Cooling The Raspberry Pi 4 With The Fan SHIM & FLIRC For Better Performance

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Cooling The Raspberry Pi 4 With The Fan SHIM & FLIRC For Better Performance

With the Raspberry Pi 4, a passive heatsink is an absolute minimum for running this new ARM SBC unless you want to deal with potentially drastic performance limitations based upon your operating conditions. However, if you will be enduring the Raspberry Pi 4 with significant load for any measurable length of time, an active cooler is almost warranted or otherwise a very capable passive cooler. In this article we're looking at the Raspberry Pi 4 performance with a Fan SHIM as an active fan designed for running on the Raspberry Pi off the GPIO pins as well as the FLIRC as a metal case that passively cools the device.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=28160

[kenjitamura]

Is it possible to simultaneously use the fan shim and flirc or are the flirc internals too cramped to fit the fan shim inside with it?

[Michael]

Is it possible to simultaneously use the fan shim and flirc or are the flirc internals too cramped to fit the fan shim inside with it?

The FLIRC immediately goes up against the SoC to serve as a heatsink. The Fan SHIM won't work with any heatsink.

[schmidtbag]

I'm a bit surprised this runs hot enough where even the FLIRC isn't quite enough to prevent thermal throttling. Perhaps they should look into something smaller than 28nm.

[AsuMagic]

Huh, I'd have expected the heatsink alone to have made a big difference on its own... Apparently not.

[brent]

Huh, I'd have expected the heatsink alone to have made a big difference on its own... Apparently not.

Most of the simple heatsinks you can get for the Raspberry Pi are crap: Too small and not suitable for passive cooling and typically adhered with an unsuitable general-purpose glue that does not transfer heat well.

Of course I don't know what Michael used, but it's likely one of the crappy tiny heatsinks.

[frief]

Radio and a metal (aluminum) case usually is a critical combination. I couldn't find something WLAN related in the Flirc FAQ.
Does someone know if Wifi performance with the Flirc case is ok?

[Misel]

Radio and a metal (aluminum) case usually is a critical combination. I couldn't find something WLAN related in the Flirc FAQ.
Does someone know if Wifi performance with the Flirc case is ok?

I have the previous version with a Pi3+ and though I haven't done any benchmarks with it I also didn't notice any possibly WiFi-related problems. It just worked.

[Tomin]

I'm a bit surprised this runs hot enough where even the FLIRC isn't quite enough to prevent thermal throttling. Perhaps they should look into something smaller than 28nm.

Really? To me it looks like it was well enough and never close to throttling. The small difference in performance between the fan and the case can be explained with random fluctuation in test results. It's also possible that Michael did something differently in some of the tests because some of the thermal results are only a fraction of the others. Probably ran them just once which would also contribute to that fluctuation.

[numacross]

Most of the simple heatsinks you can get for the Raspberry Pi are crap: Too small and not suitable for passive cooling and typically adhered with an unsuitable general-purpose glue that does not transfer heat well.

Of course I don't know what Michael used, but it's likely one of the crappy tiny heatsinks.

The only proper solution is a huge heatsink with a heatpipe with LEDs! Sadly not RGB, but eye-burning blue:


Edit: Tom's Hardware benchmarked it.