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Disclaimer: I work for a company that owns a Raspberry Pi Approved Reseller. We spend a ridiculous amount of money testing various cases from China. In testing

Disclaimer: I work for a company that owns a Raspberry Pi Approved Reseller. We spend a ridiculous amount of money testing various cases from China. In testing we found that the heat sink style[1] cases with fan work best. Having said that, for most use cases you just need to move the hot layer of air away from the SoC, so even a low speed fan will do the trick. [1] https://raspberry.piaustralia.com.au/collections/cases-enclosures/products/armour-case-with-dual-cooling-fan-for-raspberry-pi https://raspberry.piaustralia.com.au/collections/cases-enclo...

GhettoMaestro 7y ago
Thanks for posting this. I am deploying a few Pis in a hot environment and am now looking into the cooling issue.
phkahler 7y ago
Is it possible that a taller case with vents at bottom and top, plus a decent heat sink might provide enough convection to go fanless?
- schappim 7y ago
  Certainly, the key is hot air needs to be able to get away from the SoC. For my home lab, I don't bother with the fans/cases and instead just stack the Pis with brass spacers. I haven't had any issues yet with the ambient room temperature around 20-22ºC (68-71.6ºF for the stonecutters who keep the metric system down[1]). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZI_aEalijE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZI_aEalijE
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    Have you checked if the CPUs are throttling at load?
    - bitwize 7y ago
      I use a Pimoroni case with an open bit where the CPU and various other chips are. I also have a small heatsink on the CPU. The machine doesn't throttle under load even when I hammer it with a compilation job on all four cores.
  - chadlavi 7y ago
    Rremove the case of shame! Attach the case, of triumph!
bjoli 7y ago
I had issues finding a case that supported my PoE hat with passive cooling. My solution was the following: https://m.imgur.com/a/Cr38Abz https://m.imgur.com/a/Cr38Abz I wrote about it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/cefzwu/carbon_tablet_painkiller_tube_as_heatsink/ https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/cefzwu/carbon... I get great thermals. Currently I put it in the official case (with drilled holes) and get about 25 over ambient with USB turned off and a conservative CPU governor.
amelius 7y ago
What is your opinion of using a peltier element + possibly a heatsink but without a fan?
whiskers 7y ago
Interestingly we (also a Raspberry Pi Approved Reseller) tested these heatsink cases with fans attached and found that the fans didn't improve thermals due to the manner in which they are mounted. In the end we decided the extra cost, power consumption, noise, and moving parts simply weren't good value for the customer! Adding fans could (and should) make a huge difference but this specific design was very poor at taking advantage of them.
dustfinger 7y ago
Why does the image for the case featured at [1] have so many editing artifacts? and why is the image for the case linked from shopify [2] when the product is being sold at piaustralia.com.au? Seems kind of sketchy. I took a look on amazon and it seems like there are quite [3] a [4] few [5] resellers offering what appears to be the same product or design: [1] https://raspberry.piaustralia.com.au/collections/cases-enclosures/products/armour-case-with-dual-cooling-fan-for-raspberry-pi https://raspberry.piaustralia.com.au/collections/cases-enclo... [2] https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0053/4721/3361/products/arm_case2-500x500_500x500.jpg?v=1569553437 https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0053/4721/3361/products/ar... [3] https://www.amazon.ca/Waveshare-Aluminium-Raspberry-Resistance-Excellent/dp/B07VWW4K4Y/ https://www.amazon.ca/Waveshare-Aluminium-Raspberry-Resistan... [4] https://www.amazon.ca/Cooling-Aluminium-Aluminum-Enclosure-Raspberry/dp/B07VJNF7TZ/ https://www.amazon.ca/Cooling-Aluminium-Aluminum-Enclosure-R... [5] https://www.amazon.ca/Lorchwise-Cooling-Aluminum-Enclosure-Raspberry/dp/B07VM6GL6D/ https://www.amazon.ca/Lorchwise-Cooling-Aluminum-Enclosure-R... With so many clones in the market it becomes difficult to trust anyone, which is frustrating to say the least. I would love some unbiased advice on what product to purchase for a raspberry pi 4 which will probably be playing a lot of games and running at high cpu often.

GhettoMaestro 7y ago

Thanks for posting this. I am deploying a few Pis in a hot environment and am now looking into the cooling issue.

phkahler 7y ago

Is it possible that a taller case with vents at bottom and top, plus a decent heat sink might provide enough convection to go fanless?

schappim 7y ago
Certainly, the key is hot air needs to be able to get away from the SoC. For my home lab, I don't bother with the fans/cases and instead just stack the Pis with brass spacers. I haven't had any issues yet with the ambient room temperature around 20-22ºC (68-71.6ºF for the stonecutters who keep the metric system down[1]). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZI_aEalijE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZI_aEalijE
- colechristensen 7y ago
  Have you checked if the CPUs are throttling at load?
  - bitwize 7y ago
    I use a Pimoroni case with an open bit where the CPU and various other chips are. I also have a small heatsink on the CPU. The machine doesn't throttle under load even when I hammer it with a compilation job on all four cores.
- chadlavi 7y ago
  Rremove the case of shame! Attach the case, of triumph!

bjoli 7y ago

I had issues finding a case that supported my PoE hat with passive cooling. My solution was the following: https://m.imgur.com/a/Cr38Abz https://m.imgur.com/a/Cr38Abz I wrote about it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/cefzwu/carbon_tablet_painkiller_tube_as_heatsink/ https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/cefzwu/carbon... I get great thermals. Currently I put it in the official case (with drilled holes) and get about 25 over ambient with USB turned off and a conservative CPU governor.

amelius 7y ago

What is your opinion of using a peltier element + possibly a heatsink but without a fan?

whiskers 7y ago

Interestingly we (also a Raspberry Pi Approved Reseller) tested these heatsink cases with fans attached and found that the fans didn't improve thermals due to the manner in which they are mounted. In the end we decided the extra cost, power consumption, noise, and moving parts simply weren't good value for the customer! Adding fans could (and should) make a huge difference but this specific design was very poor at taking advantage of them.

dustfinger 7y ago

Why does the image for the case featured at [1] have so many editing artifacts? and why is the image for the case linked from shopify [2] when the product is being sold at piaustralia.com.au? Seems kind of sketchy. I took a look on amazon and it seems like there are quite [3] a [4] few [5] resellers offering what appears to be the same product or design: [1] https://raspberry.piaustralia.com.au/collections/cases-enclosures/products/armour-case-with-dual-cooling-fan-for-raspberry-pi https://raspberry.piaustralia.com.au/collections/cases-enclo... [2] https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0053/4721/3361/products/arm_case2-500x500_500x500.jpg?v=1569553437 https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0053/4721/3361/products/ar... [3] https://www.amazon.ca/Waveshare-Aluminium-Raspberry-Resistance-Excellent/dp/B07VWW4K4Y/ https://www.amazon.ca/Waveshare-Aluminium-Raspberry-Resistan... [4] https://www.amazon.ca/Cooling-Aluminium-Aluminum-Enclosure-Raspberry/dp/B07VJNF7TZ/ https://www.amazon.ca/Cooling-Aluminium-Aluminum-Enclosure-R... [5] https://www.amazon.ca/Lorchwise-Cooling-Aluminum-Enclosure-Raspberry/dp/B07VM6GL6D/ https://www.amazon.ca/Lorchwise-Cooling-Aluminum-Enclosure-R... With so many clones in the market it becomes difficult to trust anyone, which is frustrating to say the least. I would love some unbiased advice on what product to purchase for a raspberry pi 4 which will probably be playing a lot of games and running at high cpu often.