RoboNuggie I haven't tried the freezer but I did try using and old beer fridge putting the Pi inside and insulating the gap for the wires to come out , it made very little difference about 3°c all in all so just put beer back in the fridge and called it a day
lol, brilliant Mark...a win-win situation really: Pi = Cooler --> Drink Beer (shame to let it warm up) Pi= Not much cooler ---> Put back in fridge, drink beer later... Huzzah!
RoboNuggie So damn cool.. Am a software guy (CS) how can I start learning to program FPGS and use VHDL ... do I need to learn anything else before that .... Can I get into Arduino immediately without taking other courses
I discovered ExplainingComputers on RUclips about a year ago when I was first interested in Raspberry Pi. Now I find myself trying to watch the backlog of 10+ years of Chris Barnatt's videos any time my wife and kids are busy binging on Netflix. Today I discovered a whole list of his books available on Amazon!!! Thanks Chris, for sharing your knowledge and experience! You really make the best videos on RUclips!
When it comes to heatsinks, I always go by the theory of making sure to have copper touch the CPU/GPU and then lead that copper into some type of aluminum. In my experience it's usually some type of aluminum fins. I noticed a huge difference when I first did this with using an all aluminum heatsink and then switching to one where copper touches the chip and leads off into aluminum. There's actually some physics behind this as copper absorbs heat much quicker and aluminum's ability to spread out and dissipate heat. I think that's how it works anyway, but it definitely makes a huge difference with the type of metals you use in regards to touching the chip to be cooled and so on.
The fan is a good solution. Im using it for the SBC projects, mostly from small netbooks, and Im also using the small heat sink. Last one was for my godson, when I fitted the SBC in a toy car, and the fan on the roof. He is using it for gaming purposes, and the temperature never raises above 60 C. Anyway, the final combination looks impressive. If you ever do decide to put such a massive radiator on the Pi, consider overclocking the CPU, and testing the results how far you can push the Pi limits
This is the most helpful stress testing video for the Raspberry Pi I have seen on RUclips. Excellent and well thought out with clear repeatable information. Thank you.
Wow that's amazing that the idle temperature with no heatsink or fan is higher than the temperature the Pi had after the test with the LHS and the fan Absolutely amazing! :D
Fantastic video on cooling the too hot from the oven pi down to a reasonable temperature, I especially like your little script for testing the temps and have promptly pirated a copy for myself. In fact all of your videos that I have watched have been very well done, easily understood and included enough of a back story to put everything into context without adding gratuitous fluff. Excellent job and please keep up the good work, I very much appreciate all that you put into your videos.
I'm testing it with a 115W TDP Cooler that is supposed to cool i7s and Ryzens this weekend, to kick off the blog I'm launching after that. Try googling "Raspberry Pi 4 Arctic Freezer" mid August. Going to hook up a Pi with an SSD, an Arctic Freezer 7 Pro, Noctua NF-B9 and Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut paste, then bench the temps with and without overclocking in hardware hungry Retropie games like Perfect Dark (N64), Shen Mue (Dreamcast) or Monster Hunter Freedom (PSP).
People have done this already, it's not worth it, it's actually worse than a fan and a heatsink lol you can really only pull a .2ghz more out of it, so really what's the point? lol
Very , very Interesting .Since one hour , i was looking for information on the heat dissipation of the RPI and it was stressful to read debilitated forums. Nothing like an excellent demonstration video pedagogical. Thanks a lot
That's it, i'll build one for myself. My Pi3 started showing the temperature icon while using Ubuntu Mate. And as always, thanks for the awesome content!
And I did adapt an aluminum heat sink! I was surprised at how hot it gets while doing unattended upgrades just after booting Ubuntu Mate. I wish there was a way to attach a picture.
I bought a Noctua NF-A4x10 5V fan (10mm high) and placed into a home made frame facing downwords just 2mm above a small heatsink as showed on the video and a small heatsink on the 2 Gb memory chip. The airstream is blowing out from the frame. Now the Raspberry Pi4b is hoovering around 49 to 50° C at full load and 35° C on idle with an ambient room temperature of 21.5° C
Nice review :) I like the small heat sink and Noctua fan combination it seems a versatile and fairly robust solution. At some point in the future would you consider revisiting this topic with the same solutions and use the stress or stress-ng utility to see how well the cooling continues. I appreciate the number of combinations that the stress tool can provide might be a little daunting, therefore configuring a load that sits at load average of 8 over 1 minute would work well. I use these tools occasionally to see how well our scheduler is supporting my Linux audio components to prevent audio drop outs.
I think I like the passive cooling with the big heat sink. The cooling was satisfactory with no extra power consumption although it bit bulky. Great video.
I was thinking water cooling, too just as you said it!!! But, I do agree, the middle of the road with the black heat sink and the fan. Great videos I enjoy them.
Thank you , Dr. Barnatt, for this interesting, ambitious, practical, and useful research effort you have done for us. It has indeed helped me to decide how to best cool my various RPi contraptions. It would also be a truly wonderful world if all those commentators who are suggesting to you that you undertake to do many alternative research variations, would themselves instead do them for us, and then offer up their professionally-presented results to the rest of us, entirely free-of-charge as you do. In that case I could continue to enjoy the benefits of all those efforts without actually having to do anything myself. A wonderful world indeed!
Delid the pi, and use liquid metal with a Peltier chip! Do pi-bong cooling, hook it up to a water cooling loop from your well, I love cooling videos! Especially on odd components.
Curiously I noticed you directed the airflow away from CPU with the cheaper fan but directed the airflow towards the CPU with the noctua. Was that deliberate? Does it make any difference? Am I asking a stupid question? Oh right, and thanks for another video.
ExplainingComputers sorry I was just curious. My Pi case's instructions showed the fan blowing air away from the CPU but I set it up to blow on the CPU, so I wasn't sure if there was some CPU cooling secret I wasn't privy to.
if you have an open air design, i find it better for your fan to blow on the heat sink and if you have a closed case design, for it to pull air off of it. in the end though, the difference is marginal - you're still using the fan to promote airflow and the main difference is where you're going to get dust buildup over time. You should check out PC building airflow videos for explanations on that.
josh blowing away may be more effective, blowing down on a heatsink is known to be inefficient because air will hit the flat bottom of the heatsink. Always make air move across a heatsink so the airflow is unopstructed
Just as an aside, the accessory care package that comes with Noctua stuff is part of the reason we who like them in our PCs buy them. That fan can be got for about £10 although £13 is more common. There's at least £5 of accessories included in the extension/low noise cables and those silicone mounts.
Lovely stuff. I once ventured into overvolting and overclocking a Raspi 2 using a 50W peltier cooler, that had the hot side cooled with a large liquid cooling system. I got CPU temps down to -11C and frost started to grow on the back of the PCB. By some kind of miracle the Raspi actually survived.
It would have been interesting to see the results when using a Pi fan without the small heatsink. In other words, to find the minimal configuration to keep the processor below 70C at full power.
Good idea about using a copper spacers. I just pressed a pretty big hewtsink on mine and could free it touching some other components.. I just crossed my fingers and it still worked when I turned it on so I figured it didn't short anything. I may pick up of of those copper spacers.
Once again another brilliant video , I've personally gone down the water cooling route at a cost of £120 for a pre made kit but only on the RPi 3 and so far I had practically the same results as you had on the large passive cool system you got with the new Pi , I'll let you know my results when I finally get around to upgrading
There are many possibilities with this, imagine the servers you could make, because if you can keep it that cool, making 24/7 NAS servers or Web servers is possible. Pretty awesome video.
Hi Christopher, I really like your Raspberry PI videos, 2 months ago I got my first PI and I am now waiting for my 4th to arrive, I especially liked your Devastator Robot Videos as I would like to make a FPV Explorer Vehicle. Keep up the good work :)
Electronics on the Moon were cooled by heat sinks going to Octadecane and Eicosane wax... no air to move! That's per Ron Creel, LRV thermal control engineer... Something to try if I ever find a source...
watched a vid where a fella added a water cooling set up to his pi.. kind of defeated the mobility of the small board with a radiator that was way bigger than the board and with the reservoir and line made the area needed about 3 times as big... He called himself a "hacker" (I do not know what that is supposed to be these days) But he was obviously proud of himself.. A bit overboard I thought.. but this was a helpful experiment thanks Chris...
Will there ever be a day when c.p.u's ( and computers ) are designed to take in localised heat ( including self generated ) and turn it into power which then can be used to cool in a efficient way
Cracking video. Just got a pi a few days ago and getting in to the swing of things. Came across this video and it's incredibly helpful. Really well delivered concise info. Looking through your other videos it seems I'll enjoy all the non-pi content you've put out so far as well :)
You should take into consideration the time it takes to perform a heavy task, because if the cooling is poor then not only will the temperature change, but it will also begin to throttle, taking a longer time to complete the task.
For Science, you monster. :) Also, why not? :P Yeah, yeah, I know.. just because you can, doesn't mean you should. So, let Christopher do it for you and learn something along the way? ;) Even if it turns out that there isn't much difference, its always good to see what is needed to keep it steady at a certain temperature. You know, for that "temperature sensitive" application that includes expensive crystals that throw out accuracy if it rises 0.1°C. Or not. It's academic at this point.
As an experienced overclocker, I do have to admit "just for the hell of it" is indeed a compelling argument. as for unstable crystals, well, a TCXO doesn't cost too much, or if you have access to good surplus an OCXO, or if you have a few extra bucks, Rubidium is cheap enough too ;) --... ...-- -.. . -.- -.-. ..... ...- -.. .---
Sweet spot seems to be the fan and SHS. A few quid gets a decent reduction in temps. Seems against the point of buying a Pi if you then have to spend more than half as much again to keep it cool. Shows what can be done though and is very interesting
inspired by one of your video's I did something similar on a android box but used HC 910 thermal adhesive a very strong way to secure the heatsink cheers
You could probably make some form of bracket similar to the kind of mounting solution you see on bigger CPU towers for normal PCs, and mount it to those screws you were mounting those plastic covers onto to hold your large heatsink on to turn the big heatsink/noctua fan combo into a practical solution.
I think the main problem with small heat sink and big fan was that there was death zone under fan motor similar in size to the size of small heat sink itself. You could try puting fan not directly above heat sink but a bit to the right or left. Also to stabilize big heat sink you could just use another DIY plastic frame that would tight fit the heat sink.
Ok, out of curiosity have you considered something like this: www.amazon.co.uk/Enzotech-Corp-MOS-C10-MOSFET-heatsink/dp/B004CL89D8/ref=sr_1_22?ie=UTF8&qid=1526824983&sr=8-22&keywords=small+heatsink+copper Or even go wild and try to fit this: www.amazon.co.uk/SVF152C29M-Processor-Heatsink-Cooler-3VHK9TMN010/dp/B07D5MW85P/ref=sr_1_30?ie=UTF8&qid=1526824983&sr=8-30&keywords=small+heatsink+copper
Could you recommend a tutorial on how I could make the fan turn on and off when the CPU reaches a certain temperate level or maybe control a relay to switch the fan on/off again based on the CPU temp, perhaps this could be one of your future projects to show us how ? Many thanks
Just curious, if you tested the (3 rd) with the fan blowing on the heatsink as you did with the Noctua fan just to see how they compare. I noticed that in the video you had the small 30 mm fan blowing up instead of down on the HS. Great video on the other scenarios though . :) Edit)- I scrolled down a little further and seen someone ask the same question :). Thanks
I would love to see a video of how to properly wire up a 3 or 4 pin fan to an RPi There are so many videos of diff methods but I would really like to know if things like mosfets or resistors are needed
I wish these tests also included the execution time of the benchmarks. It would help demonstrate how long the Raspberry Pi spent in the throttled state.
When the cooling solution is bigger than the device it should cool. (j/k, I love your videos.) With a single Kintaro aluminium passive heatsink I'm having pretty remarkable results not surpassing 55°C at full load (Arctic MX-4 as thermal compound) on my Raspberry Pi 3 model B, just what I need for my portable project - it can't draw too much current out of the li-ion batteries. Only drawback is that it has to be mounted with screws through the same holes I need to mount the Pi where it has to go. Solution: craft my own heatsink from spare heatsinks scavenged from old video cards, and secure it with thermal adhesive. That's the best solution I can think of at the moment.
There's no comparison to a boxed-in product like an XBox here -- in an open rig the fan is simply moving air through the vanes. And I know from tests -- there is no temperature difference from push or pull.
The large heatsink's passive cooling ability was impressive. I shall most likely use a similar setup for my Orange Pi PC+. Where did you get the copper? Thanks.
The copper came from Amazon; I searched for "3mm copper plate", and managed to get a piece 50x50mm. Searching today on Amazon I first found a 100x50mm piece; amzn.to/2rUkwG8 But there may well be smaller bits. I looked at this in more depth -- cutting it and such -- in this video: ruclips.net/video/1AYGnw6MwFM/видео.html
I'm trying to learn more about what parts I should look for when trying to get my RPi3B+, and your channel is teaching me a lot. This video was specially helpful, and made me believe that SHS plus the smaller fan are a good enough team for my needs while saving up space. Thanks for that!
Knuckles the Echidna Dude, add a fan. My Nespi with heat sinks and 30mm fan runs around 47 c. Even under load. If noctua made a 30 mm fan, I’d be using one. The pifan is a usable fix. A bit loud and needs proper mounting, otherwise it will vibrate and sound like a weed whacker. Also get a copper heatsink for the bottom chip.
If the server room is ”hot” then something isn’t right. Server rooms needs some kind of cooling installed, blowing around warm air doesnt’t do very much. But if by server room you mean a room at home where you keep a server that’s another thing :)
For a lot of digital electronics, engineers usually assume that the temperature rise (delta T) you see above your current ambient temp will apply at higher operating temps as well, within reason. So if you see a 15 degree rise in your system when ambient is 25C, you can be pretty confident you'll see the same 15C rise if ambient is at 50C, assuming your system is designed with reasonable airflow, all the parts are still in there listed operating range, and you don't have local hot spots likely to cause thermal runaway. This assumption works well 95% of time. Measured temps are usually within a couple of degrees of where you would expect them to be, and that difference may be due to slight changes in the test setup and the accuracy of the thermocouples. That doesn't absolve the engineers from testing the circuits at the top of their listed temperature range to insure an unexpected problem doesn't crop up. If you're building a power amplifier with large discrete transistors however, much of the power may be dissipated in individual devices. Bipolar transistors tend to increase gain with increasing temperature (which increases power), and you could risk a thermal runaway problem. As such, the constant delta T assumption should be checked more carefully.
Cynthia is right, measuring the ambient temperature is enough to express a delta over ambient temperature. A lot of publications use the Delta T to compare cooling solutions rather than the measured absolute temperature.
Thanks to your videos I finally realized that an efficient cooling solution is indeed mandatory for the Raspberry Pi 3. And that the puny little heatsinks some manufacturers put in their kits are laughable at best. It seems that just putting a fan over the standard heatsink makes a huge difference, so I would say that to have a decent cooling system with a relatively small heatsink you have to have a fan. If not, heatsinks have to increase in size. Oh and thanks for the sysbench tips!! Testing my system right now. I also discovered that the "temp_limit" option in /boot/config.txt works pretty well.
Thanks to make this video. Thinking a microprocessor can work without any problem over 100 °C (at 170°C the internal solder are destroyed) I think you can use your Raspberry without any additional heathink safe.
I don't know of any microprocesor at works at anything close to 100 °C! :) Somewhere between 70 and 85 most chips will cease to function, or experience a very short life span.
All Intel cpus run up to around 100 degrees, the 4700MQ for instance thermal throttle at 99 degrees (C). Almost all modern laptops and Macbooks run at this temp under load. Somewhere from 85-99.
I've never actually seen a CPU fail in years of answering questions on broken PCs. The worst I've heard was a 8350 that was such a bad bin it had to be underclocked to be stable (and was RMAed at that point).
Hi Mr. Computers. I have a suggestion for your script. add time in front of the sysbench command like you would sudo in front of another command, and it will display the time it took to run the in stdout like the temperature does. This way you would easier see how much it throttles or preforms compared to other computers. Maybe there is also a way to display what the cpu clock was as well in a similar way.
looking at the blades the first fan was orientated to pull while the noctua was push, i don't know what effect it would have on the result but it is an added variable that needs to be considered.
Next time you should also add a timer so that it is possible to see if it is thermal throttling/how much it is thermal throttling. The less it thermal throttles, the faster it will complete the test.
I do like that noctua fan setup, especially with the cable management, making it look nice and neat, if you want to use an extreme cooling method, try mounting a Pentium 4 northwood cooler from an old early 2000's Dell on it
😂Haha. When I saw baseline, petroleum jelly came to my mind (that's how it is called in Greek). Nice video. Also you can enable a taskbar object that measures the cpu temperature in real time, while doing the benchmark.
I know this is old but i still reference this video to this day. Love all your vids by the way! I think i have been subscribed for officially 3 years now! i am 13 and im pretty certain i subscribed on this day when i was 10. I actually did not know that there was the GPIO pins that tap directly to the micro USB port. Thanks for the info! I salvaged an old PC fan and cut off some female ends of some GPIO wires and attached them to the positive and negative wires. Works great!
Your 'by the magic of film-making' is such an awesome catchphrase :)! I really appreciate all the hardwork you do. Keep on keeping on, Sir. Best of wishes from an awe-struck subscriber from Pakistan.
Passive cooling with a large copper heatsink would be best as it will conduct the heat way from the die more efficiently, but if you become obsessive about getting the temperature then water cooling is really great. Back in the old days of Athlons I was water cooling my PC components and achieved an impressively low 2 degree rise above ambient temperature rise. Compared with a 50 to 70 degree C temperature rise using the OEM supplied heatsink and fan kit. Not only than but water cooling was so much quieter. Water cooling is perhaps less practical for something so small unless planning to build a cluster of raspberry PIs and off the shelf plumbing parts could be utilised in copper. Anyway, great video. Never realised just how hot the CPU SOC gets. Now going to fit a heatsink to mine.
Hey Chris you're videos are great man. I really appreciate what you're doing here. Anyways I just wanted to say that I'm not sure why you say that people have trouble getting their Pi 3B+ up to 1.6GHZ as long as you have great cooling. I must've hit the silicone lottery with mine because I have been running mine full tilt at 1.62Ghz for weeks now. The response time and loading time are a 1/4 of what they were at the beginning thanks to your videos.
I think I know what's next. An extreme overclock video that overclocks it to 1585 mhz. Because I overclocked my model B to 1385mhz and my ram to 635 mhz. I didn't overclock GPU. It didn't want to overclock.
The big heat sink appears to performed as well if not better than the smaller one. Indeed even better than the small heat sink and small fan combination. This may be the economical way to go. Just add the copper spacer (could an aluminum one worked?). No power connection/draws to worry about. What was the cost of this heat sink? Regardless of the temperature, we'll always be big fans of these interesting videos.
Liquid Nitrogen should get you there, failing that stand in a walk in freezer ;-)
Great video as always Chris. Love your SBC videos.
RoboNuggie I haven't tried the freezer but I did try using and old beer fridge putting the Pi inside and insulating the gap for the wires to come out , it made very little difference about 3°c all in all so just put beer back in the fridge and called it a day
lol, brilliant Mark...a win-win situation really:
Pi = Cooler --> Drink Beer (shame to let it warm up)
Pi= Not much cooler ---> Put back in fridge, drink beer later...
Huzzah!
i would just dual sided thermal tape to put directly the big heat sink on the rpi.
with noctua fan.
would be perfect.
RoboNuggie
So damn cool..
Am a software guy (CS) how can I start learning to program FPGS and use VHDL ... do I need to learn anything else before that ....
Can I get into Arduino immediately without taking other courses
RoboNuggie hahaha or sent it to space 😁🤣
I discovered ExplainingComputers on RUclips about a year ago when I was first interested in Raspberry Pi. Now I find myself trying to watch the backlog of 10+ years of Chris Barnatt's videos any time my wife and kids are busy binging on Netflix. Today I discovered a whole list of his books available on Amazon!!! Thanks Chris, for sharing your knowledge and experience! You really make the best videos on RUclips!
When it comes to heatsinks, I always go by the theory of making sure to have copper touch the CPU/GPU and then lead that copper into some type of aluminum. In my experience it's usually some type of aluminum fins. I noticed a huge difference when I first did this with using an all aluminum heatsink and then switching to one where copper touches the chip and leads off into aluminum. There's actually some physics behind this as copper absorbs heat much quicker and aluminum's ability to spread out and dissipate heat. I think that's how it works anyway, but it definitely makes a huge difference with the type of metals you use in regards to touching the chip to be cooled and so on.
This is truly amazing seeing a pi reach maximum performance while remaining at idle temperatures!!!
great job on the cooling!!
Nice
The fan is a good solution. Im using it for the SBC projects, mostly from small netbooks, and Im also using the small heat sink. Last one was for my godson, when I fitted the SBC in a toy car, and the fan on the roof. He is using it for gaming purposes, and the temperature never raises above 60 C.
Anyway, the final combination looks impressive. If you ever do decide to put such a massive radiator on the Pi, consider overclocking the CPU, and testing the results how far you can push the Pi limits
This is the most helpful stress testing video for the Raspberry Pi I have seen on RUclips. Excellent and well thought out with clear repeatable information. Thank you.
Thanks. Look out for the follow-up using a Pi 4B -- today! :)
I love the experience you make us live. Thanks.
Wow that's amazing that the idle temperature with no heatsink or fan is higher than the temperature the Pi had after the test with the LHS and the fan
Absolutely amazing! :D
And a great observation -- I wish I had spotted that in the video!
Thanks! xD
Fantastic video on cooling the too hot from the oven pi down to a reasonable temperature, I especially like your little script for testing the temps and have promptly pirated a copy for myself. In fact all of your videos that I have watched have been very well done, easily understood and included enough of a back story to put everything into context without adding gratuitous fluff. Excellent job and please keep up the good work, I very much appreciate all that you put into your videos.
Thanks for your kind feedback.
Cant wait for raspberry pi 4B 4gb ram to be tested with extreme cooling like this :D
That will happen!
Hypetrain is rolling
Please try a peltier 😀
I'm testing it with a 115W TDP Cooler that is supposed to cool i7s and Ryzens this weekend, to kick off the blog I'm launching after that. Try googling "Raspberry Pi 4 Arctic Freezer" mid August. Going to hook up a Pi with an SSD, an Arctic Freezer 7 Pro, Noctua NF-B9 and Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut paste, then bench the temps with and without overclocking in hardware hungry Retropie games like Perfect Dark (N64), Shen Mue (Dreamcast) or Monster Hunter Freedom (PSP).
@@ExplainingComputers now the 8 GB!!
Thanks for the experiments. Superb, crystal-clear photography as usual.
Ask Linus tech Tips to do liquid cooling on Pi.
They don't care about anything that costs less than a gtx 1080.
People have done this already, it's not worth it, it's actually worse than a fan and a heatsink lol you can really only pull a .2ghz more out of it, so really what's the point? lol
@@bologna3048 i hope the foundation next gen pi will not come with factory locked processor.
@@minepro1206 unless it's droppable.
Bobby Bologna actually water cooling PCs works better than fans
Very , very Interesting .Since one hour , i was looking for information on the heat dissipation of the RPI and it was stressful to read debilitated forums. Nothing like an excellent demonstration video pedagogical. Thanks a lot
That's it, i'll build one for myself. My Pi3 started showing the temperature icon while using Ubuntu Mate. And as always, thanks for the awesome content!
And I did adapt an aluminum heat sink! I was surprised at how hot it gets while doing unattended upgrades just after booting Ubuntu Mate. I wish there was a way to attach a picture.
I bought a Noctua NF-A4x10 5V fan (10mm high) and placed into a home made frame facing downwords just 2mm above a small heatsink as showed on the video and a small heatsink on the 2 Gb memory chip. The airstream is blowing out from the frame. Now the Raspberry Pi4b is hoovering around 49 to 50° C at full load and 35° C on idle with an ambient room temperature of 21.5° C
Nice review :) I like the small heat sink and Noctua fan combination it seems a versatile and fairly robust solution. At some point in the future would you consider revisiting this topic with the same solutions and use the stress or stress-ng utility to see how well the cooling continues. I appreciate the number of combinations that the stress tool can provide might be a little daunting, therefore configuring a load that sits at load average of 8 over 1 minute would work well. I use these tools occasionally to see how well our scheduler is supporting my Linux audio components to prevent audio drop outs.
I think I like the passive cooling with the big heat sink. The cooling was satisfactory with no extra power consumption although it bit bulky. Great video.
I could not stop LOL that big cooler on that little Raspberry Pie
thank you
I was thinking water cooling, too just as you said it!!! But, I do agree, the middle of the road with the black heat sink and the fan. Great videos I enjoy them.
Thank you , Dr. Barnatt, for this interesting, ambitious, practical, and useful research effort you have done for us. It has indeed helped me to decide how to best cool my various RPi contraptions. It would also be a truly wonderful world if all those commentators who are suggesting to you that you undertake to do many alternative research variations, would themselves instead do them for us, and then offer up their professionally-presented results to the rest of us, entirely free-of-charge as you do. In that case I could continue to enjoy the benefits of all those efforts without actually having to do anything myself. A wonderful world indeed!
Extreme: now that’s an understatement!
Delid the pi, and use liquid metal with a Peltier chip! Do pi-bong cooling, hook it up to a water cooling loop from your well, I love cooling videos! Especially on odd components.
I never thought you could get such drastic changes amazing video thanks again.
Curiously I noticed you directed the airflow away from CPU with the cheaper fan but directed the airflow towards the CPU with the noctua. Was that deliberate? Does it make any difference? Am I asking a stupid question?
Oh right, and thanks for another video.
It is a very good question, and I think an error on my behalf with the smaller fan. :(
ExplainingComputers sorry I was just curious. My Pi case's instructions showed the fan blowing air away from the CPU but I set it up to blow on the CPU, so I wasn't sure if there was some CPU cooling secret I wasn't privy to.
if you have an open air design, i find it better for your fan to blow on the heat sink and if you have a closed case design, for it to pull air off of it. in the end though, the difference is marginal - you're still using the fan to promote airflow and the main difference is where you're going to get dust buildup over time. You should check out PC building airflow videos for explanations on that.
josh blowing away may be more effective, blowing down on a heatsink is known to be inefficient because air will hit the flat bottom of the heatsink. Always make air move across a heatsink so the airflow is unopstructed
not that you'd want to but could you re-run the cheaper fan again I'm curious as to how that'll play out against the noctua
Just as an aside, the accessory care package that comes with Noctua stuff is part of the reason we who like them in our PCs buy them. That fan can be got for about £10 although £13 is more common. There's at least £5 of accessories included in the extension/low noise cables and those silicone mounts.
Good point. :)
Towards the end in fact I wondered how far you would go 😄😄😄 and there you are!
Lovely stuff. I once ventured into overvolting and overclocking a Raspi 2 using a 50W peltier cooler, that had the hot side cooled with a large liquid cooling system. I got CPU temps down to -11C and frost started to grow on the back of the PCB. By some kind of miracle the Raspi actually survived.
It would have been interesting to see the results when using a Pi fan without the small heatsink. In other words, to find the minimal configuration to keep the processor below 70C at full power.
Ah, I missed that one. Would indeed be interesting to try given the heat spreader on the Pi 3 B+.
Good idea about using a copper spacers. I just pressed a pretty big hewtsink on mine and could free it touching some other components.. I just crossed my fingers and it still worked when I turned it on so I figured it didn't short anything. I may pick up of of those copper spacers.
Once again another brilliant video , I've personally gone down the water cooling route at a cost of £120 for a pre made kit but only on the RPi 3 and so far I had practically the same results as you had on the large passive cool system you got with the new Pi , I'll let you know my results when I finally get around to upgrading
I am glad not to be the only one here trying these kinds of things! :)
I'd like to see longer term testing, actually saturating the heat sinks with thermal energy. great video!
There are many possibilities with this, imagine the servers you could make, because if you can keep it that cool, making 24/7 NAS servers or Web servers is possible. Pretty awesome video.
It's perfectly possible to keep a NAS or web server 24/7 as-is, with no cooling at all... Trust me, the SD card will be the thing that dies sooner.
I love watching you experimenting with different options with the goal of optimizing until you can't go much futher
You always make such "cool" videos.
Thanks. :)
Amazing Video ! Congratulations ! The last two coolers are amazing !
Would the 30mm fan not be more effective if it were blowing towards the cpu ?
It would make very little difference in an open rig like this -- probably none! :)
Maybe even more effective as it'll be drawing air through the heatsink and pushing it away ! @@ExplainingComputers
Definitely one of your coolest videos yet !
Hi Christopher, I really like your Raspberry PI videos, 2 months ago I got my first PI and I am now waiting for my 4th to arrive, I especially liked your Devastator Robot Videos as I would like to make a FPV Explorer Vehicle.
Keep up the good work :)
Thanks for this. I will return to the Devastator Robot project fairly soon.
I would mount the noctua with airflow drawing up and out on the small heatsink test. It’s more efficient to suck heat out, than to blow cool air in.
Electronics on the Moon were cooled by heat sinks going to Octadecane and Eicosane wax... no air to move! That's per Ron Creel, LRV thermal control engineer... Something to try if I ever find a source...
watched a vid where a fella added a water cooling set up to his pi.. kind of defeated the mobility of the small board with a radiator that was way bigger than the board and with the reservoir and line made the area needed about 3 times as big... He called himself a "hacker" (I do not know what that is supposed to be these days) But he was obviously proud of himself.. A bit overboard I thought.. but this was a helpful experiment thanks Chris...
Will there ever be a day when c.p.u's ( and computers ) are designed to take in localised heat ( including self generated ) and turn it into power which then can be used to cool in a efficient way
Saxon , I like how you think
Just discovered your channel, what a refreshing change! Clear, precise, informative, and intelligently presented videos. Keep up the good work sir!
Cracking video. Just got a pi a few days ago and getting in to the swing of things. Came across this video and it's incredibly helpful. Really well delivered concise info. Looking through your other videos it seems I'll enjoy all the non-pi content you've put out so far as well :)
Welcome aboard! :)
You should take into consideration the time it takes to perform a heavy task, because if the cooling is poor then not only will the temperature change, but it will also begin to throttle, taking a longer time to complete the task.
True.
Couldn't have come at the more perfect time! :) I just purchased 2 of these boards. :) Thanks Chris! :)
Totally want the desktop PC coolers onto the RPi. Also want to see if cooling to ambient is even possible :)
Cooling to ambient is always possible. There is the one caveat that comes with that: WHY?
For Science, you monster. :)
Also, why not? :P
Yeah, yeah, I know.. just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
So, let Christopher do it for you and learn something along the way? ;)
Even if it turns out that there isn't much difference, its always good to see what is needed to keep it steady at a certain temperature. You know, for that "temperature sensitive" application that includes expensive crystals that throw out accuracy if it rises 0.1°C. Or not. It's academic at this point.
As an experienced overclocker, I do have to admit "just for the hell of it" is indeed a compelling argument. as for unstable crystals, well, a TCXO doesn't cost too much, or if you have access to good surplus an OCXO, or if you have a few extra bucks, Rubidium is cheap enough too ;) --... ...-- -.. . -.- -.-. ..... ...- -.. .---
Sweet spot seems to be the fan and SHS. A few quid gets a decent reduction in temps. Seems against the point of buying a Pi if you then have to spend more than half as much again to keep it cool. Shows what can be done though and is very interesting
inspired by one of your video's I did something similar on a android box but used HC 910 thermal adhesive a very strong way to secure the heatsink cheers
Great improvement for lower temperature. Any solution for warming are still pretty decent. Nice job! :D
Wow! the noctua fan actually works... interesting! thank you for this vid i'm learning everyday.
the noctua fan is probably quieter too, they're extremely good fans.
rickster4k Yeah! Noctua stuff works great. If only they'd offer better color choices...
Of course a noctua fan works.
Hey 1974 color schemes can't be beat!
they do offer better colour choices...
Using the small heat sink and fan the overall size wasn't increased considerably, but still resulted in pretty good cooling.
My Favorite CS teacher is Mr Christopher Barranet.
I like Counter Strike also!
You could probably make some form of bracket similar to the kind of mounting solution you see on bigger CPU towers for normal PCs, and mount it to those screws you were mounting those plastic covers onto to hold your large heatsink on to turn the big heatsink/noctua fan combo into a practical solution.
I think the main problem with small heat sink and big fan was that there was death zone under fan motor similar in size to the size of small heat sink itself. You could try puting fan not directly above heat sink but a bit to the right or left. Also to stabilize big heat sink you could just use another DIY plastic frame that would tight fit the heat sink.
In both cases the fan was not directly over the CPU -- in part due to mounting practicalities, but also to avoid the death zone as you note.
Ok, out of curiosity have you considered something like this:
www.amazon.co.uk/Enzotech-Corp-MOS-C10-MOSFET-heatsink/dp/B004CL89D8/ref=sr_1_22?ie=UTF8&qid=1526824983&sr=8-22&keywords=small+heatsink+copper
Or even go wild and try to fit this:
www.amazon.co.uk/SVF152C29M-Processor-Heatsink-Cooler-3VHK9TMN010/dp/B07D5MW85P/ref=sr_1_30?ie=UTF8&qid=1526824983&sr=8-30&keywords=small+heatsink+copper
Could you recommend a tutorial on how I could make the fan turn on and off when the CPU reaches a certain temperate level or maybe control a relay to switch the fan on/off again based on the CPU temp, perhaps this could be one of your future projects to show us how ? Many thanks
Really interesting video, would be nice to see the test with a overclocked Raspberry.
Overclocking makes a HUGE difference when you're using kodi, from stuttering 1080p30 h.265, to no stuttering at all.
interesting to see the difference. thank you from Spain.
47.2
47.2
47.2
47.2
47.2
47.2
47.2
OCD approved
Impressive effort and results, i never heard of Noctua before, so checking them out now.
Just curious, if you tested the (3 rd) with the fan blowing on the heatsink as you did with the Noctua fan just to see how they compare. I noticed that in the video you had the small 30 mm fan blowing up instead of down on the HS.
Great video on the other scenarios though . :)
Edit)- I scrolled down a little further and seen someone ask the same question :).
Thanks
I would love to see a video of how to properly wire up a 3 or 4 pin fan to an RPi
There are so many videos of diff methods but I would really like to know if things like mosfets or resistors are needed
I wish these tests also included the execution time of the benchmarks. It would help demonstrate how long the Raspberry Pi spent in the throttled state.
Fair point.
When the cooling solution is bigger than the device it should cool. (j/k, I love your videos.)
With a single Kintaro aluminium passive heatsink I'm having pretty remarkable results not surpassing 55°C at full load (Arctic MX-4 as thermal compound) on my Raspberry Pi 3 model B, just what I need for my portable project - it can't draw too much current out of the li-ion batteries. Only drawback is that it has to be mounted with screws through the same holes I need to mount the Pi where it has to go.
Solution: craft my own heatsink from spare heatsinks scavenged from old video cards, and secure it with thermal adhesive. That's the best solution I can think of at the moment.
Sounds like you have crafted a good solution.
With the large heat sink covering the wifi chip, did you see any connectivity issues? I would think it could possibly interfere with signal strength.
I did not notice an issue, but did not explicitly experiment with the WiFi to find issues. Good point.
Would have been interesting to see the results of the first 30mm fan mounted the same as the Noctua.
Exactly, I see a ton of RPI3 builds with fans mounted to blow the air outside, you'd figure after the xbox 360 dissaster people learned their lesson.
There's no comparison to a boxed-in product like an XBox here -- in an open rig the fan is simply moving air through the vanes. And I know from tests -- there is no temperature difference from push or pull.
The large heatsink's passive cooling ability was impressive. I shall most likely use a similar setup for my Orange Pi PC+. Where did you get the copper? Thanks.
The copper came from Amazon; I searched for "3mm copper plate", and managed to get a piece 50x50mm. Searching today on Amazon I first found a 100x50mm piece; amzn.to/2rUkwG8 But there may well be smaller bits. I looked at this in more depth -- cutting it and such -- in this video: ruclips.net/video/1AYGnw6MwFM/видео.html
Thanks for that. (A Mr Scissors fan.)
i would just dual sided thermal tape to put directly the big heat sink on the rpi.
with noctua fan.
would be perfect.
I'm trying to learn more about what parts I should look for when trying to get my RPi3B+, and your channel is teaching me a lot. This video was specially helpful, and made me believe that SHS plus the smaller fan are a good enough team for my needs while saving up space. Thanks for that!
nice. they must modify the pie to have 4 small holes for more cooling mounting ideas.
Such holes would be so good!
No freaking space
whats with the little hole on the cpu is it for the bugs to get out of XD
You always make great videos, my Pi must be overheating with it's tiny heatsink and NESPi case.
The NESPi case has mounting for a 30mm fan as I used here.
ExplainingComputers think I'll have to invest in one! Poor Pi, has to work quite hard running emulators.
Knuckles the Echidn
Knuckles the Echidna Dude, add a fan. My Nespi with heat sinks and 30mm fan runs around 47 c. Even under load. If noctua made a 30 mm fan, I’d be using one. The pifan is a usable fix. A bit loud and needs proper mounting, otherwise it will vibrate and sound like a weed whacker. Also get a copper heatsink for the bottom chip.
I like this type of content..thank you for taking the time to show us pie under load with proper cooling. !! Great
good vid, thanks for this, it wd be interesting to vary the ambient temp too, to simulate being iin a hot server room...just a thought
Nice idea -- noted for a future video if I can figure out how to control ambient.
If the server room is ”hot” then something isn’t right. Server rooms needs some kind of cooling installed, blowing around warm air doesnt’t do very much. But if by server room you mean a room at home where you keep a server that’s another thing :)
For a lot of digital electronics, engineers usually assume that the temperature rise (delta T) you see above your current ambient temp will apply at higher operating temps as well, within reason. So if you see a 15 degree rise in your system when ambient is 25C, you can be pretty confident you'll see the same 15C rise if ambient is at 50C, assuming your system is designed with reasonable airflow, all the parts are still in there listed operating range, and you don't have local hot spots likely to cause thermal runaway.
This assumption works well 95% of time. Measured temps are usually within a couple of degrees of where you would expect them to be, and that difference may be due to slight changes in the test setup and the accuracy of the thermocouples.
That doesn't absolve the engineers from testing the circuits at the top of their listed temperature range to insure an unexpected problem doesn't crop up.
If you're building a power amplifier with large discrete transistors however, much of the power may be dissipated in individual devices. Bipolar transistors tend to increase gain with increasing temperature (which increases power), and you could risk a thermal runaway problem. As such, the constant delta T assumption should be checked more carefully.
Cynthia is right, measuring the ambient temperature is enough to express a delta over ambient temperature. A lot of publications use the Delta T to compare cooling solutions rather than the measured absolute temperature.
Thanks to your videos I finally realized that an efficient cooling solution is indeed mandatory for the Raspberry Pi 3. And that the puny little heatsinks some manufacturers put in their kits are laughable at best. It seems that just putting a fan over the standard heatsink makes a huge difference, so I would say that to have a decent cooling system with a relatively small heatsink you have to have a fan. If not, heatsinks have to increase in size.
Oh and thanks for the sysbench tips!! Testing my system right now.
I also discovered that the "temp_limit" option in /boot/config.txt works pretty well.
You sure you're not gonna go all the way and add a water block? Haha!
Add a Peltier cooler to the tests. Thanks for the demonstrations.
Thanks to make this video. Thinking a microprocessor can work without any problem over 100 °C (at 170°C the internal solder are destroyed) I think you can use your Raspberry without any additional heathink safe.
I don't know of any microprocesor at works at anything close to 100 °C! :) Somewhere between 70 and 85 most chips will cease to function, or experience a very short life span.
All Intel cpus run up to around 100 degrees, the 4700MQ for instance thermal throttle at 99 degrees (C). Almost all modern laptops and Macbooks run at this temp under load. Somewhere from 85-99.
My i5 3380m Works at 102°C Without a Problem. It throttles at 105°C.
I've never actually seen a CPU fail in years of answering questions on broken PCs. The worst I've heard was a 8350 that was such a bad bin it had to be underclocked to be stable (and was RMAed at that point).
Toxy , Great to know that you think running a Chip at 100 Degrees is a " good " idea.
❌ Bad Choice though , unless you Don't like your computer
Hi Mr. Computers. I have a suggestion for your script.
add time in front of the sysbench command like you would sudo in front of another command, and it will display the time it took to run the in stdout like the temperature does.
This way you would easier see how much it throttles or preforms compared to other computers.
Maybe there is also a way to display what the cpu clock was as well in a similar way.
Pimp my pi :)
Frankenstein's monster toward the end haha !
looking at the blades the first fan was orientated to pull while the noctua was push, i don't know what effect it would have on the result but it is an added variable that needs to be considered.
You are right -- I got the first fan the wrong way up! :(
Next time you should also add a timer so that it is possible to see if it is thermal throttling/how much it is thermal throttling. The less it thermal throttles, the faster it will complete the test.
True.
I do like that noctua fan setup, especially with the cable management, making it look nice and neat, if you want to use an extreme cooling method, try mounting a Pentium 4 northwood cooler from an old early 2000's Dell on it
😂Haha. When I saw baseline, petroleum jelly came to my mind (that's how it is called in Greek). Nice video. Also you can enable a taskbar object that measures the cpu temperature in real time, while doing the benchmark.
@Julius Songling Ναι!
I know this is old but i still reference this video to this day. Love all your vids by the way! I think i have been subscribed for officially 3 years now! i am 13 and im pretty certain i subscribed on this day when i was 10. I actually did not know that there was the GPIO pins that tap directly to the micro USB port. Thanks for the info! I salvaged an old PC fan and cut off some female ends of some GPIO wires and attached them to the positive and negative wires. Works great!
Excellent video... but what about liquid nitrogen? ;-)
Uhm, now I wonder if I can get some on Amazon! :)
ExplainingComputers that would be awesome!! ;)
It would be nice to see what the temps reach under normal usage of a Pi when using this cooling method
Overclocking? 1.5ghz! Hmm mini water cooler! I must try :)
Your 'by the magic of film-making' is such an awesome catchphrase :)! I really appreciate all the hardwork you do. Keep on keeping on, Sir. Best of wishes from an awe-struck subscriber from Pakistan.
Thanks for subscribing! :)
Very cool, very cool.
Passive cooling with a large copper heatsink would be best as it will conduct the heat way from the die more efficiently, but if you become obsessive about getting the temperature then water cooling is really great. Back in the old days of Athlons I was water cooling my PC components and achieved an impressively low 2 degree rise above ambient temperature rise. Compared with a 50 to 70 degree C temperature rise using the OEM supplied heatsink and fan kit. Not only than but water cooling was so much quieter. Water cooling is perhaps less practical for something so small unless planning to build a cluster of raspberry PIs and off the shelf plumbing parts could be utilised in copper. Anyway, great video. Never realised just how hot the CPU SOC gets. Now going to fit a heatsink to mine.
Go for mineral oil, and theme it as a aquarium lol
With fish? You certainly wouldn't need a heater!
Hey Chris you're videos are great man. I really appreciate what you're doing here. Anyways I just wanted to say that I'm not sure why you say that people have trouble getting their Pi 3B+ up to 1.6GHZ as long as you have great cooling. I must've hit the silicone lottery with mine because I have been running mine full tilt at 1.62Ghz for weeks now. The response time and loading time are a 1/4 of what they were at the beginning thanks to your videos.
You have done well in the silicon lottery to achieve 1.62. :)
we now need the 2 fans the other way to see the difference
Love your methodology, I'd love to see a case that does the sinking job to the whole case too (at least a lid).
Should have tried liquid cooling it.
In a later distro update the RPi 3B+ throttling temperature was lowered to 60'C. It can be overidden by adding a line to config.txt.
I think I know what's next. An extreme overclock video that overclocks it to 1585 mhz. Because I overclocked my model B to 1385mhz and my ram to 635 mhz. I didn't overclock GPU. It didn't want to overclock.
Try overclockimg sdcard.
I did that. 100.25 mhz. The sd card READER. Yeah, it now performs full speed.
30G Put a heatsink on the RAM, take it to 700 Mhz. Also you can overvolt the CPU to get better OC.
The big heat sink appears to performed as well if not better than the smaller one. Indeed even better than the small heat sink and small fan combination. This may be the economical way to go. Just add the copper spacer (could an aluminum one worked?). No power connection/draws to worry about. What was the cost of this heat sink?
Regardless of the temperature, we'll always be big fans of these interesting videos.
Bucket of mineral oil........