Good cases for the Pi4?

roslof

@Ranma not really needed unless you overclock.

Clyde

@roslof That optional fan is interesting, thanks for the picture. I concur that it seems impractical and out of place, and I wouldn't use it myself with the Neo, but rather buy another case if I needed active cooling. Since I don't (I never overclocked my Pi 3 either), I'll stick to the Neo. Without the fan it's just too sleek. 😁

Brunnis

@barbudreadmon said in Good cases for the Pi4?:

@Weatherby The real problem with pi4 cases is that if you want to make it decent against its competitors, you need a massive overclock (~2Ghz), a massive cooler and an open case. Otherwise, imho, it is barely worth buying since the +100Mhz at stock clock won't help that much for single-threaded software-rendered emulation (which is basically 90% of emulators), and the rpi4 gpu drivers required for hardware-rendered emulation seem only good enough for N64 & DC emulation at the moment.

The fact that the Pi 4 is clocked only 100 MHz higher than the Pi 3B+ is irrelevant when you're comparing two entirely different CPU architectures (Cortex-A53 vs Cortex-A72). The software-rendered performance difference between the two at stock clocks is huge. For example, SNES emulation runs twice as fast or more. The GPU drivers appear to be quite fine at the moment, but the GPU hardware itself doesn't appear to be all that much faster than the older VC4 based solution.

As for the Flirc case: I have run some tests with older firmware that had some but not all of the thermal improvements. Running sysbench on four threads at 1800MHz (over_voltage=2) yielded a steady state temp of 72 C.

Darksavior

@barbudreadmon It passed the first test, but my pi got me a black screen on the 2nd test like 5 minutes in.
Now it refuses to give me a display even when turning it off/on. I've had this problem before. This pi has started to give me display issues since last month. I can flash the recovery image to get this going again. Not really working this time. I'll probably wait for a next revision to get another pi4.

UPDATE: It comes back to life when it feels like it. Ok, 30min into cpuburn, and it hits 83c max. I see the temp icon. No freezes but throttles at around 83c.
over_voltage=4, arm_freq=1950 , v3d_freq=750. Maybe I can scale down to 1900 to maybe lower it a a few degrees.
My room is an oven due to the weather, pc, 4k tv, and monitor. I don't have a way to measure my room's temp.

Brunnis

Just re-tested my Pi 4 (4GB) + Flirc case:

1800 MHz (over_voltage=2)
Raspbian with Linux kernel 5.4
Sysbench prime test (4 cores)
Room temp: 23.5C

Tested for one hour. Steady state (no further temp increase) was reached at least 20 minutes before the test was concluded. Final temp: 71C

This load appears to be fairly representative of real world expected temps. For example I’ve seen temps during compilation match up almost perfectly with sysbench. You can provoke even higher temps with the likes of cpuburn, but those are not really representative of normal operation. Cpuburn still won’t make my Pi run into the thermal limit, though.

1800MHz Is perfectly fine with the Flirc, along with a decent GPU overclock. I personally wouldn’t go much higher, though. Most Pis are probably not fully stable at much higher frequencies than that anyway. Seems the onboard PMIC might be a weak link, not being able to sustain the high current needed. Might be okay for most emulation, since it usually doesn’t peg the system at 100% all cores, but I like my system to not just be marginally stable.

barbudreadmon

@Darksavior @Brunnis thanks for the tests, for some time now i was wondering if a pi4 could catch up with my odroid n2 through overclocking, seeing how people were mentioning they OCed theirs above 2Ghz, i guess i have my answer now.

Ecks

@Brunnis 71c is a little too toasty for my taste i usually like staying within the 40c and yes also for my actual computers as well which with the ice tower when playing a PSP game the max temps i get is 36c note i have not overclocked but pretty sure when i do i would be getting around 45c at most.

Darksavior

@barbudreadmon I have the option to ziptie an old fan from an old pc. Rigged it up for usb power, and it should keep temps in the 60s. I don't know the size of the fan, but it's big enough to fit with the flirc case inside my snes case. It's also a good size where it makes no noise.

barbudreadmon

@Darksavior not sure there is a point if there is a high risk of unstability, the black screen you mentioned already seems like such an issue. At the end of the day, if i can't beat my n2's A73@1.8Ghz without encountering many issues, it doesn't seem the pi4 is worth buying, especially with the gpu issues mentioned in the yabasanshiro thread, furthermore i think it's possible to OC the n2 too.

Clyde

@barbudreadmon One big advantage of the Pi series always was not sheer processing power, but its immense user base and the benefits that came with it: many people and websites you can get help from, many projects you can use and learn from, many third-party supplements etc. Competitors with better hardware specs often lacked in those „soft“ areas.

How is the N2 doing in these aspects? (honest curiosity) And can it run ~~Crysis~~ Retropie?

Darksavior

@barbudreadmon The black screen is not related to this. It will do that even when idling on my frontend. It's probably a hardware defect. I left cpuburn on for around an hour after my pi4 decided to work again and no black screen with that test.

Yes, I am disappointed with the gpu drivers and I would've probably waited if I knew the pi foundation had the nerve to release a product with broken drivers.

barbudreadmon

@Clyde said in Good cases for the Pi4?:

How is the N2 doing in these aspects? (honest curiosity)

No idea, tbh i only used it as a test platform when i was debugging yabasanshiro on aarch64 linux platform, and was kinda impressed with the performances on emulation

@Clyde said in Good cases for the Pi4?:

And can it run Crysis Retropie?

Lately i've been thinking of reinstalling something on it, but i don't think retropie has aarch64 in its build scripts ? Anyway, i would probably go with a tailor-made system again.

Clyde

@barbudreadmon Ah okay, and you also answered my pending question if not Retropie, then which other retro distribution you're using for the N2. 🙂 Feel free to share any future experiences.

barbudreadmon

@Clyde said in Good cases for the Pi4?:

which other retro distribution you're using for the N2

It's still using the plain old ubuntu beta for odroid n2 i got at the time, lately i noticed the board got support from the official linux kernel and some progress was made on the open-source mesa driver (not that the proprietary closed-source driver was actually bad) so i have been thinking of giving a try to a gentoo-based setup with that open-source driver.

Adding support in retropie shouldn't be a huge ordeal tbh, since the emulators are already compatible (minor the few ones that run only on arm 32bits)

Brunnis

@Ecks said in Good cases for the Pi4?:

@Brunnis 71c is a little too toasty for my taste i usually like staying within the 40c and yes also for my actual computers as well which with the ice tower when playing a PSP game the max temps i get is 36c note i have not overclocked but pretty sure when i do i would be getting around 45c at most.

I can understand that way of thinking, but it’s mostly in your head. The Pi is functionally verified to work at 120C. At 85C it’s far from any damage. It would be able to run constantly at that temp for years.

Besides, I think few emulation use cases will cause the Pi to reach as high as sysbench with 4 core load. It’s been a while since I tested, but I think N64 temps are 60-65C.

pojr

i only have the default one that comes with canakit, but ive been looking for something that looks sleak. the argon ones looks pretty legit. i wish they had more cases that resembles retro consoles like they do with the older raspberry pi models

Ecks

@Brunnis said in Good cases for the Pi4?:

@Ecks said in Good cases for the Pi4?:

@Brunnis 71c is a little too toasty for my taste i usually like staying within the 40c and yes also for my actual computers as well which with the ice tower when playing a PSP game the max temps i get is 36c note i have not overclocked but pretty sure when i do i would be getting around 45c at most.

I can understand that way of thinking, but it’s mostly in your head. The Pi is functionally verified to work at 120C. At 85C it’s far from any damage. It would be able to run constantly at that temp for years.

Besides, I think few emulation use cases will cause the Pi to reach as high as sysbench with 4 core load. It’s been a while since I tested, but I think N64 temps are 60-65C.

Just because the Pi can get that hot doesn't mean to make it hot and besides just like with any computer it is best to keep it as cool as possible which is why there is so many of these options and also if people does use a case with a fan or just uses a heatsink with a fan connected like the one i am using you can opt out for the fan to use lower voltage (3.3v) which can get temps to the high 40's low 50's and the reason why it is better to have it cooler than 60c to 65c is so the CPU doesn't lower in performance over time from getting too hot this is why the majority of people that would buy a passive cooled case is they don't tend to overclock it by much or not at all which they can get that constant 38c to 50c.

Another good thing for the cooling solution i went for is for projects because i would be able to have it in a enclosed area like a bartop arcade system and have the unit next to like 2 little holes to exhaust the hot air out while keeping the rest of the unit cooled enough and if for some reason it gets hot i can always replace the fan for something a little bigger and a little more powerful while having a heatsink on the unit and the other thing i might try out soon because i can do it with this cooler is use non conductive thermal paste which i could maybe go down to the low 20's when on idle and maybe high 20's low 30's when playing a game.

Lastly wouldn't it be in your head thinking that making a system get that hot considered a good thing because just like every other computer out there the goal is making it as cool as possible and just yesterday i got in the mail the Pi 4 2gb for my cousin with this case https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VPQP15T/ which makes it look sleek and small and also cools very well which on idle was getting 36c and playing games almost 50c and yes N64 as well and the unit is overclocked at 1.75GHz (because i wont be able to maintain and/or troubleshoot it for my cousin because of what is going on when i mail it to him).

barbudreadmon

@Brunnis said in Good cases for the Pi4?:

I think N64 temps are 60-65C

Again, i don't think it's a good reference, iirc, even on pi2, the bottleneck of n64 emulation wasn't the cpu, which means the charge must be pretty low on pi4. There are emulators that'll stress the cpu a lot more.

Weatherby

@barbudreadmon My Pi3 has started having heating issues, and is generally a bit wonky at this point. Since 4.6 is now supported as a beta on the Pi4, I figured it's time to throw in on a new build. Mostly I want to play up to PSX games without worrying too much about heating issues (that's where I really start to have a problem on my 3, though it depends on the game.) Dreamcast games are definitely interesting, though, so I might end up overclocking.

In any case, I went with the Argon One case. Seems like it's pretty solid on cooling all around. Unfortunately it's shipping from china so who knows when the hell it'll get here.

Clyde

@Weatherby said in Good cases for the Pi4?:

In any case, I went with the Argon One case. Seems like it's pretty solid on cooling all around. Unfortunately it's shipping from china so who knows when the hell it'll get here.

Did you order there for a low price or are there no domestic sources in your area? I'm asking because German online stores do have the Argon cases in stock.