Question about the Flirc case. Need heatsinks?

BobHarris

So up till now I've been cooling my Pi 3, by active cooling: I had a heatsink on the SOC and a small 5V fan to dissipate the generated heat. But I never really liked the noise coming from the fan, so yesterday I ordered the Flirc gen 2 case.
As this only uses passive cooling (the aluminium case protruding towards the SOC), I am wondering if any other chips would benefit from heatsinks? I'm talking about keeping my Pi 3 healthy for years to come. Or are these other chips not getting as hot as the SOC when using demanding emulators like snes/n64?

I am asking this because the Wicked case uses three protrusions to cool down three chips (two on the front of the Pi, one on the back), where the Flirc case only has the one.

(By the way I've not overclocked my Pi, but without cooling I did see cpu/gpu temperatures of almost 80 C while playing Yoshi's island.)

Raistlin84

In my experience I've had higher temperatures with heatsink than without it. Raspberry works well without anything in a big case, i've removed heatsink and just put a fan for fun. ;-)

quicksilver

@bobharris you don't need to cool anything other than the CPU/GPU. Even 80C isn't that high, your pi will downclock itself to prevent any damage. Cooling to prevent downclocking makes sense though. I highly recommend the kintaro 9000 SNES case, it comes with a really nice custom heatsink (don't even need a fan) and safe shutdown/reset buttons. If you aren't a fan of the US SNES style, he has a European SNES case coming out very soon.

BobHarris

@quicksilver Yeah I know about the downclocking..but still I can't imagine 80 C will do the Pi good in the long term.
Everybody is always talking about the temperatures of the cpu/gpu unit, but I hardly ever hear anything about the other heat generating points on the Pi. I always thought they weren't relevant in cooling terms, but then I saw that Wicked case which cools down three chips.

HurricaneFan

@quicksilver Does the heatsink of the kin taro 9000 snes case work on a 3B Plus pi?

ClassicGMR

@hurricanefan No it doesn't fit properly. The new PoE pins block it.

They are making one that will work. Not sure if it's out yet though.

quicksilver

@bobharris said in Question about the Flirc case. Need heatsinks?:

@quicksilver Yeah I know about the downclocking..but still I can't imagine 80 C will do the Pi good in the long term.

The raspberry pi foundation set that as the thermal throttle temp limit because its still within the safe zone. Your pi will never stay at that temp because it will always throttle and cool itself. Performance takes a big hit though so cooling for performance makes much more sense than longevity.

Everybody is always talking about the temperatures of the cpu/gpu unit, but I hardly ever hear anything about the other heat generating points on the Pi. I always thought they weren't relevant in cooling terms, but then I saw that Wicked case which cools down three chips.

I have done a ton of research on cooling and overclocking for raspberry pis. You really only need to cool the main CPU/GPU. The ram and Ethernet chips never get hot enough to need cooling.

BobHarris

@quicksilver Thanks! The Flirc case will do the job then. I'm putting the case in my PS1 shell (hope it fits) so whether it's a Flirc or a Kintaro doesn't really matter. ;-)