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How are you cooling your Pi 3?

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General Discussion and Gaming
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  • O
    obsidianspider @Ekstreme
    last edited by 13 Sept 2016, 11:20

    @Ekstreme How small? Were they finned, or just slabs of copper?

    📷 @obsidianspider

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    • E
      Ekstreme
      last edited by 13 Sept 2016, 12:15

      Finned. but not tall enough I reckon.
      I've just ordered a case with a fan. Enough of this mucking about

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      • T
        T1nmaN
        last edited by T1nmaN 10 Jun 2016, 20:31 20 Sept 2016, 16:36

        I bought this from Ebay.
        Huge difference for only $7US

        alt text

        C 1 Reply Last reply 20 Sept 2016, 18:20 Reply Quote 0
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          caver01 @T1nmaN
          last edited by 20 Sept 2016, 18:20

          @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.

          My 4-player cocktail style cabinet built as a custom "roadcase"

          T 1 Reply Last reply 20 Sept 2016, 21:27 Reply Quote 0
          • T
            T1nmaN @caver01
            last edited by T1nmaN 20 Sept 2016, 21:27

            @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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              drake999
              last edited by 26 Sept 2016, 16:45

              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.

              V 1 Reply Last reply 29 Sept 2016, 14:14 Reply Quote 1
              • F
                flop
                last edited by flop 26 Sept 2016, 21:52

                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.

                0_1474926692053_1.jpg

                I need to automate the fan with some code and see what ºC it takes (working on code!)

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                • P
                  PokeEngineer @obsidianspider
                  last edited by 26 Sept 2016, 22:07

                  @obsidianspider

                  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...

                  Don't sweat it.
                  When in doubt, take a BYTE out of life.

                  😎

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                  • P
                    PokeEngineer @obsidianspider
                    last edited by 26 Sept 2016, 22:08

                    @obsidianspider

                    Sometimes I have to bring out my fan!

                    Don't sweat it.
                    When in doubt, take a BYTE out of life.

                    😎

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                    • R
                      Relik
                      last edited by 29 Sept 2016, 02:07

                      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. >_>

                      0_1475114832917_Pi3Fans.jpg

                      P 1 Reply Last reply 18 Dec 2016, 03:42 Reply Quote 1
                      • B
                        backstander
                        last edited by 29 Sept 2016, 13:43

                        @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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                        • R
                          Relik
                          last edited by 29 Sept 2016, 14:03

                          @backstander

                          Yeah, I haven't messed with this one in some time but I couldn't get it to overclock past 1350 and remain stable; even with the monster desktop fans. :)

                          I need to update the thing actually; I haven't used it since I got it. I need to check out some of the new features of RetPie etc.

                          I have to say, it was pretty fun making this thing though lol. It actually dropped the degrees during tests by around 15-20 degrees Celsius I believe (under full load). You should have seen the first incarnation of it... I had it mounted with the bottom case attached to two curtain rod wall mounts (parts that hold the rod and attach to wall) that I'd bent straight ... it was hideous. lol

                          Ahh well, all in good fun.

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                          • V
                            vbs @drake999
                            last edited by 29 Sept 2016, 14:14

                            @drake999 said in How are you cooling your Pi 3?:

                            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 am a newbie with RPi but I noticed that my RPi3 (not overclocked, just heatsink) throttled down the core when running some CPU benchmarks. At least thats what I concluded when Phoronix suite ran the CPU tests 3 times and the 2nd and 3rd run were always a lot slower than the first run.
                            So if that is true then I think it makes some sense to apply some proper cooling.

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                            • F
                              felixrising
                              last edited by felixrising 10 Jan 2016, 03:48 29 Sept 2016, 22:21

                              Hi!

                              I bought some 28x28x15 alu heatsink off ebay (no affiliation). Applied some small thermal paste and it fits inside a couple of my Raspberry Pi 3 cases perfectly! (my Multicomp Case and a Pi-Blox Lego® Compatible Case) I'm able to overclock to 1.40GHz without exceeding 80 degrees under load and no active cooling, therefore not being throttled back down to 600MHz.

                              More photos here: https://goo.gl/photos/rmwd9qdUH65ZjNZD8
                              0_1475187600546_IMAG0360.jpg
                              NB: the spring only serves to secure the heatsink when the case is closed.

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                              • QuackwalksQ
                                Quackwalks
                                last edited by 30 Sept 2016, 21:25

                                Could someone tell me how much I screwed up? I used arctic silver epoxy and put a heatsink on the bottom. I saw one photo of a Pi 3b like that and decided I should do that too. -_-

                                C 1 Reply Last reply 30 Sept 2016, 21:38 Reply Quote 0
                                • C
                                  caver01 @Quackwalks
                                  last edited by 30 Sept 2016, 21:38

                                  @Quackwalks Getting some extra cooling on that bottom chip can't hurt. The problems you might have could be fitting it into standard cases or interference with radio signaling (Bluetooth, WiFi)--but try it. It might be fine.

                                  It won't help cool the CPU. You'll need to add another.

                                  My 4-player cocktail style cabinet built as a custom "roadcase"

                                  QuackwalksQ 1 Reply Last reply 30 Sept 2016, 21:47 Reply Quote 0
                                  • QuackwalksQ
                                    Quackwalks @caver01
                                    last edited by 30 Sept 2016, 21:47

                                    @caver01 thanks for the reassurance. Don't worry, I have two more heatsinks and my case allows for the one on the bottom.

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                                    • D
                                      drake999
                                      last edited by drake999 10 Jun 2016, 17:37 6 Oct 2016, 16:36

                                      I'd like to find a case that supports a fan and heatsinks. I have a very slight overclock on my Pi3. The idea was to bring memory and GPU performance up to the same level as the supported overclock of the Pi2. Below are my overclock settings which have proven to be stable except for gradually building thermal issues.

                                      arm_freq=1200
                                      core_freq=500
                                      v3d_freq=500
                                      sdram_freq=500
                                      over_voltage=2
                                      dtoverlay=sdhost,overclock_50=100
                                      temp_limit=80

                                      I didn't use gpu_freq because for what I'm doing there is no need to overclock the video decoder or camera block and I figured leaving them at their stock clockspeeds would help prevent heat buildup, and it seems to have done just that to a point, but I'm still having trouble dissipating heat. After about 1 to 2 hours of use depending on the emulator, the temperature will start to approach 80 degrees and the yellow warning indicator will begin to appear. I'm hoping to find a case that will support heat sinks as well as a small fan and allow access to the SD card. Does anyone have any suggestions for a case? My heatsinks are applied with thermal adhesive and I would rather not purchase a new Pi3 just for a fan. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

                                      C 1 Reply Last reply 6 Oct 2016, 19:05 Reply Quote 0
                                      • D
                                        drake999
                                        last edited by 6 Oct 2016, 16:47

                                        You may notice I have an earlier post stating that heatsinks will suffice if you overclock. At that time I was working on a Pi2, which is the case with that model. Hopefully I didn't mislead anyone.

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                                        • C
                                          caver01 @drake999
                                          last edited by 6 Oct 2016, 19:05

                                          @drake999 Earlier in this thread, someone posted a link to a case with a sink and fan. Looked like a great option for the price for sure.

                                          My 4-player cocktail style cabinet built as a custom "roadcase"

                                          D 1 Reply Last reply 17 Oct 2016, 16:02 Reply Quote 0
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