Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Too hot to handle? Raspberry Pi 4 fans left wondering if kit should come with a heatsink
Some early adopters of the Raspberry Pi 4, released on 24 June, are running into heat issues, especially with the official Pi 4 case making no provision for a heatsink or fan.
The Raspberry Pi 4 has a 1.5GHz quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A72 CPU, for approximately three times the performance of the previous model. That inevitably generates more heat.
The Pi does not have a heatsink, but uses what the company calls "heat-spreading technology" to use the entire board as a kind of heatsink. This worked fine for the Pi 3, but the official FAQ for Pi 4 notes:
The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B uses the same heat-spreading technology but due to the much more powerful CPU cores is capable of higher peak power consumption than a Model 3B+. Under a continuously heavy processor workload, the Model 4B is more likely to throttle than a Model 3B+.
You can add a heatsink if you wish, and this may prevent thermal throttling by keeping the chips below the throttling temperature.
When the Pi 4 heats up beyond 80°C (176°F), the CPU is throttled to reduce the temperature and a half-full red thermometer appears on the display, if one is connected. If the temperature goes up beyond 85, the GPU, which now supports dual monitors and 4K resolution, will be throttled as well.
It is no surprise that the Pi 4 gets hotter than its predecessor, it is marketed as a viable general-purpose PC, after all.
There is an issue though: if it frequently overheats in normal use, users are not getting full performance. Longevity of the components may also be affected. We advised in our original review that "things got quite warm" when using the Pi for a few days.
Related Stories
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
A birthday gift: 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 now only $35
In two days' time, it will be our eighth birthday (or our second, depending on your point of view). Many of you set your alarms and got up early on the morning of 29 February 2012, to order your Raspberry Pi from our newly minted licensee partners, RS Components and Premier Farnell. In the years since, we've sold over 30 million Raspberry Pi computers; we've seen our products used in an incredible range of applications all over the world (and occasionally off it); and we've found our own place in a community of makers, hobbyists, engineers and educators who are changing the world, one project, or one student, at a time.
[...] Which brings us to today's announcement. The fall in RAM prices over the last year has allowed us to cut the price of the 2GB variant of Raspberry Pi 4 to $35. Effective immediately, you will be able to buy a no-compromises desktop PC for the same price as Raspberry Pi 1 in 2012. [...] And of course, thanks to inflation, $35 in 2012 is equivalent to nearly $40 today. So effectively you're getting all these improvements, and a $5 price cut.
[...] In line with our commitment to long-term support, the 1GB product will remain available to industrial and commercial customers, at a list price of $35. As there is no price advantage over the 2GB product, we expect most users to opt for the larger-memory variant. [...] The 4GB variant of Raspberry Pi 4 will remain on sale, priced at $55.
In addition to falling RAM prices (which will hopefully continue to fall in the future), there is likely an oversupply of the 2 GB model as the 4 GB model proved to be the most popular.
Also at TechCrunch, Tom's Hardware, PCWorld, and Hackaday.
The USB Type-C resistor issue has been fixed by the latest revision of the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B hardware, which is confirmed to be out in the wild. The issue prevented some USB-C power supplies from working with Pi4B:
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Thursday July 25 2019, @09:08AM (9 children)
This article put it best:
https://www.martinrowan.co.uk/2019/07/cooling-options-for-the-hot-raspberry-pi-4/ [martinrowan.co.uk]
Sticking a fan on it will help, but it's better if there is a hole for air to escape.
I got one a few days ago (4 GB) and ran it in the open air for a couple of days with no obvious problems (I didn't measure temperature). I've boxed it up and will continue using it once I get my FLIRC case [flirc.tv], hopefully within a couple weeks. I'm not sure if the FLIRC case (which is one big heatsink) is superior to open air, since it hasn't been tested by anyone yet, but at least it won't get damaged easily.
It has been argued that RasPi throttling is just the system functioning as designed, but it's clear that using it with the official plastic case unmodified is a bad idea. They could make it aluminum like the FLIRC case and charge $10 for it, and there would probably be no throttling, no fan needed.
Going forward, I assume they will try to lower power consumption and heat slightly on Raspberry Pi 5, with a small performance increase, especially if they have to stick with the "28nm" node.
Eventually, we could see a Raspberry Pi 6 or 7 use the DARPA 3DSoC [soylentnews.org], potentially delivering more performance than today's high end desktops... while using less power than Raspberry Pi 4 (the 3DSoC project target is 0.5 W, which is a lot less than RasPi 4 or even RasPi Zero under stress).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Wierd0n3 on Thursday July 25 2019, @09:47AM (6 children)
This is the cooler i grabbed for mine:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/In-Stock-52Pi-original-ICE-Tower-CPU-Cooling-Fan-for-Raspberry-Pi-4B-3B-3B/173962045147 [ebay.com]
I read the article you posted, all of their numbers were at idle, while this cooler kept it around 20c running prime95 for 20 minutes(the slides they have in the ebay listing were grabbed from eta prime on youtube)
I just grabbed the complete kit from CanaKit, should have the board friday, the heatsink is in shanghai, so soon....... (i hate china shipping)
some people mod their hood to let the supercharger peek out
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday July 25 2019, @10:28AM (1 child)
Yeah, I saw that one. Pretty funny, a nice-looking fan, and will help you to push it to its limits.
I want everything nice and enclosed, and would prefer passive handling of heat. Purchasing the FLIRC Kodi cases supports the XBMC Foundation too. I'm betting that these cases will also be usable with RasPi 5, although I could be dead wrong.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Wierd0n3 on Thursday July 25 2019, @08:35PM
I was planing to have the other heatsinks from the kit take care of that, and i was thinking about seeing if i can power a 120mm fan off of usb2 inside a 1/2 a shoebox since it can now power a usb3 portable HDD and at a decent speed.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday July 25 2019, @10:55AM
http://blog.flirc.tv/index.php/2019/07/24/cases-shipping/ [flirc.tv]
Looks like it may never need to throttle even at 100% with the FLIRC case, depending on other factors. That will need to be confirmed but it looks promising.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25 2019, @11:20AM
But that monstrosity won't even directly cool the usb chip that also gets pretty hot.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday July 26 2019, @05:01AM
Even the 3 got pretty hot, which is why I run mine in an alu case with a metal pillar over the CPU that turns the case into a heatsink. Shipping the 4 without serious heatsinking is just nuts (although admittedly par for the course for a vendor who runs ethernet over a USB bridge, power via a micro USB connector, no power or USB protection apart from a basic polyfuse, backpowering the system by plugging in a powered USB device, and a million other flaws). Third-party vendors know all about this, look at a vendor like Geekworm [geekworm.com] which is filled with heatsinks, heatsink-equivalent Pi cases, fans, and so on, all the stuff the Pi guys forgot about. Here's one example [geekworm.com], just a solid block of heatsink that wraps around the Pi 4 to make it function properly.
Non-Pi vendors like ODroid, my favourite properly-designed Pi alternative, wouldn't even ship something like a Pi 4 without a heatsink, their Odroid N2 [hardkernel.com] has a massive integrated alu block that's part of the system, you can't even buy it without the heatsink attached.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 26 2019, @06:26AM
I just modified my 3d printed sled. It already has a fan option (20mm or 30mm) just had to switch around the USB2 and Ethernet ports and update for 2 mini hdmi and USBC plug. Will be releasing to thingaverse once I PI4 arrives and I can verify the alignments. Airflow is great since the box is open and sled just slides in.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25 2019, @11:15AM (1 child)
Shame on you!
$ vcgencmd measure_temp
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday July 25 2019, @11:41AM
Haha. Most of my attention was on monitoring the RAM usage (Raspbian July 10) and testing YouTube video (720p handling is questionable.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25 2019, @09:43AM
... or the other kind of "fans"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25 2019, @12:07PM (2 children)
TFS makes it sound more like a heating appliance. Somebody may be exaggerating somewhere.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday July 25 2019, @12:19PM
As long as you do literally anything but use the dumb plastic case, you'll probably be fine.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday July 25 2019, @02:37PM
The Pi 4 could be infringing an Intel patent on using CPUs as heating appliances.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25 2019, @12:26PM
Fit one Sunon Mighty Mini Fan (PDF) [sunon.com] on top of the heatsink.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by theluggage on Thursday July 25 2019, @01:14PM (3 children)
What nobody seems to be suggesting is just underclock the thing a bit (it's an option in Config.txt, right?) Has anybody tried that?
Seems like a reasonable choice: If you want something that's 3x the speed of the previous Pi, add a fan and/or metal case. If you want it as a tiny, embedded, fanless computer then slightly faster than the old Pi (and, hopefully, much better USB/network performance) is still a win - its not like the price has gone up.
Its worth remembering that the Pi is supposed to be built down to a low price - if you want a premium-priced computer with technical problems to complain about, then raspberries are not the only fruit :-)
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday July 25 2019, @01:45PM
I thought about underclocking 100-200 MHz. In particular, -100 MHz is about 7% but could drop temps by a whopping 8 degrees according to one user [raspberrypi.org]. Now I'll have no reason to since I'm getting a shipment of 8 FLIRC cases (most being given away).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25 2019, @02:37PM
So has someone done this, and what was observed?
My application doesn't need much CPU performance, but IO could be helpful.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Grayson on Thursday July 25 2019, @05:59PM
A large portion of the heat from the device is coming from the USB 3.0 controller, and the USB-C power input.
From the IR shots I've seen of the Pi 4, I doubt that under-clocking it will actually reduce temperatures overall in a significant way.
The biggest issue is still that the stock case has no ventilation at all.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday July 25 2019, @03:19PM
The kit I got (Amazon Link [amzn.to]) included self-adhesive heatsinks for the Processor, Ram, Broadcom controller, and USB 3.0 controller. It's currently running naked, no heatsinks, sitting on a desk in a 70F room crunching through a bunch of apt-get installs on crappy hotel wifi and only slightly warm to the touch.
It is replacing an original Model B and the performance difference is giggle inducing.
(Score: 1) by Grayson on Thursday July 25 2019, @05:53PM
I put about ~$0.50 worth of heatsinks in my Pi 4B, it runs regular tasks without issue, as long as it isn't closed in the OEM case. But, if I close the case it overheats pretty quickly.
Without the heatsinks, but with an open case, I would see minor throttling under normal load.
Without the heatsinks, and with a closed case, it would overheat quickly and significantly throttle.
The un-vented OEM case is just a less than stellar design for a device that runs this warm.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25 2019, @10:37PM
It is a cast iron Lodge. I was careless with it and burned my hand on the handle. Unfortunately the handle was hot because apparently Lodge uses "heat spreading technology" too.