How are you cooling your Pi 3?
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Sometimes I have to bring out my fan!
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I got bored when trying to overclock mine after first getting it, and this happened... lol. Two 120mm desktop fans wired to an ac adapter power source. Enclosed with some plastic and Pi 3 is suspended in middle with four metal "hooks" from those little suction cup things and rubber bands. :P
Yeah, it's ridiculous. And it sounds like a jet taking off. But I think it's pretty awesome. >_>
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@Relik
lol that is pretty awesome!Last night I played Strider 2 for the PSX for about an hour then I loaded up Kodi to watch a movie and I got the red box on the top left of my screen so I just popped off the cover on my case and turned on my USB fan and the red box went away in just a few seconds. I don't have any overclock settings right now but I do have heat sinks on both the GPU and CPU. I put my finger to the tops of the heat sinks and they both felt very hot. At this point I rarely use my USB fan but I'm glad I have it for heat emergencies like these.
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Yeah, I haven't messed with this one in some time but I couldn't get it to overclock past 1350 and remain stable; even with the monster desktop fans. :)
I need to update the thing actually; I haven't used it since I got it. I need to check out some of the new features of RetPie etc.
I have to say, it was pretty fun making this thing though lol. It actually dropped the degrees during tests by around 15-20 degrees Celsius I believe (under full load). You should have seen the first incarnation of it... I had it mounted with the bottom case attached to two curtain rod wall mounts (parts that hold the rod and attach to wall) that I'd bent straight ... it was hideous. lol
Ahh well, all in good fun.
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@drake999 said in How are you cooling your Pi 3?:
I personally think some of the cooling methods some people use are a little extreme. If you overclock, heat sinks applied with arctic silver thermal adhesive will suffice. That's what I do.
I am a newbie with RPi but I noticed that my RPi3 (not overclocked, just heatsink) throttled down the core when running some CPU benchmarks. At least thats what I concluded when Phoronix suite ran the CPU tests 3 times and the 2nd and 3rd run were always a lot slower than the first run.
So if that is true then I think it makes some sense to apply some proper cooling. -
Hi!
I bought some 28x28x15 alu heatsink off ebay (no affiliation). Applied some small thermal paste and it fits inside a couple of my Raspberry Pi 3 cases perfectly! (my Multicomp Case and a Pi-Blox Lego® Compatible Case) I'm able to overclock to 1.40GHz without exceeding 80 degrees under load and no active cooling, therefore not being throttled back down to 600MHz.
More photos here: https://goo.gl/photos/rmwd9qdUH65ZjNZD8
NB: the spring only serves to secure the heatsink when the case is closed. -
Could someone tell me how much I screwed up? I used arctic silver epoxy and put a heatsink on the bottom. I saw one photo of a Pi 3b like that and decided I should do that too. -_-
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@Quackwalks Getting some extra cooling on that bottom chip can't hurt. The problems you might have could be fitting it into standard cases or interference with radio signaling (Bluetooth, WiFi)--but try it. It might be fine.
It won't help cool the CPU. You'll need to add another.
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@caver01 thanks for the reassurance. Don't worry, I have two more heatsinks and my case allows for the one on the bottom.
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I'd like to find a case that supports a fan and heatsinks. I have a very slight overclock on my Pi3. The idea was to bring memory and GPU performance up to the same level as the supported overclock of the Pi2. Below are my overclock settings which have proven to be stable except for gradually building thermal issues.
arm_freq=1200
core_freq=500
v3d_freq=500
sdram_freq=500
over_voltage=2
dtoverlay=sdhost,overclock_50=100
temp_limit=80I didn't use gpu_freq because for what I'm doing there is no need to overclock the video decoder or camera block and I figured leaving them at their stock clockspeeds would help prevent heat buildup, and it seems to have done just that to a point, but I'm still having trouble dissipating heat. After about 1 to 2 hours of use depending on the emulator, the temperature will start to approach 80 degrees and the yellow warning indicator will begin to appear. I'm hoping to find a case that will support heat sinks as well as a small fan and allow access to the SD card. Does anyone have any suggestions for a case? My heatsinks are applied with thermal adhesive and I would rather not purchase a new Pi3 just for a fan. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
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You may notice I have an earlier post stating that heatsinks will suffice if you overclock. At that time I was working on a Pi2, which is the case with that model. Hopefully I didn't mislead anyone.
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@drake999 Earlier in this thread, someone posted a link to a case with a sink and fan. Looked like a great option for the price for sure.
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I tried heat sinks and they did pretty much SFA, so I've ordered one of these:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Black-Aluminum-Alloy-Case-Shell-Enclosure-Box-Fan-for-Raspberry-Pi-Model-B-L3-/282136693749?hash=item41b0a84bf5:g:QnMAAOSwawpXsV0tGot the case already but they forgot the fan. Hopefully that shows up soon as Metal Slug (my son's fav game) cooks this poor lil thing
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I've only had my Pi 3 for a few days, but I've been running this 15mm x 15mm x 15mm aluminum heatsink from Adafruit (not an affiliate link) with a little thermal grease and my temps haven't gone over 57 C even with N64 games while overclocked to 1.4GHz. I've been getting the lightning bolt so I have a 3.5A power supply on order, but back at "not overlocked" (no lightning bolt) I'm hovering around 51 C with Mario 64's demo "Press Start" screen running for a few hours.
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@caver01 I took a look at that, but didn't seem to suite the style I'm hoping to get. I found the following which looks perfect, but I can't seem to get it in my local.
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I use the old heat sinks from my RPi1 and it works fine,I didn't know you could overclock it,when I goto the raspi config it say it can't be overclocked..??
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I bought a case with 3 small thermal dissipators. I never had problem before, but I needed a case...
BUT, yesterday I did re-install MAME2010 "by the source" and I got the thermometer icon for the 1st time. (no O/C)
A LOT of heat, extremely hot dissipators. I had to blow on the PI, and it tooks forever to reinstall. I have a copper dissipator I simply put on the small one, it helped a bit, but not enough. So I'm going to use a fan and bigger dissipators, and maybe make my own case. -
@nanar
I've had that same issue compiling MAME2010 from source and I have a RPi3 with those thermal heat sinks. I happen to have a cheap USB fan that I got from Walmart that I keep near my RPi. I rarely need it but when I do it's nice and cools my RPi quickly when it starts getting too hot. My power supply has enough power to push all this (including RPi, my controllers, USB mouse & keyboard) and that fan has a little on/off switch so I just turn it on when needed. Also that fan folds down flat so I can easily put it away and it can run off batteries but I've never tried this. I actually ended up getting a 2nd one that I keep next to my desktop PC because that thing can be like a little space heater and I needed something to keep me cool. -
@backstander
Hey thank you, I didn't knew this kind of fan, cool stuff. I'll rethink about making my own case, a fan should be enough without overclocking (I saw people managed to control the fan with GPIO, PWM fan) Pretty abnormal it get that hot when compiling.. -
Pretty abnormal it get that hot when compiling
It is pretty rare except maybe when I'm compiling something large like MAME.
(I saw people managed to control the fan with GPIO, PWM fan)
I haven't thought about that. Sound like a good idea!
I have several old fans from out of old PC cases but I doubt any of them are PWM fans.
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