Check out "Look Around You" episodes for the ultimate retro TV spoof - though if you're born after about 1978 you may wonder what is going on. It's nerd comedy disguised as 1970s school TV programs
@@DarkLinkAD funny you should mention that. I believe researchers have been trying just that. Also filling up the groves with copper and experimenting with water cooling
Love how when Christopher realised he had put the fan mount the wrong way round, he was "Oh" - I think I may have used some slightly colourful metaphors to express my frustrations... :-) Nice kit, thanks for the review!
RoboNuggie I liked how his clever bit of editing glossed over the fact that he was within a gnat's crochet of also putting the base on the wrong way up. Note how the GPIO pins magically transmogrify from the top to the bottom at 6:52.
I got into these small computers because I was searching up raspberry pie recipes .......I’m a noob now but I can’t wait to understand all this tech talk
This is my first video with this gentleman, and it was fabulous. At first I was like who's this "Mr. Rogers" wanna be, but by the end I was in absolute love with him. I will be around to see other videos and I hope they are as upbeat as this was. Great video and very informative by the way.
The same procedure as last sunday afternoon? The same procedure as every sundyay afternoon! Having great teatime with Christopher B.! Ideas absorbed, parts ordered, construction time is coming ... Thank you made my day!
Very nice setup. The SSD puts out a significant amount of heat as well, so the extra cooling was a good idea. Always good value Chris... Thanks for another great video.
@@Okurka. I'm not suggesting that cooling the SSD is or isn't necessary. Just saying that device puts out more heat than other possible storage solutions (a willing trade off) , so extra cooling for the SBC chips is a good idea. Chris' assembly is not completely enclosed, but adequate cooling for this setup would definitely be needed, should it reside in an enclosure.
@@Okurka. No. Cooling SSD chips makes them need to write with with slightly smaller current (which may fit your explanations), but losing data faster due to higher temperatures. High temperatures (say above 50degC) IMHO have negative impact even on writing.
Christopher. Your videos always have a lot of detail but you never do justice to summarizing it all at the end. All we ever get is about 2 or 3 sentences. I'm always left thinking your videos leave way more food for thought than you ever discuss at the end.
What I'm left feeling at the end of this video is... this is a great little 3D printed solution but actually I don't want to connect an SSD to my Pi 4 with the bottleneck of a USB connection. The Raspberry Pi is crying out for an M2 and an eMMC connector and why doesn't my Pi 4 have these already since so many other SBCs have them??
An interesting solution for mounting. This could come in quite handy when placing a PI inside a project box. The vertical mount is a space saver for sure. Another interesting video, Sir!
My Pi finally arrived the 18th and the accessories are due tomorrow the 21st. Took me a year to actually get around to it for various children... er, various reasons, that is, but we're excited and I'm glad I waited because I was able to get the 4B 8G and RPi OS 64 seems to be getting very close to maturing. I went with a simple aluminum armor case with dual fans built in since I live in the desert and summer temperatures are a serious issue even before any overclock. I've taken everything into account I've learned from your experience on the channel and my intended use, (those children I mentioned, mostly,) and I thank you greatly for the education. This will be the first family computer we've had, (schools provided Chromebooks for them, so they know at least how to navigate a GUI,) and I've only had a phone as a computer for about 15 years, so the Pi is actually perfect for starting over. I hope you're well and I'll see you in the next video.
Noctura fans are amazing. I replaced every fan that came with my computer case with the equivalent size Noctura and the system runs coolly but more importantly quietly. I did spend a small fortune for so many of the 140mm and 120mm fans though!
We've chosen a 60mm Noctua fan for our Pi 4B coolercase. But as it turned out (and was anticipated), it's not necessary except for some extreme ambient temperatures. Main reasons: - keep it quiet - keep it reliable (some 150000 hours of lifetime at default voltage) - have enough space for eventual dust (both on a fan and the cooler itself). we've ended up with a 215g block of CNC milled aluminium :) th-cam.com/video/RbzKM5XxlOA/w-d-xo.html
An RPI should always have at least a small heatsink anyway. If you were to use the stock fan with the heatsink the temps might be at least 5 degrees cooler as a guess. I have no idea if this observation has been repeated.
I was hoping to see that same experiment... the video can only be so long of course, but it would be most informative to see how much of the benefit is attributed to the heat sink versus a particular model of fan.
@@ExplainingComputers I like them so much I bought four of them, and gifted one to my brother! Thank you, sir, for pointing us to them. Best RPi case ever. So far.
The Argon One Case doesn't fit a SSD Drive so the two are completely different products! You'd need to have the SSD Drive hanging out the side, which is no bad thing but the point of this product is to have a SSD and pi as one unit.
No one can resist the bubble wrap fun after unpacking, ha ha. Edit: I not only watch this for informative content, but also for the occasional comedic comment slipped in.
I use Ice Tower in passive cooling mode (i.e., with the fan dismantled). Keeps my Raspberry Pi 3B at 55 degrees C while the room temperature is about 20C. The Pi is in vertical position, which helps air to cool the fins (I hope). As for the fan... it started making noises after a week's use. ADD: and by the way, I overclocked my Pi to 1400 MHz (the stock frequency being 1200). Thanks for your excellent video on overclocking, Chris!
With some slightly longer spacers/bolts, it looks like this might accommodate a low-profile PoE hat/shim as well, which would eliminate a cable going into the side (for those of us running headless pis)
I have very good success with M2.5 screws in PETG too. They hold very firmly. The hole is some 0.2mm smaller than the nominal screw diameter, that's enough for them to hold ok.
Your videos are always so well done. Thank you. Incidentally, thanks to your previous instructional video, I now have FreeNAS running on an Odyssey SBC with Pi-Hole running on a VM therein. (Turns out the most difficult task was figuring out that the screw attaching the ssd to the Odyssey came in two parts). Now I'm going to install Wireguard on a RP4 running PiVPN. No rest for the wicked.
Great review. Thanks! I also appreciate the look at your script for testing cooler performance. I've adopted it into my utility script folder. My Ice Tower only hit 49 degrees C once, and otherwise spent most of its time around 48 degrees C. I think this is the first time I've had a way to really log and stress test it.
Just purchased this kit and might be worth pointing out it ships from Slovakia. Ordered it on Sunday 27 Dec and it arrived on the 29 Dec, amazing speed considering it includes a bank holiday on the 28 Dec.
It’d probably improve a bit but Noctua fans are some of the best (if not the best) on the market - the air flow it’ll be pushing will be considerably higher than the no-name fan that was supplied. I’d be confident in saying most of the improvement is from the fan and not the heat sink.
@@donkeyk1988 A heat sink is all about adding surface area and ideally getting the heat away from the object faster rather than tying to dissipate heat from where it originates, having ANY heatsink would provide a greater improvement over simply blowing air over a tiny metal plate. Edit: He even provided proof of this in the video at 10:35, this "case" was by far the worst cooling solution, even when compared to a completely passive solution.
Thanks Christopher. Most excellent presentation and certainly a lesson I will use assisting children how to take control of their Raspberry Pi situation in a very fun way. I will most certainly build another one using your solution tips. The best to you and, please, keep the excellence coming.
Although I like how the final product looks, and I think overall this is a step in the right direction, I can't help but think that it would still be nice to have a more solid (mostly) enclosed case without wires sticking out and about when you've got it all completed. I've envisioned something with 1 of the USB's being inaccessible to the outside world (permanently attached to a board internally that is used for SSD connections) and a hole on the side for the fan to blow out, maybe a little flip out "door" of sorts for the GPIO connectors, etc etc. This would be more for the type of person who doesn't constantly want to change their Pi configuration around of course, but more for the person who wants it to be self contained and "just work" while not exposing too much of the board to the outside world. And after typing all this I've come to think maybe I ought to venture on to create my own if I can't find it out in the Pi world :)
I agree, but if it were still mostly constructed the same then I'd prefer a solid jumper board between the SSD and the Pi's lower USB 3 port. With the case being purpose-built, it's not as though the location will vary.
So true, I dont like the cable sticking out like that also, the rest of the kit can be replaced by some double sided tape, or have the fun of 3d printing a bracket yourself. Sorry, i just fail to see the added value
I have to admit that it looks impressive all put together and for an open case, the board looks fairly protected, yet I have two concerns. First, I feel a little uncomfortable with the SSD supporting everything with two bolts in it. Second, I also worry about the power and video cables sticking out the top. Those sockets on the board look so fragile! I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable even using 90 degree cable adapters. Still, I would be tempted to use this setup, if the Pi was set safely out of the way from bumbling humans and the cables were securely tied so there wasn’t any possibility of torque on the board’s connections. If there is ever an improved version of the setup, I’d be interested in seeing it because I like its overall concept. Looking forward to your next video!
Love your stuff Christopher. It’s always nice checking in to see the RPI stuff, I think its amazing how far those have come, I got rid of all my Sun Sparc machines as soon as they came around, keeping up with the joneses though- its not as expensive as with the Sparcs I can tell you! Really great things for the amateur hobbyist and experimentalist. Cooling has been an important area for me as the transmitters that these Pis are controlling aren’t exactly cool 🧊 gadgets! Stay awesome.
I've been using 'clear' forever, despite been told about this key combination years ago. I could recall there was a combination, but forgot what it was, so when I needed to clear the screen I just sighed and typed 'clear', telling myself to look it up, then instantly forgetting about it until next time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ So thank you very much!
And don't forget ctrl-d to exit a terminal (or many other apps which read input line by line from the console). Typing "exit" or "logout" is barbaric by comparison.
Great video! I'm sad you saved peeling the plastic film off of the sata/usb connector for off film although! Peeling the plastic off is sooo satisfying.
Borrowed an old heat sink & shim fan of one of my old gpu's for my super-slim pie-in-a-keyboard configuration..still enjoyable just to view over multiple choices on heat distribution on these little marvels in the making...cool one Chris. 😉
I'm putting a PI camera & lens and a Google Coral USB Accelerator for vision recognition on my clocked Rig, along with the tower ICE heat pipe cooler. I just have no idea what the Coral USB Accelerator is or how to use it, but I think it's a must have.
Thanks for sharing. I am not a "fan" of how the fan attaches to the GPIO. If you want to plug something into the 40 pin GPIO, now you cant. This seems to be a common problem with most of the fan kits for the Pi.
I realize you probably want your review to reflect the experience out of the box, but I have to say the Noctua+rad+TerraPi combo looks like a winner to me and I'd probably go with that. The reason is that I can clearly hear the whining of the 'normal' fan and it'd be a distraction, to be honest. Thanks for the review and especially the last bit.
It is safe to power a fan from the Pi's 5V rail, as this takes power before the voltage regulator (it is tapping the USB adapter input directly). It is not safe to power a fan from the Pi's 3.3V rail, as this comes after the voltage regulator, and as you say a voltage spike from a motor on this rail could seriously damage the Pi. Some people do apparently power fans from the 3.3V rail, but it is risky.
@@creation_nono Fans are induction load at the commute wires. Means that the ends of its windings have some inductor between them - induction of the coils, measured in Henrys. But the coils in a fan are "hidden" behind a commuter, necessary to change polarity of windings' current for the motor to actually spin. Some motors are three phase, some (stepper and small fan motors) use two phases with two changing polarities on each phase to spin. Stepper motors are also of this latter design. At the terminals of a fan, you see only commuting electronics. All of these fans have electronic commuting, no actual classic commuter between the windings and the power rail (5V, 12V, ..) So the question is, can the voltage rail (5V, 3.3V) supply this commuting electronics? For the USB charger at 5V, the answer is yes - the charger (actually power supply) can sustain even some pulsed load, it has been designed to handle it. Some really crappy "chargers" for phones may actually fluctuate its voltage depending on load - but that would be chargers for 20 years old Nokias. Modern power supplies can deliver 1 to 3 Amps of current. A typical fan eats about 100 milliAmps. Back to the 3.3V rail on Raspberry Pi. The documentation states somewhere, that it's only auxiliary power, so that you can power some 100mA of current with it securely. We have used it for running a medium 60mm Noctua fan on top of our CooliPi cooler ( th-cam.com/video/RbzKM5XxlOA/w-d-xo.html ) without any problem. The fan is 5Volt, but at 3.3V it's even quieter. Your mileage may vary as soon as you add some other load to it, i.e. a HAT with its own power consumption on the 3.3V rail. So, to wrap it up, it's safer to include your own switching or linear voltage regulator that is powered from the 5V rail and outputs some 3.3V or even higher voltage for a fan. But as I've written, unless you add some other load, you don't need this for small and even medium fans. To further extend my answer to stepper motors - stepper motors with a permanent magnet, such as those in contemporary 3D printers can destroy its drivers and even the driving electronics (powered from the same circuit) IF YOU MOVE THEM MANUALLY too fast. Because they start to act as an alternator - actually generating current on its terminals. So, if you turn off a 3D printer (I've tried with Prusa i3) and MOVE SOME AXIS TOO FAST, the display blinks. Because the motor is feeding the power supply rail back with its own output, and through protection diodes it gets to the power rail of the PSU. So, Prusa i3 is 24Volt, the motor supplies some current/voltage to it and the changers/switchers start to generate output voltage (5V, 3.3V, etc) from this 24V rail. Sorry for such long explanation.
Re-Watching your older fan solutions, I wonder if using thermal paste between the pi-Shim would yield more interesting results for the simpler solution?
I am fan of the FLIRC case because it does not make any sound and it's rather cool and no external not protected parts everything is nicely build into the case.
I believe that it’s going to be hard to find this kit available on Amazon.ca A 3D printed parts could be easy designed to provide the same results. Hopefully someone will work on that in the near future. I understand that the Raspberry Pi corporate has now posted the official boot to USB updated.
He said they were 3D printed, but they looked injection molded. Would like to find STL files for this, looks like it's easy and relatively fast to print. As you said though, not that hard to just design something similar.
@@timezonewall Nah they were 3d printed, whilst one side has a slight texture to it you can see the layer lines on the other side very clearly. At 4:51 take a look at the base part screwed into the ssd.
Thank you, Dr. Barnatt, for another very nice RPi-related video. It's interesting to me how you always seem to find these useful projects. There seems to be an infinite supply of different RPi mounting solutions. However, once again, I must protest that blue LED lights are NOT "rather nice". Blue light is known to disturb sleep. Rather, moderate-intensity amber is the appropriate LED light color of choice for any "always on" damn light. Blue LED lights should be summarily outlawed, and all existing inventory of them should be immediately consigned to any rapidly-diminishing land-fill operation where they can deteriorate in dignity. I concede though that the fault lies only with the fan, and not the TerraPi concoction itself.
It seems that the Terra-Pi would be a very nice construction/structure to build your very own Raspberry Pi cluster on a bookshelf. Having your own little Super Computer-cluster comes in handy when you need some serious number crunching.
Agreed. I would expect the improvement to be more a function of the increased thermal transfer area than a different fan, though I don't know the respective CFM ratings on the fans...
I'd like to know how the Terra Pi rig cools with the simple addition of the heat sink you added to the Noctua rig. Comparing a fan without heatsink to a fan with a heatsink seems to me to be an apples to oranges comparison. Given what we have learned about the thermal properties of the RPi4, running one without a heatsink seems a fool's errand, no?
Nice review. I'd be curious what the CPU temp is under normal or medium load (not stressed) without the included fan and with a HAT. If I were to opt into active cooling I would probably use an aftermarket fan like you did during the second part of the video, as I really dislike bright blue LESs on everything.
A great video, as ever. But please allow a (relative) newbie question: The video shows the core temperature in the taskbar. How does one get it there? I've tried adding an app there, but CPU temp is not listed among the choices (CPU % is).
Agreed, IMHO that was a surprisingly unscientific and wasteful approach from Chris. I bet that with the heat sink, the original lit-up fan would perform pretty much as well as the Noctua fan, which was an additional cost that we had no evidence was required! How about it Chris??
The big advantage of the noctua vs other fans is noise. They spin slower than many other fans and are often *less* effective at cooling, depending on the comparison fan. I expect the cooling difference is mostly attributed to the heat sink. I recall in another video, he had a wider heatsink that would have fit this setup and given even more cooling performance.
I would have been interested to see the temps with the terrapi stock fan and the added heat sink as well... just to see how their fan compares to the noctua.
A very interesting development. On the one hand probably positive, as NVIDIA is a solid tech company with an interest in seeing ARM thrive. On the other hand, ARM is no longer independent of those who make or use its chips. Time will tell!
@@drishalballaney Even more than Unix. Linux is blissfully indifferent to the underlying hardware, (subject to a little bit of really low-level code for weird devices). . If there's a C compiler than will emit object code for it, somebody will have Linux running on it by teat-time.
Nice idea for a case with attached SSD. It was made with people like me in mind. But I'd also love to use my Pi with HATs. I have the Pimoroni Explorer Hat Pro and would like to use it for a few learning projects.
What makes it solid construction is it's dependency of using the SSD housing to supply structural integrity to the plastic frame. That's a bit of a disappointment, but I guess it works. I don't know if you know anything about tails os, but it might make an interesting presentation. I'm sure some viewers could find an interesting use for it. Im just running this Idea past you.
Thanks, Chris. Another excellent video presentation. Looking at the gap between the fan bracket and CPU, I would have been tempted to stick a thermal pad and low profile heat-sink to the CPU. That way you'd be able to maintain better thermals and still get the best from this new form factor. Best of both worlds!
Okay you skipped the part on how you configure the ssd to work on the raspberry pi. Usually the boot and os is installed on a sd drive. So how did you get the OS to boot from the usb ssd drive?
I actually picked up a similar sata to usb cable from amazon the UGREEN USB 3.0 to Sata Adapter 2.5 after seeing your Argon One build and was considering mounting an ssd on that.So purchased a BAITITON 480 GB and on removing the actual chipset from the case it greatly reduces the space needed for it to less than half its original size.
This program always gives me massive "How 2" vibes from children's TV in the 90s. I love this presentation format.
And that is HOW for now
Yeah this guy gives me Tim Hunkin vibes
I totally said something about a 90s vibe to one his videos yesterday! I love this guy.
Check out "Look Around You" episodes for the ultimate retro TV spoof - though if you're born after about 1978 you may wonder what is going on. It's nerd comedy disguised as 1970s school TV programs
Yes, me too 😌
A video version of "for Dummies" tech books 😆
Conclusion:
A fan that directly cools the CPU surface is just as efficient as blowing through a keyhole. The increase in the CPU area is crucial.
just add heatpipes
the increased surface area using fin stacks is always going to be superior than just having a fan blow directly onto the cpu.
I guess you should carve grooves into the silicon for increased surface area.
@@DarkLinkAD funny you should mention that. I believe researchers have been trying just that. Also filling up the groves with copper and experimenting with water cooling
@@x3roxide Gamers Nexus or De8aur right? ,I cant remember.
Love how when Christopher realised he had put the fan mount the wrong way round, he was "Oh" - I think I may have used some slightly colourful metaphors to express my frustrations... :-)
Nice kit, thanks for the review!
@jason crigger Indeed, colourful.
Definitely colourful, indeed.
RoboNuggie I liked how his clever bit of editing glossed over the fact that he was within a gnat's crochet of also putting the base on the wrong way up. Note how the GPIO pins magically transmogrify from the top to the bottom at 6:52.
@@aloysiussnailchaser272 I'm shocked :-)
I knew nothing about the Pi when I got the recommandation for your video. Now I am obsessed by it. Planning my own project. Thanks for all the videos!
I got into these small computers because I was searching up raspberry pie recipes .......I’m a noob now but I can’t wait to understand all this tech talk
I really love how you always provide prices adjusted for currancy rates.
the bob ross of teaching basic computer stuff and its great. i come round for the pi videos and delv into others frequently as well.
This is my first video with this gentleman, and it was fabulous. At first I was like who's this "Mr. Rogers" wanna be, but by the end I was in absolute love with him. I will be around to see other videos and I hope they are as upbeat as this was. Great video and very informative by the way.
The same procedure as last sunday afternoon?
The same procedure as every sundyay afternoon!
Having great teatime with Christopher B.!
Ideas absorbed, parts ordered, construction time is coming ...
Thank you made my day!
Very nice setup. The SSD puts out a significant amount of heat as well, so the extra cooling was a good idea. Always good value Chris... Thanks for another great video.
Cooling SSD chips makes them fail prematurely.
@@Okurka.
I'm not suggesting that cooling the SSD is or isn't necessary. Just saying that device puts out more heat than other possible storage solutions (a willing trade off) , so extra cooling for the SBC chips is a good idea. Chris' assembly is not completely enclosed, but adequate cooling for this setup would definitely be needed, should it reside in an enclosure.
@@Okurka. No. Cooling SSD chips makes them need to write with with slightly smaller current (which may fit your explanations), but losing data faster due to higher temperatures. High temperatures (say above 50degC) IMHO have negative impact even on writing.
Christopher. Your videos always have a lot of detail but you never do justice to summarizing it all at the end. All we ever get is about 2 or 3 sentences. I'm always left thinking your videos leave way more food for thought than you ever discuss at the end.
What I'm left feeling at the end of this video is... this is a great little 3D printed solution but actually I don't want to connect an SSD to my Pi 4 with the bottleneck of a USB connection. The Raspberry Pi is crying out for an M2 and an eMMC connector and why doesn't my Pi 4 have these already since so many other SBCs have them??
An interesting solution for mounting. This could come in quite handy when placing a PI inside a project box. The vertical mount is a space saver for sure. Another interesting video, Sir!
My Pi finally arrived the 18th and the accessories are due tomorrow the 21st. Took me a year to actually get around to it for various children... er, various reasons, that is, but we're excited and I'm glad I waited because I was able to get the 4B 8G and RPi OS 64 seems to be getting very close to maturing. I went with a simple aluminum armor case with dual fans built in since I live in the desert and summer temperatures are a serious issue even before any overclock. I've taken everything into account I've learned from your experience on the channel and my intended use, (those children I mentioned, mostly,) and I thank you greatly for the education. This will be the first family computer we've had, (schools provided Chromebooks for them, so they know at least how to navigate a GUI,) and I've only had a phone as a computer for about 15 years, so the Pi is actually perfect for starting over. I hope you're well and I'll see you in the next video.
Ha, a deserted user - you seem to be the one our passive coolercase is aimed for. CooliPi .... th-cam.com/video/RbzKM5XxlOA/w-d-xo.html
This channel is still where I find useful parts for my raspberry pi and I love it
Great to hear!
Other than not shipping screws with the fan, it sounds like a good experience.
They actually do!
How do people have the heart to dislike Chris’ videos? I seriously can’t think why
I think statistically you could write it off as a misclick on a small screened phone? Maybe?
In fact maybe Chris could tell us how many of those dislikes are current subscribers.... Cos that'd tell us right?
Maybe some subscribers are getting fed up with yet another SBC video.
@@plica06 Well, in fairness you may have a point. But, it's a Sunday thing for some of us, a ritual perhaps.
I think there are people who click dislike on every video they watch or start watching.
Does indeed look like a "very solid construction".
Well designed, well made. Good job INUX
An added benefit to that vertical mounting is that in the event of fan failure the thermo-syphon effect will cool the CPU.
These are proper technology programmes which should be on telly before the 6 o'clock news
Noctura fans are amazing. I replaced every fan that came with my computer case with the equivalent size Noctura and the system runs coolly but more importantly quietly. I did spend a small fortune for so many of the 140mm and 120mm fans though!
We've chosen a 60mm Noctua fan for our Pi 4B coolercase. But as it turned out (and was anticipated), it's not necessary except for some extreme ambient temperatures. Main reasons:
- keep it quiet
- keep it reliable (some 150000 hours of lifetime at default voltage)
- have enough space for eventual dust (both on a fan and the cooler itself).
we've ended up with a 215g block of CNC milled aluminium :) th-cam.com/video/RbzKM5XxlOA/w-d-xo.html
An RPI should always have at least a small heatsink anyway. If you were to use the stock fan with the heatsink the temps might be at least 5 degrees cooler as a guess. I have no idea if this observation has been repeated.
I was hoping to see that same experiment... the video can only be so long of course, but it would be most informative to see how much of the benefit is attributed to the heat sink versus a particular model of fan.
Looks good, but I think I will still be sticking with my Argon One computer case. Gotten used to everything out one end, and a power switch.
The Argon One is indeed a great case.
I'm very happy with mine
@@ExplainingComputers I like them so much I bought four of them, and gifted one to my brother! Thank you, sir, for pointing us to them. Best RPi case ever. So far.
The Argon One Case doesn't fit a SSD Drive so the two are completely different products! You'd need to have the SSD Drive hanging out the side, which is no bad thing but the point of this product is to have a SSD and pi as one unit.
Oh AWESome!! I love these Argon One cases! Definitely going to setup one of these with a nice new 8Gb Ras-Pi 4B!!
Excellent!!
No one can resist the bubble wrap fun after unpacking, ha ha.
Edit: I not only watch this for informative content, but also for the occasional comedic comment slipped in.
Definitely look forward to the dry humor.
I use Ice Tower in passive cooling mode (i.e., with the fan dismantled). Keeps my Raspberry Pi 3B at 55 degrees C while the room temperature is about 20C.
The Pi is in vertical position, which helps air to cool the fins (I hope).
As for the fan... it started making noises after a week's use.
ADD: and by the way, I overclocked my Pi to 1400 MHz (the stock frequency being 1200). Thanks for your excellent video on overclocking, Chris!
With some slightly longer spacers/bolts, it looks like this might accommodate a low-profile PoE hat/shim as well, which would eliminate a cable going into the side (for those of us running headless pis)
I have very good success with normal screws in PLA prints. They hold really good
I have very good success with M2.5 screws in PETG too. They hold very firmly. The hole is some 0.2mm smaller than the nominal screw diameter, that's enough for them to hold ok.
Your videos are always so well done. Thank you. Incidentally, thanks to your previous instructional video, I now have FreeNAS running on an Odyssey SBC with Pi-Hole running on a VM therein. (Turns out the most difficult task was figuring out that the screw attaching the ssd to the Odyssey came in two parts). Now I'm going to install Wireguard on a RP4 running PiVPN. No rest for the wicked.
You're not installing an SSD to the pi, you're installing the pi onto an SSD :p
Lmao yeah correct xD might be the best and cheapest nas solution u could get for money. I´d be curious what he plans to run on that monster xD
th-cam.com/video/SotZUOfLBS8/w-d-xo.html
@@maxklassen254 mincraft on 720p 15 FPS
Thanks for this video. I ordered two cases just to clean up my workspace. I will try to combine it with the icetower.
Great review. Thanks!
I also appreciate the look at your script for testing cooler performance. I've adopted it into my utility script folder. My Ice Tower only hit 49 degrees C once, and otherwise spent most of its time around 48 degrees C. I think this is the first time I've had a way to really log and stress test it.
Glad it helped!
Very good video as always! As I'm looking forward to create an owncloud setup inside my network, this video was just exactly what I was looking for!
Just purchased this kit and might be worth pointing out it ships from Slovakia. Ordered it on Sunday 27 Dec and it arrived on the 29 Dec, amazing speed considering it includes a bank holiday on the 28 Dec.
That is very good service. :)
Unboxing the Terra Pi seemed to be much more complex than it needed to be! ;-)
Still love the "closer look"
th-cam.com/video/SotZUOfLBS8/w-d-xo.html
TerraPi fan with heatsink might give same results as more expensive fan? Wonder if the pi could be mounted other way round to keep usb cable tighter.
It’d probably improve a bit but Noctua fans are some of the best (if not the best) on the market - the air flow it’ll be pushing will be considerably higher than the no-name fan that was supplied. I’d be confident in saying most of the improvement is from the fan and not the heat sink.
@@donkeyk1988 A heat sink is all about adding surface area and ideally getting the heat away from the object faster rather than tying to dissipate heat from where it originates, having ANY heatsink would provide a greater improvement over simply blowing air over a tiny metal plate.
Edit: He even provided proof of this in the video at 10:35, this "case" was by far the worst cooling solution, even when compared to a completely passive solution.
As usual, crystal clear information....keep up the good work Christopher
You gave us more knowledge about diy computer sir. More power to you sir.
Loved this case and especially since it's a maker making stuff for makers. Ordered one tonight :)
Good to hear! Have fund mounting up your pi. :)
Thanks Christopher. Most excellent presentation and certainly a lesson I will use assisting children how to take control of their Raspberry Pi situation in a very fun way. I will most certainly build another one using your solution tips. The best to you and, please, keep the excellence coming.
Neat mounting option AND nice look too, like the small space used, AND color match nice
These types of vedios make me relax
Although I like how the final product looks, and I think overall this is a step in the right direction, I can't help but think that it would still be nice to have a more solid (mostly) enclosed case without wires sticking out and about when you've got it all completed. I've envisioned something with 1 of the USB's being inaccessible to the outside world (permanently attached to a board internally that is used for SSD connections) and a hole on the side for the fan to blow out, maybe a little flip out "door" of sorts for the GPIO connectors, etc etc. This would be more for the type of person who doesn't constantly want to change their Pi configuration around of course, but more for the person who wants it to be self contained and "just work" while not exposing too much of the board to the outside world.
And after typing all this I've come to think maybe I ought to venture on to create my own if I can't find it out in the Pi world :)
I agree, but if it were still mostly constructed the same then I'd prefer a solid jumper board between the SSD and the Pi's lower USB 3 port. With the case being purpose-built, it's not as though the location will vary.
So true, I dont like the cable sticking out like that also, the rest of the kit can be replaced by some double sided tape, or have the fun of 3d printing a bracket yourself. Sorry, i just fail to see the added value
I have to admit that it looks impressive all put together and for an open case, the board looks fairly protected, yet I have two concerns. First, I feel a little uncomfortable with the SSD supporting everything with two bolts in it. Second, I also worry about the power and video cables sticking out the top. Those sockets on the board look so fragile! I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable even using 90 degree cable adapters. Still, I would be tempted to use this setup, if the Pi was set safely out of the way from bumbling humans and the cables were securely tied so there wasn’t any possibility of torque on the board’s connections. If there is ever an improved version of the setup, I’d be interested in seeing it because I like its overall concept. Looking forward to your next video!
Love your stuff Christopher. It’s always nice checking in to see the RPI stuff, I think its amazing how far those have come, I got rid of all my Sun Sparc machines as soon as they came around, keeping up with the joneses though- its not as expensive as with the Sparcs I can tell you! Really great things for the amateur hobbyist and experimentalist. Cooling has been an important area for me as the transmitters that these Pis are controlling aren’t exactly cool 🧊 gadgets! Stay awesome.
9:00 just fyi: ctrl-l will clear the terminal in bash.
I've been using 'clear' forever, despite been told about this key combination years ago. I could recall there was a combination, but forgot what it was, so when I needed to clear the screen I just sighed and typed 'clear', telling myself to look it up, then instantly forgetting about it until next time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So thank you very much!
And don't forget ctrl-d to exit a terminal (or many other apps which read input line by line from the console). Typing "exit" or "logout" is barbaric by comparison.
@@StephanBeal I Ctrl-D all the time, but thanks anyway!
8/10. Just need to repeat the test with/without heatsink, so we can see how much is Noctua fan & how much is the heatsink responsible
Great video! I'm sad you saved peeling the plastic film off of the sata/usb connector for off film although! Peeling the plastic off is sooo satisfying.
Borrowed an old heat sink & shim fan of one of my old gpu's for my super-slim pie-in-a-keyboard configuration..still enjoyable just to view over multiple choices on heat distribution on these little marvels in the making...cool one Chris. 😉
Hope you're all having a wonderful weekend!
I like the idea of this vertical mount where the Pi nakedness can be admired
Can you make a dedicated video about overcocking raspberry pi zero
The process is the same as in my recent Pi 4 overclocking video -- just with different values.
Fanhat didn’t last long as word of the day, it’s been usurped by “overcocking”
My missus has as much as she can contend with in the overcocking department..... Any more and she'd end up wobbling when she walked!
Because chromium is hanging with the cpu load of 100%
And the disadvantage is it has single core with 1 ghz speed
I'm putting a PI camera & lens and a Google Coral USB Accelerator for vision recognition on my clocked Rig, along with the tower ICE heat pipe cooler. I just have no idea what the Coral USB Accelerator is or how to use it, but I think it's a must have.
Thanks for sharing. I am not a "fan" of how the fan attaches to the GPIO. If you want to plug something into the 40 pin GPIO, now you cant. This seems to be a common problem with most of the fan kits for the Pi.
Good video, and I'm glad you added the heat sink, and better fan, as that's what I would have done if I had this.
Looks like a neat little setup. Thanks for the video.
No problem 👍
Please do a video on the future of optical computing. It’s quite interesting.
I realize you probably want your review to reflect the experience out of the box, but I have to say the Noctua+rad+TerraPi combo looks like a winner to me and I'd probably go with that.
The reason is that I can clearly hear the whining of the 'normal' fan and it'd be a distraction, to be honest. Thanks for the review and especially the last bit.
You are right that the Noctua is very hard to beat.
@@ExplainingComputers How did you attach the Noctua fan to the TerraPi fan mount? I don't see any screws holding it in place at the 1:08 mark.
@@CarryOnRTW There are screws, but they are deep down at the base of the fan.
Anyone knows if there is any danger powering fan from RPI? Fans are induction loads, which cause high voltage spikes when you turn them off.
It is safe to power a fan from the Pi's 5V rail, as this takes power before the voltage regulator (it is tapping the USB adapter input directly). It is not safe to power a fan from the Pi's 3.3V rail, as this comes after the voltage regulator, and as you say a voltage spike from a motor on this rail could seriously damage the Pi. Some people do apparently power fans from the 3.3V rail, but it is risky.
ExplainingComputers thanks for explanation. But is then usb power supply in danger?
@@creation_nono Fans are induction load at the commute wires. Means that the ends of its windings have some inductor between them - induction of the coils, measured in Henrys. But the coils in a fan are "hidden" behind a commuter, necessary to change polarity of windings' current for the motor to actually spin. Some motors are three phase, some (stepper and small fan motors) use two phases with two changing polarities on each phase to spin. Stepper motors are also of this latter design.
At the terminals of a fan, you see only commuting electronics. All of these fans have electronic commuting, no actual classic commuter between the windings and the power rail (5V, 12V, ..)
So the question is, can the voltage rail (5V, 3.3V) supply this commuting electronics? For the USB charger at 5V, the answer is yes - the charger (actually power supply) can sustain even some pulsed load, it has been designed to handle it. Some really crappy "chargers" for phones may actually fluctuate its voltage depending on load - but that would be chargers for 20 years old Nokias. Modern power supplies can deliver 1 to 3 Amps of current. A typical fan eats about 100 milliAmps.
Back to the 3.3V rail on Raspberry Pi. The documentation states somewhere, that it's only auxiliary power, so that you can power some 100mA of current with it securely. We have used it for running a medium 60mm Noctua fan on top of our CooliPi cooler ( th-cam.com/video/RbzKM5XxlOA/w-d-xo.html ) without any problem. The fan is 5Volt, but at 3.3V it's even quieter. Your mileage may vary as soon as you add some other load to it, i.e. a HAT with its own power consumption on the 3.3V rail.
So, to wrap it up, it's safer to include your own switching or linear voltage regulator that is powered from the 5V rail and outputs some 3.3V or even higher voltage for a fan. But as I've written, unless you add some other load, you don't need this for small and even medium fans.
To further extend my answer to stepper motors - stepper motors with a permanent magnet, such as those in contemporary 3D printers can destroy its drivers and even the driving electronics (powered from the same circuit) IF YOU MOVE THEM MANUALLY too fast. Because they start to act as an alternator - actually generating current on its terminals. So, if you turn off a 3D printer (I've tried with Prusa i3) and MOVE SOME AXIS TOO FAST, the display blinks. Because the motor is feeding the power supply rail back with its own output, and through protection diodes it gets to the power rail of the PSU. So, Prusa i3 is 24Volt, the motor supplies some current/voltage to it and the changers/switchers start to generate output voltage (5V, 3.3V, etc) from this 24V rail.
Sorry for such long explanation.
Beautifully made. I love it
I am late , but
WHEN ARE YOU GOING RELEASE MR.SCISSORS ANTHEM
Snippity doo dah?
@@massmo2007 Perfect!
What do you call the intro song then?
I very much like the way this handles the placement of the ssd. I have seen other arrangements for the pi that do not handle this so elegantly.
Re-Watching your older fan solutions, I wonder if using thermal paste between the pi-Shim would yield more interesting results for the simpler solution?
I’m using a +10 year old Icy Box external HDD enclosure for my Pi4B NAS along with a Seagate Iron Wolf Pro 2TB NAS drive.
Sounds cool.
I am fan of the FLIRC case because it does not make any sound and it's rather cool and no external not protected parts everything is nicely build into the case.
I believe that it’s going to be hard to find this kit available on Amazon.ca
A 3D printed parts could be easy designed to provide the same results. Hopefully someone will work on that in the near future.
I understand that the Raspberry Pi corporate has now posted the official boot to USB updated.
He said they were 3D printed, but they looked injection molded. Would like to find STL files for this, looks like it's easy and relatively fast to print. As you said though, not that hard to just design something similar.
@@timezonewall Nah they were 3d printed, whilst one side has a slight texture to it you can see the layer lines on the other side very clearly. At 4:51 take a look at the base part screwed into the ssd.
th-cam.com/video/SotZUOfLBS8/w-d-xo.html
Very clever mounting solution!
Hi Chris. :)
It sure is
Thank you, Dr. Barnatt, for another very nice RPi-related video. It's interesting to me how you always seem to find these useful projects. There seems to be an infinite supply of different RPi mounting solutions. However, once again, I must protest that blue LED lights are NOT "rather nice". Blue light is known to disturb sleep. Rather, moderate-intensity amber is the appropriate LED light color of choice for any "always on" damn light. Blue LED lights should be summarily outlawed, and all existing inventory of them should be immediately consigned to any rapidly-diminishing land-fill operation where they can deteriorate in dignity. I concede though that the fault lies only with the fan, and not the TerraPi concoction itself.
I agree that night operation of even one small blue LED is disturbing.
It seems that the Terra-Pi would be a very nice construction/structure to build your very own Raspberry Pi cluster on a bookshelf. Having your own little Super Computer-cluster comes in handy when you need some serious number crunching.
Why was the stock fan not tested with the heat sink?
Agreed. I would expect the improvement to be more a function of the increased thermal transfer area than a different fan, though I don't know the respective CFM ratings on the fans...
Thank you I enjoy your videos giving a novice lots to think about. Projects for the cold Canadian winters.
I'd like to know how the Terra Pi rig cools with the simple addition of the heat sink you added to the Noctua rig. Comparing a fan without heatsink to a fan with a heatsink seems to me to be an apples to oranges comparison. Given what we have learned about the thermal properties of the RPi4, running one without a heatsink seems a fool's errand, no?
Second that. With or without heatsink should make a bigger difference than with or without the stock fan.
but the point is to compare experience for someone who just bought this solution and how is cooling in stock to adding a heatsink and brand-fan
I think Stanley is quietly telling you he wants a new blade.
Or the current blade flipped.
Stanley Food
He's losing his edge
This channel is great.
Thanks. :)
Nice review. I'd be curious what the CPU temp is under normal or medium load (not stressed) without the included fan and with a HAT. If I were to opt into active cooling I would probably use an aftermarket fan like you did during the second part of the video, as I really dislike bright blue LESs on everything.
Now this is the positive part of tech🇰🇪
Christopher, your journey for the perfect Pi comes to an end today. 52Pi's DeskPi Pro is everything you ever wanted, and more. Check it out.
A great video, as ever. But please allow a (relative) newbie question:
The video shows the core temperature in the taskbar. How does one get it there? I've tried adding an app there, but CPU temp is not listed among the choices (CPU % is).
Thanks for this. I show adding the panel (taskbar) for this early in this video: th-cam.com/video/Ty23K4g1Tyg/w-d-xo.html
ExplainingComputers
Got it, thank you. Odd how I missed such an obvious option...
That would make a nice basis for building a multi-machine network. Set up a rack of shelves with spacers, and add processors as the load grows.
Working on it, will be released next week. TerraPi cluster :)
Neat semi-minimalist set-up.
I'd love to see where that 10C difference under pressure is coming from, the heat sink or the noctua.
Agreed, IMHO that was a surprisingly unscientific and wasteful approach from Chris. I bet that with the heat sink, the original lit-up fan would perform pretty much as well as the Noctua fan, which was an additional cost that we had no evidence was required! How about it Chris??
@@ridefast0 I'd love to see the temps with just the heat sink, just noctua, and heat sink plus the lit up fan.
The big advantage of the noctua vs other fans is noise. They spin slower than many other fans and are often *less* effective at cooling, depending on the comparison fan. I expect the cooling difference is mostly attributed to the heat sink. I recall in another video, he had a wider heatsink that would have fit this setup and given even more cooling performance.
I would have been interested to see the temps with the terrapi stock fan and the added heat sink as well... just to see how their fan compares to the noctua.
@ExplainingComputers So what do you think about nvida buying out ARM?
A very interesting development. On the one hand probably positive, as NVIDIA is a solid tech company with an interest in seeing ARM thrive. On the other hand, ARM is no longer independent of those who make or use its chips. Time will tell!
@@ExplainingComputers what of linux then?
I think it will be ok. Nvidia will enjoy the royalties and ARM will have deeper pockets for development.
@@drishalballaney Even more than Unix. Linux is blissfully indifferent to the underlying hardware, (subject to a little bit of really low-level code for weird devices). . If there's a C compiler than will emit object code for it, somebody will have Linux running on it by teat-time.
@@ExplainingComputers Agree. Lets hope GNU is still a thing in the future.
Nice idea for a case with attached SSD. It was made with people like me in mind. But I'd also love to use my Pi with HATs. I have the Pimoroni Explorer Hat Pro and would like to use it for a few learning projects.
I like the SATA cable with cord exiting from the side, would be great if they did the same side exit cord with the USB end as well.
Did you run the test with heatsink and the original 10mm fan?
What makes it solid construction is it's dependency of using the SSD housing to supply structural integrity to the plastic frame. That's a bit of a disappointment, but I guess it works. I don't know if you know anything about tails os, but it might make an interesting presentation. I'm sure some viewers could find an interesting use for it. Im just running this Idea past you.
Try the noctua fan without heatsink to compare to the other fan config
There where are, there we are, there we are!
Looks like a nice little setup. Would be cool for making a small NAS using something like Nextcloud or Seafile under Docker.
Chris: Let's take a close look
Me: closer camera angle but ya still cant see it hehe
Thanks, Chris. Another excellent video presentation. Looking at the gap between the fan bracket and CPU, I would have been tempted to stick a thermal pad and low profile heat-sink to the CPU. That way you'd be able to maintain better thermals and still get the best from this new form factor. Best of both worlds!
SSD with built-in Raspberri Pi? What a time to be alive
Maybe some explanation how the dual version places the second drive would have been nice. Thanks anyway !
It seems very useful and I also like the aesthetic.
Welcome to another video from explainingcomputers.com .....
Hello you should do a test with the stock fan that came with the terra pi and also add the heat sink In it to see the difference is.
Okay you skipped the part on how you configure the ssd to work on the raspberry pi. Usually the boot and os is installed on a sd drive. So how did you get the OS to boot from the usb ssd drive?
Covered in this video: th-cam.com/video/2zrwjGcyM5s/w-d-xo.html
@@ExplainingComputers thanks
Very neat! It will look pretty cool sitting on the desk.
I actually picked up a similar sata to usb cable from amazon the UGREEN USB 3.0 to Sata Adapter 2.5 after seeing your Argon One build and was considering mounting an ssd on that.So purchased a BAITITON 480 GB and on removing the actual chipset from the case it greatly reduces the space needed for it to less than half its original size.
Did you know that Starfleet uses DOS on their ships purely for the function of their lights?