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!
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 was worried my Pi5 case (a FLIRC aluminium case) was very hot, and prompted me to search and find this video. So I ran a similar test, running a simple script to sample the CPU temp every 10 seconds. After 3 hours, the average without the case was 63 deg c. The same test with the case fitted, was 52c! Same running conditions etc. So the case is definitely benefitting my Pi5. Thanks for this vid!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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! 🙂
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
The somewhat bigger brother of this case, the GeeekPi Armor V5 is quite good at passive cooling. I overclocked my Pi 5 to 3GHz CPU and 1GHz GPU at 1V and have had it running a stress test (stress -c 4) for 24 hours to fully load it. It topped out at about 81C and is averaging about 76C with an ambient air temperature of about 20C in a well ventilated area, all without any faults/crashes or throttling! It should handle normal workloads without any issues. Cheers.
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
@@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
But...theres still a reliability problem with this cooler , the use of passive cooler isnt only to prevent noise , but also to prevent dust from coming inside cause of airflow Yet in this case , the cooler is so big that it cant fit on the raspeberry case , so the dust will go inside , btw the cooler and the raspberry , and you will have to clean it Meanwhile the small fan on idle will make almost no noise and the case will prevent dust from coming inside
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!
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 don't usually leave comments on videos like this because the comment section is usually filled with very formal and basic comments, which I personally cringe at a bit, but I really just gotta thank you for this video. Been wanting a Raspberry Pi to play around with since last year and today I was like "why not?" Figured out all the things I wanted but wasn't sure if the official case was compatible with the active cooler (which I assumed was the best cooling option). So thanks for the help! Simple, to the point video, which is what I consider the best for just answering a simple question like "which of these products is the best?"
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!
@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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Chris Barnatt crunching those numbers so we don't have to :-) Thank you Chris, very useful as always..... and as always take care, see you next Sunday!
I have a couple of Raspberry Pi 4 computers with a passive extruded heatsink. In my case there are ribs on both the top and bottom extrusions. I hang one in free space by its Ethernet cable, and running idle it's at 104ºF/40ºC. Another sits flat on a surface and runs at 124ºF/51ºC. Both are idle most of the time, being servers in the home environment. My point is that hanging or mounting the passive heat sinks vertically to get a nice convective airflow makes a big difference in cooling efficiency with the passive heat sinks. Thanks Chris for another excellent video!
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.
The only SPOF (Single Point Of Failure) is the fan that inexorably dies when less expected, and the passive cooler is in most cases the most reliable cooling way. While the case is nice, its vents are too narrow to make a constant airflow, and it can be seen from the temperatures graph. As always, your reviews are so clean and elegantly presented. Thanks a lot!
@@georgekokotis5732 your experience. Mine is several hundreds of maintained PCs and some died for extra warming. Offices are a bad campaign to get trhough... 😀
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.
@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:)
Why didn't the passive heatsink have further conductive pads on the rear of the board? Modern BGA's put a significant amount of heat down into the PCB.
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!
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.
is it my imagination, or is the fan supplied with the case a bit smaller than the official? Smaller fans run faster and are therefore noisier. Also the official one is attached to a large purpose made heatsink, and has more blades, so it doesn't need to work nearly as hard to dispel the heat. As other people have also suggested, it seems counter-productive to sell an official case with and inferior built-in fan alongside a better official fan that doesn't fit unless you snap the fan-mount panel out.
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.
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 🗝
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.
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.
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
wish you would have ran the geek pi heasink for around a full day, in case someone wanted to use the pi for Distributed Computing (folding@home)... I'd rather have super quiet (no fan to clean or fans to replace). After looking at your results, it would lead me to believe in a few hours, that the pi would be thermal throttling with the GeekPi Case. Personally, I'd rather using an 80MM case fan, like a be quiet fan that runs forever with dual ball bearings (no sleeve bearing)... and is big enough to really move some air without making any noise. Also, you could even get a cool RGB led one if you so fancied. I hate those small fans, in my views, they don't last a long time, they get noisy quick, and good luck finding a replacement.
I wonder if it is possible to fit it with spacers below the official case - stacked vertically. But even if it fits, it would have to be undoubtedly open on the sides with cables connected externally
Will the Pi break if it's at 75 C for 24 hrs per day? And how about with the big heat sink @24 h per day? P.S. I liked the simplicity of the orig. Pi. Like you said in one of your vids: a Pi is slowly getting getting too expensive and too much of a hassle compared to a $250 or $300 Chromebook. And they don't sell the old Pi's any-more...
Thank you so much! An important question: Did you might record or estimate from date and time the video was filmed, the ambient air temperature? Chris, with own case and the lid on, there is definitely going to be a lot more aerodynamic noise due to local air acceleration that is caused by the air blockage of the lid in the suction side. Also, in theory, the black official case should have a small advantage due to increased radiative cooling
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
@@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
The official case should have the fan fitted directly on the top cover using an elastic mount.The cover should have ventilation holes for the suction side of the fan, pluggable by a silicon rubber dust protective cover shaped like a raspberry - when not in use. I also want a Pi 500 and an official fully modular Raspberry laptop. Eben are you listening? 😊
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.
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.
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.
I love these type of cases, I have a different case this one fits in perfectly As for the PI5 case they might have send you the wrong version. it looks like the version for a PI3 or Pi4. SO yeah its mostly false advertising. because they did not design/modify the case yet to fit/be suitable for a PI5
That was a very interesting test. The Geek Pi did exceptionally well considering the lack of fan and is of course totally silent. The supplied fan and heat sink for the official case was almost identical in performance with the Active Cooler. But the Active Cooler was virtually silent. All variations worked very well though the GeekPi suffered from a loss of some access. Clearly the Active Cooler is the front runner, but from a pure cooling point of view it ties with the case, heat sink and fan setup. In short any one of these cased options is more than sufficient. Very impressive.
@@edrd6257 I checked again and yes, the same type I'm using on my pi4 is now available for pi5 - £10 delivered from Ali. Thanks for the heads up. They work very well and no noise.
There's a scenario missing with the Own HS & Fan, where the fan would be reversed. Factory fitted it blows down on the HS, would be interesting to see if it shows any difference pulling air out.
Documents suggest that Active cooler is permanent. They suggest not trying to remove the active cooler since you can easily damage the board. Can you show how you are removing the active cooler, do you cut plastic snap push screws and replace them afterwards or you are using some tool to do the job?
The active cooler is pretty easy to remove -- I've done it many times now. You just need to be careful easing up the push-pins. I hold them closed with plyers.
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.
I'm considering using Raspberry pi5 in my car along with mega squirt standalone ECU on M.2 and a 7" dash screen . I'm concerned about when the PI gets hot.
So the CPU never got throttled with those low temperatures right? I went for a Geekworm Heavy Duty case, as I had it for my RPi4 already. I don't care it it gets hotter, I just don't want throttling to kick in. I work with my Pi's behind my back. Even if coolers are silent, it would annoy me to hear them start and stop. Also, an active cooler pulls more energy and I wan't to optimize for that. Great video! Love those comparisons!
I own one of these passive heatsink cases but for the pi4 one oddity i found is that the thermal pad seems to be a very poor conductor of heat. i ended up replacing the thermal pad with some thermal paste and a metal shim to make up the height difference and the cooling performance went up drastically. just my experience.
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.
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! :)
@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
Just waiting for more software to work with the 5. Particularly looking for a way to play my PC on my tv. Thought I'd use steam link but it doesn't seem to work.
Consise review, but not a fan (Cosmetically) of either of those cases personally. The Argon NEO case looks nice, Flirc's passive offering is on the way and of course, "PironMan" Case for Pi 5 is also coming SOON!. I'd say both the cases shown will fail with a 2.8Ghz Overclock like many of us emulation fans (Pun intended) will run it. Can you test that one for me Chris?
I don't like having fans on SBCs because I'm usually stuffing them in a closet somewhere and just using them to run some sort of service. Always go for passive cooling whenever possible, especially because I haven't had the best luck with tiny fans when it comes to longevity. I remember the third time I replaced a broken fan I thought to myself "this thing only pulls like 10w at full tilt, why am I even putting a fan on it to begin with?"
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.
Active cooler + official case fits real well.
Thank you always for informative videos!
I was worried my Pi5 case (a FLIRC aluminium case) was very hot, and prompted me to search and find this video. So I ran a similar test, running a simple script to sample the CPU temp every 10 seconds. After 3 hours, the average without the case was 63 deg c. The same test with the case fitted, was 52c! Same running conditions etc. So the case is definitely benefitting my Pi5. Thanks for this vid!
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.
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.
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.
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!
A fan has no place in passive cooling 😊
@@georgekokotis5732 The two sort of fans tend to be noisy and use accessories to cool down 😊
Years in I continue to be very impressed with the quality of your work and presentations. Thanks again.
One of my favorite classic PBS shows. Thanks.
Thanks for an in-depth series of tests Chris.
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! 🙂
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
The somewhat bigger brother of this case, the GeeekPi Armor V5 is quite good at passive cooling. I overclocked my Pi 5 to 3GHz CPU and 1GHz GPU at 1V and have had it running a stress test (stress -c 4) for 24 hours to fully load it. It topped out at about 81C and is averaging about 76C with an ambient air temperature of about 20C in a well ventilated area, all without any faults/crashes or throttling! It should handle normal workloads without any issues. Cheers.
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
But...theres still a reliability problem with this cooler , the use of passive cooler isnt only to prevent noise , but also to prevent dust from coming inside cause of airflow
Yet in this case , the cooler is so big that it cant fit on the raspeberry case , so the dust will go inside , btw the cooler and the raspberry , and you will have to clean it
Meanwhile the small fan on idle will make almost no noise and the case will prevent dust from coming inside
Watched this as the first video from your channel. Instant fan ❤
Thanks for watching! :)
I'm impressed just how good the official cooler is!
Me too!
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!
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.
I don't usually leave comments on videos like this because the comment section is usually filled with very formal and basic comments, which I personally cringe at a bit, but I really just gotta thank you for this video.
Been wanting a Raspberry Pi to play around with since last year and today I was like "why not?"
Figured out all the things I wanted but wasn't sure if the official case was compatible with the active cooler (which I assumed was the best cooling option). So thanks for the help! Simple, to the point video, which is what I consider the best for just answering a simple question like "which of these products is the best?"
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!
@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
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.
:)
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.
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.
As ever big thanks for the content. I didn't even realise that I could use the official active cooler with case. Many thanks.
Another very effective solution is the geeekpi passive case + a fan.
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.
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!
Thanks now i'll take off the top of the case :)
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.
I really like the idea of passive cooling and small sized computers.
Ahh, i did not buyed the original case, because i was not sure, if the active coller will fit.
Thank you
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
I just love passive cooling and can't wait until the new build.
N100 passively cooled build next week. :)
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!
Excellent and informative, takes the guesswork out of deciding on which cooling solution to use.
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.
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.
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! :)
Thanks for all the hard work. Surprising results, I must say!
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
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.
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.
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.
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
Meeting Allen The Key caused Me far more joy than most things on TH-cam ever have
Chris Barnatt crunching those numbers so we don't have to :-)
Thank you Chris, very useful as always..... and as always take care, see you next Sunday!
Thanks for your support.
I have a couple of Raspberry Pi 4 computers with a passive extruded heatsink. In my case there are ribs on both the top and bottom extrusions. I hang one in free space by its Ethernet cable, and running idle it's at 104ºF/40ºC. Another sits flat on a surface and runs at 124ºF/51ºC. Both are idle most of the time, being servers in the home environment. My point is that hanging or mounting the passive heat sinks vertically to get a nice convective airflow makes a big difference in cooling efficiency with the passive heat sinks. Thanks Chris for another excellent video!
it would actually make sense to get a column displaying the temperature without any heat management.
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! :)
The only SPOF (Single Point Of Failure) is the fan that inexorably dies when less expected, and the passive cooler is in most cases the most reliable cooling way.
While the case is nice, its vents are too narrow to make a constant airflow, and it can be seen from the temperatures graph.
As always, your reviews are so clean and elegantly presented.
Thanks a lot!
I haven't had a PC yet that died from a fan. All of them died from electrolytic capacitors
@@georgekokotis5732 your experience.
Mine is several hundreds of maintained PCs and some died for extra warming.
Offices are a bad campaign to get trhough... 😀
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
@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:)
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. :)
Why didn't the passive heatsink have further conductive pads on the rear of the board? Modern BGA's put a significant amount of heat down into the PCB.
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.
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.
is it my imagination, or is the fan supplied with the case a bit smaller than the official? Smaller fans run faster and are therefore noisier.
Also the official one is attached to a large purpose made heatsink, and has more blades, so it doesn't need to work nearly as hard to dispel the heat.
As other people have also suggested, it seems counter-productive to sell an official case with and inferior built-in fan alongside a better official fan that doesn't fit unless you snap the fan-mount panel out.
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.
I don't have a Raspberry Pi but I still find these videos very interesting, thank you for the post Christopher
Given the timescale, it is impressive there are that many offerings already. It shows how responsive the market is
Those manufacturers work just as hard as the Raspberry Pi guys!
Yes, the market was clearly ready to spring into action.
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 🗝
Nice review I got the same numbers testing some quite higher with over clocking and emulation. My low temps was 28 degrees
Not the most scientific test but definitely the comparisons I want to see. THANKS
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.
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.
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.
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
wish you would have ran the geek pi heasink for around a full day, in case someone wanted to use the pi for Distributed Computing (folding@home)... I'd rather have super quiet (no fan to clean or fans to replace). After looking at your results, it would lead me to believe in a few hours, that the pi would be thermal throttling with the GeekPi Case. Personally, I'd rather using an 80MM case fan, like a be quiet fan that runs forever with dual ball bearings (no sleeve bearing)... and is big enough to really move some air without making any noise. Also, you could even get a cool RGB led one if you so fancied. I hate those small fans, in my views, they don't last a long time, they get noisy quick, and good luck finding a replacement.
Bought a PIMORONI NVMe Base for Raspberry Pi 5, but didn't find good solution for case yet.
I wonder if it is possible to fit it with spacers below the official case - stacked vertically. But even if it fits, it would have to be undoubtedly open on the sides with cables connected externally
Will the Pi break if it's at 75 C for 24 hrs per day? And how about with the big heat sink @24 h per day?
P.S. I liked the simplicity of the orig. Pi. Like you said in one of your vids: a Pi is slowly getting getting too expensive and too much of a hassle compared to a $250 or $300 Chromebook. And they don't sell the old Pi's any-more...
Thank you so much!
An important question: Did you might record or estimate from date and time the video was filmed, the ambient air temperature?
Chris, with own case and the lid on, there is definitely going to be a lot more aerodynamic noise due to local air acceleration that is caused by the air blockage of the lid in the suction side.
Also, in theory, the black official case should have a small advantage due to increased radiative cooling
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
Shame there isn't a variant of the official case designed to provide proper exhaust for the active cooler's blower fan.
The official case should have the fan fitted directly on the top cover using an elastic mount.The cover should have ventilation holes for the suction side of the fan, pluggable by a silicon rubber dust protective cover shaped like a raspberry - when not in use.
I also want a Pi 500 and an official fully modular Raspberry laptop.
Eben are you listening? 😊
My preference is no fan solution, it's quiet and more reliable. Also, if you hang it vertically, cooling capacity should have a significant increase.
Many thanks for testing the passively cooled RPi5.
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.
I think the case own heatsink with the fan top off is good enough (budget wise).
Thanks Chris!
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.
I love these type of cases, I have a different case this one fits in perfectly
As for the PI5 case they might have send you the wrong version. it looks like the version for a PI3 or Pi4.
SO yeah its mostly false advertising. because they did not design/modify the case yet to fit/be suitable for a PI5
That was a very interesting test. The Geek Pi did exceptionally well considering the lack of fan and is of course totally silent. The supplied fan and heat sink for the official case was almost identical in performance with the Active Cooler. But the Active Cooler was virtually silent. All variations worked very well though the GeekPi suffered from a loss of some access. Clearly the Active Cooler is the front runner, but from a pure cooling point of view it ties with the case, heat sink and fan setup.
In short any one of these cased options is more than sufficient. Very impressive.
I prefer the passive cooling aluminium case which completely encloses the PI. I have several for PI 4's but have not seen them yet for pi 5.
There is already one model for RP5 since the past 1-2 week.
And like you, I prefer fully enclosed type of passive cooling case.
@@edrd6257 I checked again and yes, the same type I'm using on my pi4 is now available for pi5 - £10 delivered from Ali. Thanks for the heads up. They work very well and no noise.
So useful. Thank you.
There's a scenario missing with the Own HS & Fan, where the fan would be reversed. Factory fitted it blows down on the HS, would be interesting to see if it shows any difference pulling air out.
I too love the aluminium cases of Geeek Pi, however, they absolutely mess up your WIFI signal :(
Documents suggest that Active cooler is permanent. They suggest not trying to remove the active cooler since you can easily damage the board. Can you show how you are removing the active cooler, do you cut plastic snap push screws and replace them afterwards or you are using some tool to do the job?
The active cooler is pretty easy to remove -- I've done it many times now. You just need to be careful easing up the push-pins. I hold them closed with plyers.
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.
I'm considering using Raspberry pi5 in my car along with mega squirt standalone ECU on M.2 and a 7" dash screen . I'm concerned about when the PI gets hot.
So the CPU never got throttled with those low temperatures right? I went for a Geekworm Heavy Duty case, as I had it for my RPi4 already. I don't care it it gets hotter, I just don't want throttling to kick in. I work with my Pi's behind my back. Even if coolers are silent, it would annoy me to hear them start and stop. Also, an active cooler pulls more energy and I wan't to optimize for that.
Great video! Love those comparisons!
I own one of these passive heatsink cases but for the pi4
one oddity i found is that the thermal pad seems to be a very poor conductor of heat. i ended up replacing the thermal pad with some thermal paste and a metal shim to make up the height difference and the cooling performance went up drastically. just my experience.
You are right -- metal and paste give a much better thermal transfer solution.
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.
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.
@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
Just waiting for more software to work with the 5. Particularly looking for a way to play my PC on my tv. Thought I'd use steam link but it doesn't seem to work.
this is science. thank you very much.
Thank you Chris. You did a significal part of my future work. Awesome!
Consise review, but not a fan (Cosmetically) of either of those cases personally. The Argon NEO case looks nice, Flirc's passive offering is on the way and of course, "PironMan" Case for Pi 5 is also coming SOON!. I'd say both the cases shown will fail with a 2.8Ghz Overclock like many of us emulation fans (Pun intended) will run it. Can you test that one for me Chris?
Another banger of a video Chris!
I don't like having fans on SBCs because I'm usually stuffing them in a closet somewhere and just using them to run some sort of service. Always go for passive cooling whenever possible, especially because I haven't had the best luck with tiny fans when it comes to longevity.
I remember the third time I replaced a broken fan I thought to myself "this thing only pulls like 10w at full tilt, why am I even putting a fan on it to begin with?"