How are you cooling your Pi 3?
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@UberJay said in How are you cooling your Pi 3?:
@caver01 I think if your examination was more scientific ie. A before / after with stats on temp. You would find that no significant improvements are made unless you go above and beyond what fits in a standard case.
I'm not sure I need to be more scientific. We could get into test data and define what you mean by significant, but we are merely after sufficient cooling. All I know is that I bought a Pi3 when they came out and saw throttling (red box appears, games stuttering, sound dropping etc.). I slapped on a heatsink (cut from an old Pentium sink) using thermal paste and viola--no throttling. In fact, I haven't seen a single instance of throttling since. Is it significant cooling? Depends on how you define it. Do I know how many degrees it has changed? No. I don't remember the temperature delta. Is it sufficient for a better gaming experience? Absolutely.
I don't want to sound overenthusiastic about it, but I think it's important to counter the argument that the only cooling that works is water cooling. That's simply not true. There may be people reading this that are seeing the red box and wondering what they can do about it. Everyone's mileage will vary as we all use different cases and what not, but you don't have to go crazy to see results. A properly applied sink can make an impact and can improve your gaming experience if you are seeing issues.
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Here's my heatsink for sake of argument. It really doesn't take much to help an overheating problem. Also, I think you'd agree that this is a sink that will fit it practically every case made, although I don't use a case (mounted inside my arcade cabinet). That probably makes a difference too.
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@UberJay said in How are you cooling your Pi 3?:
I run a pi2 not over clocked and it runs everything.
Interestingly, when I was running a Pi2 I didn't see any heat issues either, but when I upgraded to the Pi3, everything ran faster (and hotter). It may be apples and orange between the two.
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I think this would be a better solution than your little heat sink.
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@UberJay LOL! That's fantastic. I know it's an extreme example to prove the point, but it's not a contest to get the lowest temp--we just need enough cooling to stop the throttling. Besides, that one blocks access to gpio pins.
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@caver01 I think we agree to be honest. I'm sure you are getting some benefits from your heat Sync and if it meets your requirements then it's obviously the right solution. Like you said it's not a competition but if it was this guy has won :)
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@UberJay I do like the creative use of plastic to insulate and secure the sink. Mine is literally just sticking with the thermal paste, but I'd feel better if I had a method to hold it on there.
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I think he did a follow-up video with a fan put on that thing as well... lol.
Anyway, from what I have seen, a heatsink only drops temps by a little bit (the normal ones you see for the RPi, not the beast above). Adding a fan is when it drops considerably.
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I put 2 small copper heat sinks in my pi3 today. Total waste of time. I have to run the thing with the case cover off or it starts to throttle
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@Ekstreme How small? Were they finned, or just slabs of copper?
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Finned. but not tall enough I reckon.
I've just ordered a case with a fan. Enough of this mucking about -
I bought this from Ebay.
Huge difference for only $7US
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@T1nmaN wow. The price is right. Seems like a no-brainer to get a case, heat sinks and a fan for that price. I like that the case was designed with GPIO, camera and display cable slots too. Is it acrylic? It would be easy enough to use acrylic weld solvent to attach "wings" with screw holes for mounting. Seems like a good solution if the fan doesn't conk out.
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@caver01 Yeah, the one thing that is missing is screws and nuts to attach the board to the case, but it's a pretty tight fit, and I feel pretty good about it the way it is. Does anyone know what size nuts and screws would work? I can't remember if it had the holes to attach to the board at the bottom, but I'll check when I get home. It is acrylic.
Here's the ebay link : http://www.ebay.ca/itm/111965982816?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&var=410906661440&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
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I personally think some of the cooling methods some people use are a little extreme. If you overclock, heat sinks applied with arctic silver thermal adhesive will suffice. That's what I do. I don't trust the adhesive pads that the heatsinks usually have pre-applied so I peel them off and use a quality thermal adhesive. The downside to using thermal adhesive is you will never get the heatsinks off again, so make sure you apply them correctly. For a $35 dollar board, its a risk I'm willing to take.
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I´m using copper heatsink and aluminium alloy case, but I putted the fan above the micro (needed to do Dremel art hehe); with the fan off I get 45-60ºC compared to my old SNES acrilic case 65-75ºC.
I need to automate the fan with some code and see what ºC it takes (working on code!)
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My Pi 3 only gets really hot when installing a lot of things for a long time...
Opening the lid on my case and having heatsinks on the CPU and the built-in USB hub helps, but not that much...
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Sometimes I have to bring out my fan!
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I got bored when trying to overclock mine after first getting it, and this happened... lol. Two 120mm desktop fans wired to an ac adapter power source. Enclosed with some plastic and Pi 3 is suspended in middle with four metal "hooks" from those little suction cup things and rubber bands. :P
Yeah, it's ridiculous. And it sounds like a jet taking off. But I think it's pretty awesome. >_>
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@Relik
lol that is pretty awesome!Last night I played Strider 2 for the PSX for about an hour then I loaded up Kodi to watch a movie and I got the red box on the top left of my screen so I just popped off the cover on my case and turned on my USB fan and the red box went away in just a few seconds. I don't have any overclock settings right now but I do have heat sinks on both the GPU and CPU. I put my finger to the tops of the heat sinks and they both felt very hot. At this point I rarely use my USB fan but I'm glad I have it for heat emergencies like these.
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