Raspberry Pi 5 Cooling: Official Case vs Geeek Pi Heatsink Case
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 พ.ค. 2024
- Raspberry Pi 5 cooling tests, using official case with both the official active cooler, and then its native heatsink and fan. And then testing the GeeekPi / 52Pi heatsink case.
The GeeekPi Heatsink Case is available on Amazon US here: amzn.to/47N9GEx and on Amazon UK here: amzn.to/46p3rFI Note that these are affiliate links, and that I will earn a commission from any qualifying purchases.
The official Raspberry Pi 5 case and active cooler are available from many vendors, including Pimoroni, The Pi Hut and Adafruit.
The first video in which I tested Raspberry Pi 5 cooling (and other things!) is here:
• Raspberry Pi 5: Video ...
And my initial review of the Raspberry Pi 5 is here:
• Raspberry Pi 5
For additional ExplainingComputers videos and weekly updates, you can learn about becoming a channel member here: / @explainingcomputers
More videos on computing and related topics can be found at:
/ @explainingcomputers
You may also like my ExplainingTheFuture channel at: / @explainingthefuture
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:51 Cooling Options, inc first tests
05:59 Official Case: Own Heatsink & Fan
10:04 Geeek Pi Heatsink Case
13:25 Conclusions
#RaspberryPi5 #Cooling #GeeekPi #52Pi #ExplainingComputers - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
I hope Argon brings out an update version of the Argon One M.2; would love to have native NVMe support plus a little nicer fan sound than their first version!
Hello, Jeff! 😄
An ICE tower cooler would be nice too to match my clusters. Crazy, I know. :)
Please make a case to hide the power supply under an optical disc drive, and don't forget professional 1/4" audio jacks for professional audiophiles.
@@sbc_tinkererI do believe they are working on that; or at least someone is. Over on Twitter/X, someone had posted a picture of one I think!
they need to put in 40x10mm fan support so you can put a noctua in it and make the fan control not have to go over i2c as it prevents fan control from working on an os that doesnt support their script, such as openwrt.
I am a fan of passive cooling Heatsink and I tested my RaspBerry Pi 5 with 100% stress on the 4 CPU for about one hour in two different cases and the results are amazing!
Active cooler + official case fits real well.
Thank you always for informative videos!
Thanks for an in-depth series of tests Chris.
I've used that aftermarket case for quite a while with my pi 4 and it has been a great rugged case on the workbench and proven itself as a linux-based test lab.
As ever big thanks for the content. I didn't even realise that I could use the official active cooler with case. Many thanks.
Thank you for the review. Straight to the point and easy to understand test results. I just subbed to channel and made up my mind with Pi5 case and Pi5 active cooler. Happy new years.
Welcome aboard! :)
Watched this as the first video from your channel. Instant fan ❤
Thanks for watching! :)
Excellent vid! Only one problem for me. I'm not a content creator so I am still waiting for the Pi5 to be available to the general nerds, such as myself -- and proud to be in that classification!
Excellent video Chris, thanks for sharing
Years in I continue to be very impressed with the quality of your work and presentations. Thanks again.
I think you nailed it. You show via your work your ideas. You back up your observations with real numbers and you take the time to do it right! THANK YOU!
Great timing! I just received my Pi 5, active cooler and official case. Don't need to complete my own testing. I really like the larger heat sinks due to them contacting components other than just the CPU. Thanks for another great video!
Since 2018 i have been running my Raspberry PI 4B 4GB with the Red Raspberry PI Buttom Case and a Geekworm Raspberry Pi 4 Armor Case and a Pimoroni Fan Shim with a Noctua 40mm 5V PWM Fan and it tops out at about 40 degrees celsius at normal room temp at full load.
It did take a little fittling around with a metal file and stuff to make it work but the silence and performance is second to none! 🙂
@ExplainingComputers
Great video as always.
I am waiting for my Raspberry Pi 5(8GB) still. I did get the official active cooler and official case. I can't wait to upgrade my development environment with the RPi5 :D
Hoping to see what the build times are with MAME on the RPi5 vs the RPi4B
Hi Chris, I received an early pi 5 and stumbled into the same solution you did, using the official case with the raspberry pi active cooler. I can leave the cover on as long as I’m not overclocking. With the cover off, I can overclock to ~3.0 GHz and still maintain stable, saturated load test temps in the mid 70s.
I only got mine to 2.9GHz overclock with active cooler and the cover off, 3.0 GHz wasn't stable, it booted, but then crashed and lost networking.
Thank you for the video, it helped me select the Official Active cooler for my new Pi 5 (at least for now!).
I wanted it to have Teamviewer so I could connect to it remotely, but it didn't work at all with Wayland on Raspberry Pi OS. After changing to Xorg, everything worked fine!
I'm impressed just how good the official cooler is!
Me too!
Cooling solutions and case types I think would depend on how and where the Pi is deployed. I have seen Pi's in the wild as thin clients and some industrial applications where heat sink cases are the norm. After examining the little black boxes, I finally realized these are Pi 3 and 4's.
Thank you, very informative
So useful. Thank you.
I have always liked the solid-aluminium heat-sink cases for Pi devices. I usually get the engineering department to shave the middle three or five rear fins (which are more aesthetic than functional anyway) flat so I can run a slightly-recessed Velcro strip along the bottom for attaching them to/behind whatever student artwork they are driving at the time.
Undoubtedly I could also get engineering to CNC out extra slots in the upper case to allow easier access to the PCI and DCI ports, but by the time I get allocated budget to upgrade our stocks to Pi5 there will likely be other aluminium cases available with those issues solved.
Great video! I would like to see you test the new Canakit Pi 5 cases next! 😁
Thanks for all the hard work. Surprising results, I must say!
You've answered my question as to whether or not the Raspberry Pi 5 combination heatsink and fan would fit into the official Raspberry Pi 5 case. I'm glad to see that it does and happy with the results. I appreciated this video and am looking forward to your next one!
Thanks for another great review! I decided to go with the Geeek Pi heatsink before seeing your review. I still like it because it is completely passive and will probably not work quite as hard as your stress test. We will need another emoji for Alum the Key 🗝
Great video. I currently have my Pi5 and official case on pre-order. I have a project waiting for it and it's quite CPU intensive so I'll now be be ordering the active cooler too. No messing about.
Thanks! :)
Good luck with your project.
Great video, as always, Chris. Season greetings to you and yours. I hope to see some other performance tests done on this new model
I'm sure these are not my last Pi 5 tests. :)
Excellent and informative, takes the guesswork out of deciding on which cooling solution to use.
Another banger of a video Chris!
Great video! Thank you.
Thanks for the video!
You're welcome!
I like the Geek Pi heat sink cases for my Raspberry Pi 4s... but still place extra heat sinks on top. The Pi5 seems to need more cooling area for sunny days.
My initial installation has been the official fan heat sink, with the collection sandwiched inside my old Pi2-era "case" made of two plates.
Despite the standard fan/cooler being quiet, I am thinking of making my own passive case, based on bits of old very low noise PC power supply cases. They have deepish fins, and I can make a much wider, longer, top plate heat sink, extending over the USB and Network connectors.
Case solved! 🙂 Cool result!
I have the official case with the built in fan and it is a nice kit (thumbs up!) suitable for most people for average use. I will consider buying the better fan, I like the better mounting for sure.
Beyond perfection showcase of Pi5 cooling 👍
Kindest regards, neighbours and friends.
@ExplainingComputers - the difference between the fans is one is a blower fan, which should be noisier, but you'll need to check fan RPM, not just temp, in order to see the full picture
Active cooler, since it's a blower, it also points air in one direction - most probably it can do that much better at lower RPM
Chris, thank you for another "outstanding" video!...jo'c
I think the case own heatsink with the fan top off is good enough (budget wise).
Thanks Chris!
Thank you. Because of some doubt I've ordered both the case and the official fan. Your info confirms that they can be combined into a good solution regarding the heat, which was only an intuition of mine before this day. I'm expecting the delivery of my pi5 and these around Christmas. Can't wait 🤩
Since the temperatures are similar, the passive case is much more attractive: not only is the noise 0, but there is no mechanical wear and tears, so reliability is much better.
biggest disadvantage i see is, that you cant use this case with nvme hats, bcz it soes not fit it, ....but maybe with some home improvements it will, atleast with bottom one
Put additional thermal material under the board, and it will match the fan solutions.
@@nargalda773 I don't really see the point of using a MVME with a rpi. If one needs the performance boost, a cheap mini-pc is certainly preferable: CPU and I/O boost. Otherwise a MVME hat is not really compatible with either case. Not only are hats too bulky for 90% of cases, but they block the air flow as well. The rpi board design is great for a low power CPU, but it becomes a liability as the CPU power usage increases. One better design would be to move the CPU to the underside, like most mini-pc do.
If the rpi foundation really wants to compete with mini-pc, they will have to come up with a different form factor, like they did for the 400.
@@pascalmartin1891 if you use raspberry a lot, like rly A LOT, it can (and every raspbery do that) literaly eat your sd card in real time with read/write cicles, which are limited, i saw like half a year of daily use, and card was dead, nvme promis ged rid of these behaviour, as nvme should not be affected with this as much as sd cards, second raspberry 5 can be used with nvme at gen3 speed, 800Mb sec when you move big files, when you use rasp as home theater player for example, i set it as download station for torrent, throw it in corner and come back when its full of files, also geekworm offer 3 types of nvme adapters, and big one L shaped completely uncover pio ports and half of original rasp ventilator, so i hope it will work, they even have own case, big enough, to carry all their adapters, give it look on youtube, interested stuff
Informative, good info. Thanks for the graph.
Thank you.
The GeekPi case would be good for use where you cannot easily access the Pi as in remote server locations. No chance of an active cooler fan failing and causing issues. I personally am a proponent of active cooling but there are passive use cases (no pun intended) where a large heat sink and no fan would better fit the bill.
Have had too many problems due to failing active cooling system (too much dust accumulating in heatsink, fan failure, etc) - so it's really good to see a good passive cooling option like this. Excellent.
I really like the idea of passive cooling and small sized computers.
Very useful, cheers! I think a powerful elegant solution has been reached. I am curious if there are any stores open other than the one in Cambridge?
Very intstrutive. The passive caseis not just a grammatical construction. It might be prefereable is some applications where airflow through a case is undesirable, e.g. a workshop with metal particles in the air from grinding.. Some of those combinations might also be useful for other SBCs. Most manufacturers seem to have reconised the merits of leveraging the Pi ecosystem.
As a former English teacher, I approve of the joke in your second sentence.
Hi Chris informative. How much of the cooling effect is changed by knocking out the plastic piece of the cover? A larger hole could mean more airflow as it's not as restricted.
As you made the RPi500, how about a special case incorporating all the features of the new RPi5? Onboard memory support etc all with superior and quiet cooling?
Have fun!
I avoid using a case at all. But my yet to be fired up five will have the recomended fan. Keeping these beasts cool is very important ive learned.
Very thorough comparison and experimentation. Nice work!
Ty! Very helpful!
Btw, can you recommend a good source for learning programming C to program Pis for a new programmer?
My Pi5B 8GB runs even cooler with raspberry active cooler, because i removed the thermal pad on the SOC, and replaced it with thermal grease arctic mx-4. I put the pad for the SOC onto the LPDDR4x RAM chip instead, and made the pad on the PMIC and WLAN shielding a little smaller, so it can compress down easier to even height above PCB as SOC, and also put a little piece of pad onto the RP1 chip. I made two spacers from pieces of a matchstick too, matchsticks are about 2.3 mm square, near the two mounting holes, to ensure the heatsink sits parallel above PCB at height of SOC chip, which is about 2.3mm.
I also made some small modifications to the cooler itself, to optimize airflow, and added a small and quiet fan (12v fan running at 5v) on the backside of the Pi, because backside also gets hot.
When i ran your thest, i got max about 47.7°C. Ambient temp. was about 18°C while testing, so we should add +2°C for fair comparison to result.
There is no case around, above. Cooling fan never got above level 1.
Thank you Chris! I can't help but wonder how the case with the giant 2-sided heatsink (GeeekPi) would fare if a fan were added?
On the previous geekpi case I stuck an active cooler fan on top of the giant heatsink, and was able to overclock the pi significantly, might try something similar with my pi 5
Geek pi heatsink is effectively the same as the pi 4 version.
Good enough for the 4 but feel a much bigger heatsink required for the 5 like the akasa pi 4 case.
Hanging on your desktop with all kind of stuff connected the official case wins by flexibility, but in the case of being in an attic providing some service, the passive cooling is the best option to have peace of mind, the less moving parts is always the best! fans are always a headache
I think Michael the Heatsink and Allen the Key would be a great duo for an adventure series :-) With that said, given how effective the Official Raspberry Pi Active cooler is, I would be curious to see how it performs with the fan disabled and only the heatsink itself handling the cooling duties.
That would be the active cooler without fan surely in other words passive cooler
It's certainly a boys club isn't it with Stanley and Mr Scissors. No gender diversity there.
@statters Mrs Scissors has serious mental health problems and has been locked in the cellar, and Stanley the knife murdered his wife. Allen the key is a transkey, and turns both ways, and sometimes silver other times black. Hope that reassures you:)
Great video
its ok Christopher i use the wrong uf2 file great videos
Thank you very much for this review. If I had the Geeek Pi heatsink, I'd attach a fan to it just out of curiosity. Also I'd be concerned about the interference effect it would cause to the on-board wi-fi signal transmission for those using them as Access Points or Repeaters.
Over the summer I had a Pi4 in my shed running with one of the heatsink cases non-stop, I just bought a cheap poundland-style USB fan and pointed that over the Pi4, power from the Pi USB slot, it worked fine. They are still my go to cases for general use.
As I sit here and wait for my Pi 5, you have answered many of the basic questions I have had. Thank you the video.
I have similar passive heatsink, just waiting for the Pi to arrive. The passive heatsinks are good as they won't wear out and no noise. I won't be running sysbench 24/7.
:)
Chris, most interesting RPi5 heatsink. I wonder how hot the RPi5 will get running things like TensorFlow Lite and OpenCV 30FPS? 😎 Thank you.
Hello Chris. I hope everything is going well for you and your family. It appears that the Raspberry Pi Foundation has found a decent cooling system for the Pi-5 -- provided you cobble together two of their systems that they sell separately. But if you buy the official case without buying the official cooler, you get a noisy system that doesn't cool nearly as well. The Pi Foundation should use your data and start selling the case and the official cooler together. Since they appear to monitor your channel, maybe they will.
That would be great! Raspberry Pi 5, model EC 1 cooler.
I agree. It really should be possible to purchase the official case with the active cooler, as they must be aware they work well together.
Their are actually 2 entities, Raspberry Pi Ltd and Raspberry Pi Foundation. The Raspberry Pi Ltd does the selling part...
Maybe CCoburn3 is looking at different test results. Yes the official fan and heat sink that come with the case is noisier, but the cooling is almost identical.
As it is there's a cheap and functional solution and a more expensive one that is quieter. This stuff isn't all aimed at perfectionists with plenty of disposable income.
Like the fanless solution as I do not like fan noise. If temperature would be an issue with the large heat sink, I'd rather use a large noctua fan to cool it and these tiny fans.
Not directly relevant, but I use a 6th Gen i5. I hate fan noise so I invested in a fanless case. However, that case gets quite hot so I also invested in a 120mm USB fan which I sit on top of the case.
A larger fan can be run at low (i.e. inaudible) speeds so it's a silent solution which runs at @10 degrees above ambient. Under load it runs at @20 degrees above ambient.
I mention this because a fanless Pi case would allow someone to put a larger diameter fan on top, bringing temps right down.
The feet on the official case probably matter to raise up the case 1-2 mil and allow the bottom vents to do something.
A very good point. Missed that.
it would actually make sense to get a column displaying the temperature without any heat management.
Ahh, i did not buyed the original case, because i was not sure, if the active coller will fit.
Thank you
Love the pure real data you achieved! Only question i have would be is if the ambient temperature was the same for each test? Kerp up the awesome work Mr. Barnatt!
The ambient was about 22/23 in all tests, but creeps up under movie lights.
For the passive cooling solution maybe you can add some cooling pads between the bottom plate and the rpi, underneath the hot spots. This way you can cool the cpu also at the bottom. You can stack 2 o r 3 cooling pads on the bottom plate, so it is touching the board. I don't know if this is a good idea or not.
My 52Pi passive heatsink, just bought from thepihut, already came with a large thermal pad that fills the entire space between the bolt holes on the bottom plate. Maybe a new revision as the SKU is still C-0048 and the instruction diagram included it (but no spare thermal pads for top section as seen in this video).
Chris, I believe the difference in noise levels of the two fans may be due to the types of fans used. The axial fan will naturally be noisier than the centrifugal fan due to their design.
I think it could also be the case fan is rattling the case whereas the official cooling fan is separate from the plastic case
I have always admired your beautifully legible data tables... now I must say the same of the graph! Really nice to have both.
Are there any case solutions for wet or dusty conditions?
Thanks. :) I have come across industrial water and dust proof Pi cases in the past, but don't have links to hand.
I have the active cooler and laeve the top open , but removed the original case fan and enlarged the hole in the transparent part and clicked that in also , ther enough room for colling , did not test it , but i will do that to
Nice video, thanks :)
It would be interested to see temps if you made air holes/slots or something in the cover of the case with best heatsink/fan to see if temps come down some since they went up with the cover on.
09:26 - What intrigues me is "temperature steps" in version Own HS Fan Top off in rows 5-6-7-8-9 and 11 - I mean temperature goes down, little up, down again and finally in 11th rows equals 6th.
In other variations temperature always go up, never down.
Hi Chris,
The active cooler fan and the case fan appear to be different types. I think tha active cooler has a raidial type of fan and the case as an axial type fan. I may have the names wrong, but that could also contribute to the difference in noise level. Great video. I am in the US and finally got my pi 5 yesterday. So I am just starting ot see what it can do.
You are right, the fans are not the same. The one with the active cooler seems to be of a higher quality.
With passive cooling, the orientation and placement of the pi-cooler-combo is of great importance. Putting it flat on the table is about the worst situation for the passive solution.
That's what I thought. I just ran a quick test using the Barnatt formula (sorry :-)) with my GeeekPi passive cooling and the results were very similar between vertical and horizontal respectively....
temp=39.5'C
temp=52.1'C
temp=53.8'C
temp=56.5'C
temp=56.5'C
temp=59.3'C
temp=58.7'C
temp=60.9'C
temp=61.5'C
temp=63.1'C
temp=63.7'C
temp=40.6'C
temp=53.2'C
temp=54.9'C
temp=57.1'C
temp=59.3'C
temp=59.8'C
temp=60.4'C
temp=61.5'C
temp=63.1'C
temp=62.6'C
temp=63.7'C
@@vikingforties Interesting 🤔
Thank you for checking this. So there is more to it than expected. 👍🏻🤝🏻
@@Plons0Nard I think the passive heatsink case doesn't get warm enough to start generating much of it's own airflow so the fins act just to increase the radiative surface area not the convection. What does make a huge difference is conductive cooling with the GeeekPi case. These are the data when my Pi5 is sat on top of an i5 circular heatsink and below a large Xeon heatsink....
temp=35.1'C
temp=45.0'C
temp=45.5'C
temp=46.6'C
temp=46.1'C
temp=47.7'C
temp=47.7'C
temp=48.3'C
temp=48.3'C
temp=48.8'C
temp=48.8'C
Nice!
Exactly the comparison I was looking for ! Thanks Chris
Thank you Chris. You did a significal part of my future work. Awesome!
One thing that should be tested with these solutions is the WiFi. I have a very nice Vilross case, but the downside of the massive hunk of aluminum is that it seems to block the WiFi signal or at least weaken it.
Don't know about your solution, but given my experience, worth a check in the future.
For my uses, losing WiFi is not a big deal (it's hard wired), but in other situations, the official case (modified trivially to accept the active cooler) is an excellent choice even with the cover on because it does not interfere with WiFi.
Thanks Chris for an excellent video! I do like to see temperature comparisons it's a good guide to follow, what about when the Pi is running under normal use say on a Kdenline render? I thought I'd got a name check 'Allen the key' ah wrong spelling :)
Hi, Alan!!! 😁
I could be Alan the key or change it to the American spelling, hope you're keeping ok ?@@Praxibetel-Ix
@@alanthornton3530 I'm doing okay! The real world has been harsh but I'm still vibing. I hope you're doing okay too. :)
I'm ok thanks, be a hoopy frood. Never turn your back on mother earth (Sparks)!!@@Praxibetel-Ix
one of the few channels that I can click like without having watched the video ! :)
One of the few channels that I can watch the video all the way through!
Agreed
Uncannily Interesting, I've just started designing a PI5 passive heat sink/box for the 16U deployable space telescope I'm designing. Whether a commute module PI5 goes upstairs on the real one is up for debate , but this will go in the vacuum chamber for testing. Using the Rasp PI 4/5 onboard a spacecraft makes so much sense, a massive user base means rock solid library's and the OS is super stable, it's a de-risking no-brainer, just don't tell ESA.
Really interesting! :)
I can't believe the RPI 5 dropped most hardware decoding of most video codecs. I'm skipping this generation out especially since you can get a low wattage mini PC for less overall.
I went with a GMKTec Nucbox G3 for $99 with a 6w Intel N100 CPU. I'll just buy a breakout board that Explaining Computer's mentioned in another video for GPIO. This will make the perfect Linux box using Arch Linux and Kodi installed along with Retro Game Emulator softare for a full fledged HTPC / NAS with externally attached drive/s
Same here. I went with a Bmax. RPi is just a cult following at this point.
@@lordwiadro83 Cult following is exactly right. I hadn't thought of that.
I do agree that "Raspberry Pi" is becoming a bit of a cult like Apple.
I don't have a Raspberry Pi but I still find these videos very interesting, thank you for the post Christopher
I was wondering about putting the official case and official active cooler together. Great to see that is possible and works well. I'll be doing that with the lid on when I get a Pi 5 next year.
Should subtract ambient temperature from all values to give repeatability (though I'm sure you did control ambient temperature so it was the same for all tests). Looks to me that the Geeek case was not updated from the Pi 4 version that I have which is why some of the cutouts do not line up (including the PoE header being blocked which you did not mention.
That wouldn't really change the result of "They all work well but one is noisy". Its just a case review not a scientific paper.
Great content! Do you know of any case that supports an nVME drive within or on the bottom of the enclosure?
Not yet -- but I'm sure they will arrive, and sooner rather than later. :)
@@ExplainingComputers Thanks. When they appear I will definitely get one! I really wish Raspberry would build a version that had a NVMe socket on the bottom of the board. I would pay extra for that!
The only good thing about a Sunday is seeing Chris and explainingcomputers uploads!
That thing would look rad with the big Be Quiet cooler I have in my Threadripper desktop sticking out the top! Kind of like one of those hot rod's that's an engine with a seat and 4 wheels attached.
I just love passive cooling and can't wait until the new build.
N100 passively cooled build next week. :)
Very thorough testing. Will Allen become a regular of your toolbox?
I'm sure he will hand around. :)
I would love to see a case like Argon Neo 5 Bred tested as well (I kind of prefer it to the plastic one - I have the Argon NEO 4 for my Pi 4). As far as I saw, there will a case with M.2 from Argon shipping in January 2023 (the Argon ONE V3).
Good video, I do think you should place the feet on the back of the case, this gives some height to let the air flow trough the case.
Agreed. I did put the feet on the case. :)
I would be curious how well the Geeek Pi solution would work if a small fan was added in order to compare "active" cooling solutions on a similar level.
Thank you for your testing it was very interesting, but I do wonder with the all metal heat sink does that affect the Wi-Fi range with all the metal around the Pi? It's a bit like a faraday cage would you think.
I just saw there's a Pimoroni hat fot NVME and goes on the bottom of the PI 5 , but that means that it does not fit in the PI 5 case, PI foundation has not released a NVME hat themselfes but think the desing is goin to be the same , there are cases that can support this configuration , but not sure if it's caomptible witt the active cooling kit on it because the Geekworm N506 case is metal and has its own fan and wil that interfere with the colling kit on it.