How are you cooling your Pi 3?
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I've seen that Pi 3s run hot, especially when overclocked (Hello N64, I'm looking at you), so I'm wondering how you're keeping your Pi 3 cool. For a Pi 2 I've seen that a heat sink doesn't really help much, but with a Pi 3 I've seen all sorts of solutions from the simple aluminum blocks that come with many kits to copper to ceramic, to quite elaborate and sometimes
solutions. -
People cool their raspberry pis?! Why??
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@obsidianspider I had an old Pentium heat sink. It wasn't anything special. I cut this with a hack saw between the heat-disapating fingers perfectly to size, polished the flat side nice and smooth, then attached it to the CPU with Arctic Silver.
Before the heat sink, I could easily get the yellow/orange/red box on the screen indicating heat throttling. Games would start to stutter and slow down.
With the heat sink, the same games that saw slowdowns no longer have that problem. I have not seen a throttling indicator with anything since.
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25x25x15mm heatsink off eBay, attached with 3M heat transfer tape
More research here: https://github.com/superjamie/lazyweb/wiki/Raspberry-Pi-Cooling
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@suprjami said in How are you cooling your Pi 3?:
25x25x15mm heatsink off eBay, attached with 3M heat transfer tape
More research here: https://github.com/superjamie/lazyweb/wiki/Raspberry-Pi-Cooling
You can use one of those larger heatsinks which are on the top of a PC northbridge. I saw them on eBay with a 5v fan included. I did measure if it would fit and it will fit. The only thing you have to do is to add some isolation layer on the PCB so the heatsink won't make contact with the small electronic components. This month I will but it and I will test it out.
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@PetroRie Let us know how it goes!
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@obsidianspider I also overclock, for Mr. 64, with two Pi 3s. One is in a slab-style case with aluminum heatsinks on the CPU/GPU/RAM, and a 5V fan. It's one cool puppy, but it's total overkill.
The other one is in a Smartipi case with a 7" touchscreen. Runs just as overclocked, with the governor set to performance during gameplay. It's covered by the case, but not sealed and there's a wee bit of airflow. I NEVER get high-temp alarms on it. It gets upwards of 70 C, but that's about it. I can easily force it to go over temp with sysbench, but in real-world use, it's not an issue.
I haven't seen enough Pi's myself to confirm, but Pi 3s might be somewhat varied in how well they handle temperature. It could also totally be that the people with heat problems are using them in cramped corners, behind TVs, or in mostly-sealed cases.
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I use the Performance Pro case by LoveRPi. It's well ventilated and comes with a 5 volt fan. It does get a little bit noisy so there is the option to lower the voltage to 3.3 volts, which is much quieter. And it's only $10.
The one thing I don't like about it so far is that you must unplug it for the fan to turn off. The fan doesn't seem to be aware of when the Pi is on or off so it runs as long as there is power.
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@SimonBelmont said in How are you cooling your Pi 3?:
The one thing I don't like about it so far is that you must unplug it for the fan to turn off. The fan doesn't seem to be aware of when the Pi is on or off so it runs as long as there is power.
Same. When I get time, and a case that will hold it, I plan to add a little NPN transistor so that I can control the fan via GPIO (which shouldn't directly power something like a fan), along with a resistor to throttle it down. This way I can have a quieter fan that only kicks in during high temp, or gameplay, etc.
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I honestly didn't think this was going to be an issue. But now I;m seriously having to do something about it. My Pi3 is running 86 degrees with the cover off and throttling like you wouldn't believe.
Heat sinks are in order, but I think a fan is going to be required also
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I've used the heatsinks on the cpu and gpu, and a ps2 fan over 3.3V. The hottest its get is 41°C. And that is to watch 1080p movies over a streaming network.
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I bought a case with 5v fan and heatsinks off ebay for like 8 bucks.
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@obsidianspider
I originally purchases a kit that came with a Raspberry Pi 3, a 2.5A power supply, a black case (with a top that will pop off) and 2 heat sinks but when I had it overclocked and played alot of MAME games, I stated getting those yellow/orange/red box indicators on the top/right of the screen. I already had a small USB powered fan that I picked up at Walmart last year in the Fall on discount so just for fun, I plugged it into my Pi 3 and I was surprised that the fan actually works without a powered USB hub. I just took the top off the case and had the fan blow over the heat sinks and I never saw the yellow/red boxes again. I have since got a powered USB hub and the fan is plugged into that now but I haven't used it after re-flashing to RetroPie 4.0 (and without any overclocking).From my experience, as long as it's not really, really hot in my house, the 2 heat sinks will suffice unless I overclock my Pi, then I need that USB fan.
My only complaint about this kit I purchased is that it's really hard to get the microSD card out without having to pop open the case a little bit. Putting the microSD card in is very easy.
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@backstander i only use a heatsink on all of mine. One is in an intellivision flashback with no ventilation. I use it daily with no heat issues.
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@edmaul69
When I had mine overclocked, I think it was maxed out in every area I could find in the forums including the SD card reader with "dtoverlay=sdhost,overclock_50=100\n" and it only happened when playing MAME games for extended times. Now with the new updates to the N64 emulator in RetroPie 4.0.x, the Pi 3 handles this pretty well without any overclocking so I haven't used a fan since but I have the fan handy if I ever need to use it :) -
Do you guys recommend using heatsinks and/or cases with fans, with a non overclocked pi?
Just want to know if I need to spend a little bit more money or not.
Btw, I'm thinkin of housing my pi in my old sega genesis, do you guys think it will overheat being closed on the shell of the genesis? -
@Thegodfather
You should be fine without any heating unless it's really cramped in there. -
The only cooling which really works (based on benchmark tests on youtube) is water cooling (overkill obviously) & a large heat sink which means you wont get the top of a case on. Everything else outside of that is a waste of time. I run a pi2 not over clocked and it runs everything.
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