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posted by martyb on Wednesday October 09 2019, @12:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the Hot-Stuff! dept.

Raspberry Pi 4 Can Now Overclock to 2.147 GHz. Here's How.

The Raspberry Pi 4 is much faster than every prior Raspberry Pi, but what if you could squeeze much more than the base 1.5 GHz out of its Broadcom BCM2711B0 CPU? Fortunately, it's easy to overclock any Raspberry Pi and you can do it just by tweaking a few lines of text in the /boot/config.txt file. Now, with the latest firmware, we were able to reach a speed of 2,147 MHz, which we believe is a new high.

With prior firmware, the Pi 4 B's processor was limited to a maximum overclocked frequency of 2 GHz, which is pretty good all by itself. However, the latest update let us push it up another 147 MHz. We were also able to increase the GPU clock speed to 750 MHz, a big boost over its 500 MHz stock speed and the 600 MHz we had overclocked it to previously.

Before 2 GHz, the max overclock was 1.75 GHz with the original, stable firmware.

Also at Electronics Weekly.

Previously: Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Launched
Raspberry Pi 4 Has a Non-Compliant USB-C Charging Port
Too Hot to Handle? Raspberry Pi 4 Fans Left Wondering If Kit Should Come With a Heatsink


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 09 2019, @01:57AM (16 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday October 09 2019, @01:57AM (#904461) Journal

    I hear these things run hot even at stock settings. What does this OC do to heat output, and would it necessitate active cooling?

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  • (Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Wednesday October 09 2019, @02:03AM (10 children)

    by Fnord666 (652) on Wednesday October 09 2019, @02:03AM (#904464) Homepage

    I hear these things run hot even at stock settings. What does this OC do to heat output, and would it necessitate active cooling?

    I was wondering the same thing myself.

    With the active cooling power of our Pimoroni Fan Shim [tomshardware.com], the Pi 4 remained at comfortable temperatures, hitting just 43 degrees Celsius at idle and, even with a stress test running, it never even came close to hitting the 80-degree throttle threshold.

    Without active cooling you could probably pop popcorn on the CPU but it looks like a fan will keep temps reasonable.

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 09 2019, @02:34AM (9 children)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday October 09 2019, @02:34AM (#904478) Journal

      Niiiiiice. At some point these tiny SBCs will become just powerful enough to use as basic desktops. I'd love to see companies building a sort of AiO solution out of these, basically just nice monitors with a slot for the Pi, and ideally one the user can easily slip new ones in and out of.

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      • (Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday October 09 2019, @02:55AM (8 children)

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday October 09 2019, @02:55AM (#904488) Journal

        Raspberry Pi 4B was pitched as an SBC desktop and although there are all kinds of complaints, it does indeed function well as a "basic desktop".

        Another option is that you just dock your smartphone and use that as a desktop. Samsung DeX is one approach to this.

        However:

        https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/07/24/0814221 [soylentnews.org]

        https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/3DSoCProposersDay20170915.pdf [darpa.mil]

        Capability of > 50X the performance at power when compared with 7nm 2D CMOS technology.

        Inclusion of > 4GB of non-volatile memory in a monolithic SoC that has a 2D footprint of no more than 200mm2 and dissipates < 500mW of average operating power.

        Once 3DSoC lands, SBCs and phones will be able to become more powerful than current desktops.

        Before 3DSoC lands, there will be DRAM added on top of or near chips. One example is Intel's Lakefield SoC [wikichip.org]. It's tiny and TDP is 5-7 W. AMD is rumored to include on-chip DRAM for Zen 4.

        AMD is embracing the "small form factor" [notebookcheck.net] (e.g. Intel's NUC). That's a size up from SBCs but might be preferable given you could fit many more ports, better cooling, larger SSD inside the box, etc.

        The idea of all-in-ones with slots sounds like Intel's cancelled Compute Card:

        Intel abandons development of modular Compute Cards [theverge.com]
        Intel's Compute Card is Dead, But This Bad Idea Won't Die [tomshardware.com]

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        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 09 2019, @03:13AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 09 2019, @03:13AM (#904495)

          Intel in a YO DAWG moment of creativity put something like the NUC in a pcie format, so you can compute while computing inside your computer with a little computer. Intel Element is the name.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 09 2019, @03:21AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 09 2019, @03:21AM (#904499)

          Amd already have a little beast Supermicro M11SDV AMD EPYC 3000 [servethehome.com]

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by coolgopher on Wednesday October 09 2019, @10:36AM (4 children)

          by coolgopher (1157) on Wednesday October 09 2019, @10:36AM (#904613)

          DRAM is already typically stacked on top of the SoC - the term to look for is "PoP" (Package on Package).

          • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday October 09 2019, @01:15PM (3 children)

            by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday October 09 2019, @01:15PM (#904690) Journal

            This may be the norm with smartphones, but isn't common in desktops, laptops, and SBCs. Shortening the distance between the CPU and RAM is a clear way to improve performance and efficiency, unless it comes at the expense of performance due to a thermal dissipation issue.

            Various high-end Intel processors have included stacked DRAM/HBM, and some of their CPUs with integrated graphics have included up to 128 MB of eDRAM. Gigabytes are needed for it to become more useful. There should be at least 1 GB of L4 cache DRAM with every CPU, including the ones without integrated graphics. Preferably 4 GB or more. It doesn't even have to be stacked on top of the cores.

            3DSoC will put at least 4 GB of non-volatile memory layers in direct contact with CPU core layers, enabling far superior performance and efficiency. It will also allow the use of older/larger process nodes at existing facilities, although scaling it down to the bleeding edge will offer even more benefits (at high cost).

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 09 2019, @02:06AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 09 2019, @02:06AM (#904466)

    I had an ice cooler system (really... ice cubes) to cool off a Pentium 200mmx overclocked to 300mhz back when setiathome first came out. I was in the top 100 for a while. The audio chipset didn't work at that speed but everything else did.

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday October 09 2019, @02:31AM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday October 09 2019, @02:31AM (#904477) Journal

    The only question now is whether passive cooling is sufficient (such as FLIRC [flirc.tv], others [martinrowan.co.uk], and a really thick one I couldn't find). I think some of these might be able to do 2 GHz.

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 09 2019, @05:22AM (2 children)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday October 09 2019, @05:22AM (#904536) Homepage
    The first-order model is that power scales with frequency, and with the square of the voltage.
    So with what looks like a 6% voltage hike and a 43% frequency jump, that's about 61% more Watts.
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    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Rupert Pupnick on Wednesday October 09 2019, @06:39PM (1 child)

      by Rupert Pupnick (7277) on Wednesday October 09 2019, @06:39PM (#904834) Journal

      Yes, and for a particular fixed set of cooling parameters (airflow, etc.), a 61% increase in power dissipation will give you a 61% increase in temperature rise above ambient. For example what was once a case temperature that was 10 deg C above ambient will now be a 16.1 deg C rise above ambient. In still air it might not be as high because of passive convection effects helping out, but for forced air this is a very good approximation.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Thursday October 10 2019, @10:34AM

        by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday October 10 2019, @10:34AM (#905148) Homepage
        Good point, that was the actual question being asked. I'll cross them, you knock them in.
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