Good cases for the Pi4?

Jiryn

@pojr Exactly what I am using!

Ka

Thinking about getting an Argon One case for my Pi 4. Stupid question - I’ve already got some stick-on heatsinks on my Pi board. Would I need to remove these for the Argon case to fit? It looks like it’s a tight fit.

pojr

@Jiryn
i absolutely love the case. it provides the bulk that i need. i had to remove the fan though. did you? not that it has been an issue without the fan.

jandalf81

@Ka Yes, you will need to remove the heatsinks, as there are two protusions inside the case which directly touch the CPU and GPU for optimal heat flow. See here for reference at 2:10:

pojr

The argon one case is probably the best one ever made for the pi 4 right now, but sadly its sold out...and places like ebay are selling it for too much. its really only a $25 case, shouldn't be sold for $40. the flirc case is probably the next best thing.

Clyde

I just got my Argon NEO. Its overall quality is superb, except that one of its two magnets was loose and I had to glue it back on with metal glue.

Alas, I don't have that much time for setting up Retropie 4.6 and transfer my old installation from my Pi 3 at the moment, so it may be some weeks before I can say something about the performance and thermal effects of the Pi 4 in the NEO case. But I will post them here eventually.

Ecks

@Ka said in Good cases for the Pi4?:

Thinking about getting an Argon One case for my Pi 4. Stupid question - I’ve already got some stick-on heatsinks on my Pi board. Would I need to remove these for the Argon case to fit? It looks like it’s a tight fit.

Yes you would have to since the case is it's own heatsink as well.

Ecks

@pojr said in Good cases for the Pi4?:

The argon one case is probably the best one ever made for the pi 4 right now, but sadly its sold out...and places like ebay are selling it for too much. its really only a $25 case, shouldn't be sold for $40. the flirc case is probably the next best thing.

the low profile ice tower is great as well cause it does include an acrylic plate for under the Pi and you could also make your own case if you wanted for the Pi since it does include the stand offs under it and heck since we have all the time in the world right now cause of what is going on we could even make something like this as an example for the Pi.

alt text

IceChes1

I wanted an Argon ONE but since I'm a 12-year-old that would really break the bank for me. I eventually settled on one on Amazon by a company called Pastall. It is aluminum and has a fan. It's only $16 USD.

Izzi

@barbudreadmon said in Good cases for the Pi4?:

@Darksavior said in Good cases for the Pi4?:

I keep mine at 1950Mhz

You can now push it to that freq with a fanless flirc case ? No throttling ? That wasn't possible until recently, right ?

Yeah. I have a Flirc too and I'm overclocked to 1900 arm core and 750 gpu core. Thermals cap around 60~65º after an hour or so of gaming.

Riverstorm

I've had good luck with the Argon One / Pi 4. The best part is having all the ports rear facing making cable management a breeze and easy to hide. No more infamous Pi cable spiders! ;) The fan can be slightly loud at 100% in a quiet room when working next to it.

@barbudreadmon - I did some testing with the link provided using the settings below. The first test completed in 919s (but it keeps running) leveled off around 57-58C (fan at 10%).

over_voltage=6
arm_freq=2000
gpu_freq=750

CPUBurn pushed it a little harder and it leveled off around 64-66C (fan was jumping between 50-100%) . The fan is set to run at 55% below 65C and 100% at and above 65C. The fan speed could be tweaked for a more consistent temp as it was right on the boundary.

I did the latest firmware update before testing. It seems 2GHz is solid on this board. I'm going to do a few more tests over the weekend for stability before trying to go above 2 GHz. Ambient was around 73F/22.7C.

Clyde

@Riverstorm Thanks for the detailed results. As for the cable spiders, it depends on the application of the Pi. In my upright arcade cabinet, having the cables not on only one side actually helps to spread them out between the different components. 😊 That's why I usually prefer cases that don' t change the socket layout.

Riverstorm

@Clyde - Hey Clyde, how's Germany holding up with the pandemic and all? That's a good point the orientation might facilitate your build but those Argon cases aren't meant to be hidden away in cabinets. That would be a sin! ;) They are well built with a nice finish and meant to be displayed. :) If I was going to mount a Pi in an upright cab I think I would go for one of those cheap acrylic cases/plates or make a cheap balsa wood plate or something.

I had one minor issue with the Argon One/Pi 4 and that was with mounting the board inside the case. The standoffs that hold on the bottom plate were to close together. I could either file the finish off the standoffs or file the PCB. I chose to file the PCB just in case the removed finish wasn't enough to fit the board down flush and I had to file both the standoff and PCB. It was less than a one MM and it took only a small round file to do the trick. I don't know if it was just an early run manufacturing variance or something but the Argon One for the Pi 3 case was a perfect fit.

The other really nice thing about the Argon One is the power button. After you load the script shown in the manual it integrates extremely well with RetroPie. You press the power button to turn it on and you're right at the ES menu. When done gaming just go through the RetroPie menu to shut it down and it will shut down properly and kill the power to the Pi just like a console. It's real clean powering up and shutting down. It feels like a true mini console minus any branding. ;)

You can also hold the button down for a graceful shutdown or longer to do a hard shutdown. I think it's the 3 to 5 second range. I was looking to change the times between a graceful shutdown and a hard shutdown but found a comment from a guy that wrote the company and they said they are hard coded values and can't be changed.

The fan is a user set percentage of the fans max RPM's based on 3 temps 55, 60 and 65. So you don't have full flexibility. It's set through a script so maybe it can be modified if those values don't work for your setup. The defaults have worked ok for me.

On a side note after a whole lot of testing I did get the Pi 4 stable at 2.1GHz with these settings:

over_voltage=6
arm_freq=2100
gpu_freq=750

I used the overclock link provided by @barbudreadmon. At 2100 the temp topped out at 68C with CPU Burn in the Argon One. I would give a bit of room around the case due to it getting really quite warm to hot once the fan starts revving up.

Then I went through and compiled from source Retroarch, Emulationstation, Advmame, Daphne, FBNeo, mame2003-plus and several other emulators with no crashes. Compiling from source was the only other thing that would get the Argon case hot enough to kick the fan on.

I played a bunch of arcade games, Dragon's Lair, N64 games, etc. with no issues.

Finally I did the @quicksilver Quake 3 stability test with max bots in spectator mode for 12 hours straight with no issues at all. I started it before going to bed and it was still running fine when I got up so I let it go several more hours before calling it good. If the overclock is unstable I can usually get it to crash or lockup with Quake anywhere from 0 to 4 hours and if it makes the full 12 hour run I call it good.

It's been 100% stable at 2.1GHz all weekend. I also did try 2147 but it was locked up after the first overclock test. So the real number is probably somewhere between 2100 and 2147.

Clyde

@Riverstorm I'm well, thanks, and you? Germany seems to be one of the best places to be in these times if you believe the official numbers (which I do for the most part). There are moderate measures against the pandemic in place, like having to wear masks when shopping, or keeping your distance of approx. 1.5 to 2 meters, but they are bearable in comparison to those in other countries (edit: at least for myself, since my job isn't one of the cut-off lines of work).

Aaaanyway … coming back to topic, I surprisingly got around to setup my Pi 4 over the last weekend. It is now the new heart of my upright cabinet. Since I used it mostly for arcade and console games from the 70s and 80s, there was no sudden burst of speed to notice, but even without any overclocking yet, all of my beloved PSX games do run now at (mostly) stable 60 Hz without any of the sound stuttering I was used from my non-overclocked Pi 3B.

I didn't do any overclocking or thermal tests so far. I did overclock the Pi 4 in its passively cooled Argon Neo case for a short time to 1750 Mhz at an overvoltage of 2 without any throttling according to watch -n 1 vcgencmd measure_clock arm, but since this didn't have any noticable benefits in my PSX games, I switched it back to the normal speed. (Yeah, the pretty little Neo is now hidden inside the cab, but it will take trips to hacker and Linux conventions from time to time, as its predecessor did, so its beauty is not completely wasted. 😉 )

That said, which emulators and games would you or anyone else reading this recommend to test overclocking on? I was never much interested in theoretical numbers from benchmarks, but rather in actual noticable effects.

Thanks, and have fun with your new Toys. 😊

quicksilver

@Clyde you should be able to run psx games fullspeed with enhanced resolution turned on now. Without the need for the inaccurate speed hack. At least I can when overclocked, I haven't tested it at stock speed.

Clyde

@quicksilver Thanks, I've actually activated the speed hack like I did on the Pi 3. I will test the enhanced resolution without it as you recommended.

Weatherby

Do you/should you overclock if you want to play Dreamcast games on the Pi4, running version 4.6? I'm surprised the temps for an overclocked board are so well maintained with an Argon, and am considering doing so just to get better performance.

What really causes my Pi3 to heat up is the fact that it's hooked up to a 4k display, with the resolution setting on default, so that it automatically scales to whatever the monitor's preference is. I've tried to manually set it to like, 1080p, but then everything looks fuzzy and I'm not a fan of that. I'm looking forward to getting the Argon case and putting together this Pi4, since these temperatures you guys are getting under load are about as hot as my Pi3 runs ambient on a 4k display.

IceChes1

@Weatherby Yes. You should overclock for Dreamcast. just to play it safe.

Riverstorm

@Clyde - That's great, I read Germany has been doing great. Since you're pulling that beauty out of your cab occasionally for field trips it's all good! ;)

We are doing ok here also even though we are dead last in the "race"! =/ For sure urban areas are harder hit than rural but the overall infection rate is less than a half percent, something like 0.4%. The media has a way of spinning things to make you swear the sky is falling and create hysterics. In some of these rural areas there just isn't much difference except for the ripple effect on the economics and even some political spins on the pandemic, go figure. They seem to focus on mostly the "bad" rather than the 100s of millions doing it right. I feel to many folks here hook a fire hose of news to their face and feed on it all day long. They need to unplug and take a break if it's getting to them to frequently.

My job is considered critical infrastructure also and I work the same as always Monday through Friday. We have a new jail addition going live in a month or so here and there's so much work to be done from fiber, switches, wireless AP's, camera's, finger printer readers, etc. etc. that have to get installed and setup. I just need to focus on the networking pieces. I also get the Sheriff's office, patrol vehicles, 911, juvenile detention center, etc. Several 24/7 departments in addition to the daytime ones. My partner in crime here at work is immune compromised so he's telecommuting and I am here every day but I don't mind.

From the Pi 3 overclocked to the Pi 4 overclocked I can run Mario Kart 64 with hi-res textures at full speed with no sound juttering, it looks fantastic in hi-res. Even though I never tried it at stock speeds. @quicksilver pointed out another great emu that runs at full speed with enhanced resolution. I'll do more testing as I get more games installed on the Pi 4.

I guess isn't faster better in most cases if there's no drawback? The two drawbacks are a possible shorter Pi life which I consider negligible as I've never "wore" a Pi out yet (even with massive overclock testing) and I suppose the electrical cost of running them faster.

If a game loads faster, exits faster, downloading from binary or source complies faster. Just running the Pi more efficiently from emulator to emulator and option to option seems better. Isn't that why we went from a Pi 3 to a Pi 4, for a better experience and performance? It seems like a win-win.

In competitive game play they shoot for a smooth consistent 60 FPS to improve their game play. It would seem consistent vs. "variable" FPS would make for a better gaming experience overall even if not tangibly noticeable. There's never enough power to run MAME perfectly smooth, especially the later builds in RetroPie. I see they even have been trying to get the latest MAME working on the Pi, which is great.

Many console emu's seem to benefit too from the extra speed even if it doesn't translate to perfect emulation it's an improvement or step in the right direction.

I know theirs two sides to overclocking. I even hear some say it's not stable and shouldn't be done on a Pi. If done correctly I feel it's definitely ok and perfectly stable. Actually some days I get more of a thrill out of pushing the overclock boundary on a new Pi vs. game playing, some days that is! ;)

I'm not sure what you mean by a theoretical number from benchmarks? Those two words together in a sentence almost seems like an oxymoron. Aren't benchmarks based on real testing, data and experience which is the opposite of theory! ;)