Silly question about RetroTINK

matchaman

I was thinking about buying a RetroTINK since I'm (close but) not 100% happy with composite 240p on my CRT telly.

However, I live in Greece and during summertime it's impossible to use my Pi 3 without a fan, even in stock clock. It keeps throttling unless I'm using the aircon...

So I was wondering, since RetroTINK is using all the pins, will I still be able to use a my little fan? Are there any extra pinouts for that job on the RetroTINK?

I am using one of those silent double fans so in terms of height, it's just like using a heatsink.

Capeman

@matchaman The retrotink uses all of the pins. You might want to run your fan off of a separate power supply. If it's a 5v fan, you can just strip an extra usb cable and wire the black and red wires directly to the fan's power inputs.

You could also wire the fan to the pi by soldering some jumper wire from the 5v and ground pins on the bottom of the pi and to the fan, but if the HAT uses sufficient power, running a fan also might cause a low voltage warning. Might be worth getting a 3amp power supply if you're going to try that.

spruce_m00se

I live in Dubai, my pi doesnt thermal throttle in most cases even in the summer.
However, quake 3 makes it burn up in no time at all, so I 3d printed a case that holds an 80mm fan above the pi, i have the normal crappy heatsink stuck to the cpu, I want to test without the heatsink as I suspect it may actually be better without it,
but long story short, an 80mm fan, seperate 12v power supply and you get a metric ton of cooling, and less noise than the tiny fans.

Beldar

@spruce_m00se Those cheap tiny fans are ridiculous! They sound like they are going to lift off and fly the pi around the room! I found a very nice but tiny fan and hooked it two the lower voltage pins for slower speed and less noise. I can see how the larger fan would be even better, I was just too lazy to set up a secondary power supply.

Rion

@matchaman Connect you're RetroTINK using an GPIO ribbon cable. That way you can use any fan you want.

Capeman

In my arcade build i found the fan that came with the flat pack kit was really loud when run from full power. It was a 12v fan. So i just found a left over 5v power brick and connected that to the fan and it runs about half speed, just the perfect amount of air flow without the noise.