Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Heat

ParadoxGBB

Hello all,

Seems like a great time for an upgrade. Thanks so much to the team for getting 4.6 out!

Since a lot of folks here have Pi 4s, so I just wanted to ask for clarifications whether people believe a fan is still essential for moderate operation. I use my 3B today primarily as a media player with light gaming on the older emulators. At the moment I doubt that I'd consider overclocking. However, I do have it on 24/7.

A lot of the kits out there include fanless case options (e.g. https://www.newegg.com/p/1HD-005N-00078?Item=9SIAHUBA2T7783&Description=raspberry pi 4&cm_re=raspberry_pi_4--9SIAHUBA2T7783--Product) so I'm curious whether some of the recent board revisions addressed some of the initial reviews that the Pi4 runs very hot, even while idle.

Thanks in advance!

mitu

The overheating issue have been largely addressed by firmware updates that have been released since the Pi 4B. I don't think active ventilation is needed for moderate to high performance usage and there are a few cases which provide good passive cooling (Flirc, Argon).
There may have been improvements to this in the newer revision (1.2) released this year, but don't have one to compare.

ParadoxGBB

Thank you!

Norstein

I am blogging about this exact topic, and have experimented a lot with the Pi 4B and different coolers as well as clock speeds.
With the latest firmware and stock clocks, you can expect to run about 20 minutes of high load before thermal throttling kicks in, with a decent passive heatsink for less than a buck.
However, active cooling is absolutely necessary if you want to even slightly overclock your Pi 4B, or prevent thermal throttling when running for longer periods of time, or both.
I personally recommend this one: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/133351554298?ViewItem=&item=133351554298
For me, it was a little more expensive ( around 15€) since I live outside of the United Kingdom, but it was absolutely worth it.
It is hands down the best price/performance case I have seen so far, and I have personally tested 6 cases and more than 20 cooling solutions so far.
With this, I managed an overclock from 1500/500 (CPU/GPU) to 2100/750 at 56°C max temp after 1 hour of stressberry 4 core testing with the cooler at 5V, it goes up to 65°C when the fan is at 3.3V, so even with a 40%/50% overclock and the fan slowed down for silence, it is still far from throttling.
You can further decrease temperatures by using a bigger (up to 7mm high, up to 40x40 broad and long) heatsink, or using copper instead of aluminium, but as you can see from these temps, it is not necessary.