Heatsink

AndersHP

I've done it also, but read somewhere that heatsink without active cooling only lowers CPU temp around 5°C.
Haven't tested myself, but haven't had issues with heat without the heatsink anyways.

dankcushions

heatsinks and so on are only needed if you have heat issues (the thermometer icon appearing in the top right corner). every pi and environment are different so there are no 'rules' here :)

PetroRie

They're not really needed, I played a lot of PSX games on my Pi and I never had any heat issue. You can get those 4cm by 4cm heatsinks + 5v fans from ebay. It's overkill but it would look bad-ass! Sadly I never started this project :(

You might checkout this video:

I think I will stick mine simply in a freezer :P

pjft

It depends.

I have some heatsinks as on occasion playing some MAME games on my Pi3 (yes, you read that right) ended up showing the temperature warning after a while.

I also take off the lid of my Pi case when I need a bit more air flow.

I don't have a fan because I like that the Pi is extremely silent - the fan just breaks that.

As others recommended, try it out, play with it, and see where it takes you. If you get temperature warnings every now and then, maybe it's worth considering, but I wouldn't say it's a requirement.

drake999

@russkil It only makes a small difference but it does help. It's really only required if you overclock or are operating in a hot environment. A lot of heat sinks come with an adhesive pad on them that isn't even thermally conductive, so the heat sink is intended for show only. To make it actually effective, I recommend you buy some arctic silver thermal adhesive (that's adhesive, not paste). Remove that useless adhesive sticker, apply the thermal adhesive lightly to the surface of the chip, then stick the bare heat sink to it. Only do this if you really want to because you will not be able to remove it. If you want something even more effective, buy a case with a fan, then wire the fan to the 3.3v power connector and ground on the GPIO array. The fan combined with the heat sink has made a real difference on my build.

DD-Indeed

I installed a heatsink just in case, had these GPU VRAM coolers lying around in a box with double sided tape. They're roughly 15x12x15mm in diameter, so they're also small and easy to install. Pi 3 do get hot on PS1 games, so it was a good call. Heatsink should also give more lifespan to the raspi, so installing them nevertheless would make sense. Allthou, those official coolers and fans are massive for the card, I myself would never buy those.

Hint: When choosing the fan, I recommend of getting 12V fan instead. Because when you run 12V fan in 5V supply (or even on that 3.3V pin), it is much more quiet. If you buy 5V fan, it will be loud, because it was designed to run the same speed in 5V as 12V fans.

russkil

thanks peeps. only got back to reading this(i thought this forum has email notification but it appears it doesnt :-s)

spruce_m00se

@DD-Indeed however if you had used many 12v fans you would realise that quite a lot of them wont run as low as 5V, let alone 3.3V
the noise a fan makes doesnt just depend on the speed at which it runs, it has a lot to do with vane design and airflow, a high airflow fan will make a lot more noise than a low airflow fan even though they run at the same speed.

DD-Indeed

@spruce_m00se

Yeayea, I know, but at least it worth to test out and cheap way. I now have one 40x40x10 mm, 12V fan on the case, hooked up to the 5V pin and it is still somewhat noisy, and on the 3.3V pin it's too weak to hardly blow any air. But it was more of like an industrial purpose fan for certain sort of machines running 24/7, so I ordered better one, see if that will be better. Generally, I look for a fan with big blades, as they obviosly transfer more air even in the lower voltages and if they're proper PC fans, they will be much more quieter.

caver01

@russkil I think @dankcushions said it best. It just depends on the build, case, and how you run your setup.

I run a Pi3 without overclocking, and for the arcade games that I wanted to play, I was easily able to push it over the threshold and saw performance suffer as a result.

I cut a square off of an old Pentium sink and polished it smooth, then stuck it onto my CPU using Arctic Silver. No fan. I have never seen a temperature related issue since, so I will do this on all of my Pi3 systems from now on.

I echo the comments above regarding self-adhesive applications. They can work if the stuff is thermally conductive, but how can you know what you are getting? Having a tiny dab of actual thermal adhesive is a good fallback.

Regarding paste vs. adhesive, both will work. The adhesive hardens while the paste remains liquid, but the paste is thick stuff and it dries a bit with hot/cool cycles and it is very sticky (don't over apply). Mine sink has not moved a bit since I added it (and the Pi is attached upside-down inside my cabinet), but I could grab the sink it and twist it right off if I wanted to--so thermal adhesive is probably the safer route.