else DIDN'T need a fan? The first PC's.

      FTFY

  • The issue is not that it needs a fan (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lsllll ( 830002 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @11:39PM (#58943770)

    Yes, needing a fan is a PITA if you need to keep the unit cool, but you've gotta think where the energy to heat the silicon comes from. It comes from the 5V rail, which meant this unit, no matter what they do to it, is useless for embedded applications that use batteries or are left on 24x7 because of its power usage. Check out this page [raspi.tv]. At idle, the thing uses more than twice RP3B. All other numbers point to almost double the usage.

    I guess I understand the uses where its new performance numbers are needed, but for most applications, it is an overkill and a RP3B is still the champion.

    • Running on battery obviously you want the most power efficient chip you can get but as far as 24hour operations, At 2.85 Watts idle the Pi4 would cost you ~$3 a year

    • Re:The issue is not that it needs a fan (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Thursday July 18, 2019 @01:15AM (#58944058)

      I put a lot of work into power-optimising a Pi Zero W. I got it down to 0.5W when running off 5V. Or just 0.4W when running off 3V (Which can be done, if you're careful.). I've not tried on a Pi 4 yet, but if you are on a battery-type power budget, I think Zero / W is the only way to go.

      Unfortunately the application I have in mind has a power budget of about 0.1W, so I'm still far from what I need. I don't think a Pi Zero will hit that no matter how many optimisation tricks you use.

      • Re:The issue is not that it needs a fan (Score:4, Insightful)

        by nadaou ( 535365 ) on Thursday July 18, 2019 @04:39AM (#58944538) Homepage

        Sounds like you need to go with an Arduino. The Cortex M0 and M4 chips are quite capable, run at 11 mA 3.3v, and sleep at 1-2 mA. You won't get much memory but you can attach a SD card easily enough. Classic ATMega32 can run for months off a 9v battery if you get your sleep registers right.

      • Unfortunately the application I have in mind has a power budget of about 0.1W, so I'm still far from what I need.

        Can you shoehorn it into an ESP32? It consumes 160-260 mA @ 3.3v during wifi operation, and only 20mA (at full speed) with modems off.

  • Nonsense. Sure, if your Raspberry Pi's sitting idle or doing something boring like running OctoPi you don't need a heat sink or fan. Try running a media player on it, though, and see how quickly it throttles without a heat sink or fan.
  • Why does it take so many paragraphs to say that?

  • I would get a NanoPi M4 instead (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Misagon ( 1135 ) on Thursday July 18, 2019 @01:15AM (#58944060)

    Right now, I'm more impressed by the NanoPi M4. Only $5 more for the 2GB model now.

    Same form factor as the RPi 3 except that the SoC is mounted on the underside where a heat sink won't be blocked by a hat, and there is a heatsink available which it is as big as the SBC itself.
    The SoC with 2+4 cores in big.LITTLE config is faster in single-core benchmarks and uses less power when idle.
    There is a eMMC socket ... and the killer feature: a separate PCIe header which fits a $25 4*SATA hat. A M.2 hat is on the way.
    It has been out for a years, so its Linux distro appears stable and supports hw video decoding in "4K".
    However, the GPU appears to be slower on 3D than the Pi 3's.

    • No user base. They missed the boat.

    • Wake me up when they get a 4GB RAM version for under fifty bucks. The 2GB RAM was too little, and the expanded RAM at this price point is specifically why I want the new raspi.

  • They still have not realized that they are pretty incompetent and continue to screw it up. Pathetic. The fanbois will, of course, explain this away as well as they are blind. Sane people will get one of the alternatives designed by actually competent hardware designers.

    • Yeah one of the obscure alternatives that have no user base, no accessories and no tutorials. Good luck with that. Nerd.
  • Fun fact: if you take the TDP of all chips, then add to that the inverse of the efficiency rating of the components feeding power into it, you get total watts dissipated as heat AND, I guess they didn't know this, but it doesn't magically drift off into the Aether or into another dimension. It dissipates to the air. In fact, at a rate equal to the temperature difference multiplied by the thermal conductivity...you know what, let's just say they should have seen this coming with about 60 seconds of math. I l

  • The USB-C design is not to be desired either. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AbRASiON ( 589899 ) * on Thursday July 18, 2019 @03:07AM (#58944350) Journal

    https://twitter.com/Laughing_M... [twitter.com] (Benson, the Google USB-C guy)
    https://medium.com/@leung.bens... [medium.com]
    This one is another bonus doozy on top of the above:
    https://twitter.com/Tyler_Scor... [twitter.com]
    https://www.scorpia.co.uk/2019... [scorpia.co.uk]

    Once these issues are fixed and a decent case is out there with a simple 3.3v, quiet fan, you'll find it's a good little product.
    That being said, unlike the 2 series and some of the 3, I can't see them being deployed out 'in the wild' on fancy installations as it doesn't seem as robust a piece of hardware.
    Things like this: https://www.raspberrypi.org/bl... [raspberrypi.org] (but obviously warmer environments) would be better suited to a more resilient (no fan) hardware.

    I'd have preferred several things for the Pi4:

    1, accept inflation, put the base cost up $10
    2, remove the 1GB option entirely
    3, include a basic heatsink of some kind. Heck if you're charging $10 more at base make it a damn good one. Something which allows the device to seem more robust
    4, not release it with USB-C "bugs" like Nintendo and 5,000 other companies who can't get USB-C right (clearly, it's far far too complicated a standard!)

    Oh and a 5'th thing? .... I wouldn't have lied to the public about the release being "miles away" and "not any time soon" because several (quite a few) Rasbperians such as myself, purchased a 3B+ Pi recently for our collection, knowing "nothing is coming soon" only to find less than a week or two after our safe purchases, were not so safe after all. My Pi 3B+ was still in the box when the 4 was announced.
    (No, I don't expect them to Osborne themselves, but the terminology used in the last 2 interviews was very adamantly "nah nothing on the horizon! this next Pi is proving tricky to design and keep cheap guys, be patient, sorry lol!!" etc etc, deceptive)

  • The Raspberry Pi joins the growing list of computer and peripheral manufactures who do not accept that things need to stay cool to run. Other members with this dreadful disorder include: Intel, who seems to like to understate their DTP, the Amd x470 chipset designer whose illness will cause great harm by forcing motherboard manufactures to use a chipset fan which no on likes, and most notebook computer manufactures, who cannot accept that without cooling, a computer will throttle. Apple has a marked and tra

  • No you do not need a fan. Skip the official case. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Raphael ( 18701 ) on Thursday July 18, 2019 @04:12AM (#58944482) Homepage Journal

    I have been running my Raspberry Pi 4 without temperature issues but without the official case. As soon as I put the Pi4 in its case and I close the lid, the temperature increases until it has to throttle the speed. But outside the case it works fine, especially when I put the Pi4 vertically on its side.

    I just checked the temperature with a light load on the Pi4 and no display:
    $ vcgencmd measure_temp
    temp=55.0'C

    So everything is fine when I do not use the official case. This temperature is very similar to what I get from my old Pi model B or Pi3B+ that are in the same room and operating at temperatures between 49 C and 65 C depending on the load. The Pi4 is a couple of degrees warmer under comparable load, but it works fine without a fan.

    However, I do not understand why the Raspberry Pi Foundation designed the official Pi4 case as a completely closed box, unlike the official Pi3 case from which it was easy to remove the top or the side panels to provide some additional air flow. It is possible to use the Pi4 case without the top, but there are no side panels so there is very little air flow under the board. This is a weird design decision that causes the board to overheat rather quickly.

    Those who purchase the Pi4 Desktop Kit with the official case will get a much better desktop experience if they do not use the case (or at least remove the top part).

  • This is unscientific – and actually wrong (Score:5, Informative)

    by demon driver ( 1046738 ) on Thursday July 18, 2019 @04:22AM (#58944508) Journal

    Did he compare a Pi 3 with a Pi 4 using reproducible tests, comparing real temperature readings and timings under defined loads?

    Renowned German c't magazine did, using a Pi 3B+ for comparison, and what they found out is that, yes, the Pi 4 draws a little more current when idle, but it's hardly more under load. And under full load the Pi 4 actually takes significantly *longer* than the 3B+ until it gets so hot (80C) that the CPU cores start throttling.

    So, yes, for applications which cause substantial load the Pi 4 needs cooling, but the Pi 3B/3B+ already did, and even more so.

    But then again that doesn't mean it needs *active* cooling.

    My own experience with one 3B and one 3B+ is very similar to what c't magazine found – which is why I've long since put both inside what I find the nicest available case anyway, the aluminum "flirc case" in which the casing acts as an effective passive cooler. Which, for me, so far has proven fully sufficient to prevent any kind of overheating.

  • The Pi has lots of fans, always had.

  • Yep. Pi 4 runs hot. (Score:3)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Thursday July 18, 2019 @06:31AM (#58944804) Homepage

    I added a fan to my Pi 4 because it was reaching almost 80C on the SoC without one. Now I can't get it to go much above 50C.

    The fan is pretty tiny and not too noisy. I could reduce the noise by running it at 3.3V at the expense of reduced airflow, but so far it hasn't bothered me. And yes, for web browsing, email and light LibreOffice work, the Pi 4 is a completely usable desktop replacement.

  • Join the Raspberry PI 4 Fan club ! (Score:5, Funny)

    by LordHighExecutioner ( 4245243 ) on Thursday July 18, 2019 @06:59AM (#58944894)
    It will bring a refreshing breath of air to your CPU,,,
  • Has anyone tried just drilling a few holes in the top and bottom of the case? It seems there should be a decent air flow by convection.

  • Quick test results here:

    https://imgur.com/a/yjKsJKa [imgur.com]

    This is a 3 B+ in a ventilated case, with passive cooling (metal coolers, no fans). 10min under 'stress' brings the temperature from 44 to 81 Celsius, as reported by vcgencmd.

  • I imagine that just using a large enough heat sink will do the job ok. The itsy bitsy self-adhesive heat sinks for RAM were enough to cure overheat problems on earlier pi models, and on the mk908. Presumably a bit larger one will do the job here. If you want to use the case, you'll have to put a hole in it for the sink, but so what?

    There's actually PC cases that cool your whole machine this way, but as your PC draws hundreds of watts, they needs a very large, heavy, and expensive blob of finned aluminum to

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