Cooling The Raspberry Pi 4 With The Fan SHIM & FLIRC For Better Performance

[wujj123456]

Are you going to be picking it up while it's running games or some other heavy load? If it's running close to idle, I'm sure it will not be too hot.

Not on purpose. I just put my Pi on desk. I want to make sure someone accidentally touching it won't be hurt/surprised in case it happens to be running something heavy. For example, moving it around when cleaning the desk. I guess it's not really a big deal. The case probably won't have time to heat up that much unless I intend to run my Pi at 100% often.

[coder]

Radio and a metal (aluminum) case usually is a critical combination. I couldn't find something WLAN related in the Flirc FAQ.
Does someone know if Wifi performance with the Flirc case is ok?

FWIW, one side of it is just plastic.

[darkbasic]

Can you please retest while overclocking?

[cobratbq]

Is nobody bothered by the fact that these diagrams don't start at 0? I completely misread the diagrams at first. Maybe it's me

[sykobee]

FLIRC case looks good, if you get the RPi4. I'd like to see if it helps with overclocking.

But let's admit it, most uses of a Pi don't push it often, so the default configuration is fine. But those cheap stick-on heatsinks are clearly pointless.

Note there isn't much difference, performance-wise, between the A72 and the A73, at the same clock. The A72 is wider, the A73 is more optimised (smaller core).

But the N2 is a good board if you need its features.

[tuxd3v]

But the N2 is faster, being based on A73 cores, while the RockPi64 uses A72 cores. ODROID made a N1 that was based on the same SoC as the RockPi64, but they cancelled it.

Also, I don't know why you're comparing DDR speeds vs. CPU clock speeds. The N2 runs its A73 cores up to 1.8 GHz and its A53 cores at about 1.9 GHz.

Cortex A73 is only slightly more efficient than Cortex A72, but the 200Mhz difference in bigger cores matters..
I am comparing RAM speeds because they matter, in heavy workloads..

The N2 simply doesn't need a fan. It's manufactured at 12 nm. When running all 6 cores at sustained max load, using the stock, passive heatsink, it plateaus around 73 C, which seems to be below the point of throttling.

Have a good read through their benchmarks (including their N1 comparisons, should you want to compare it with RockPi64).

You can't compare it to Rockpro64, simply because it doesn't have the features Rockpro64 has..
Rockpro64 has more peripherals, faster CPU, faster Ram, and a full pcie x4..

N2 is half the node size, that helps, but sooner or later it will throttle, because of self heating, no matter what..
I ran a Rockpi64, for 14 months @2Ghz, full throtle, at around 55C, completely stable..
Try do that with the N2..

Clearly, I don't agree with your conclusion.

Well,
You have the option to disagree,
But even tough that s922x is half the node of RK3399,
AmLogic is knows to cheat, pushing up some cores until they achieve a degree of temperature, then throttling them down..

This behaviour added to the fact that, it has relatively slower Ram, makes the idea, not useful..
Also, with a Soc beneath, the heat doesn't spread.. and Rockpro64 has a full size pcie x4 slot, with a lot more connectivity..

They are different boards..

Even RockPi4 has pcie M2,
But it also suffers from the same problem N2 suffer( CPU in Bottom of the Board.. )..

[George99]

Is nobody bothered by the fact that these diagrams don't start at 0? I completely misread the diagrams at first. Maybe it's me

Talking about temperatures and zero is always difficult besides absolute zero i.e. 0K of course. I think it's reasonable for such measurements to start at room temperature in the diagrams.

[mvdvarrier]

QUOTE=wizard69;n1119577]I don’t mind that RPI 4 comes without a heat sink. What is problematic is that Raspberry PI did not provide for a proper fan header or other solution for users to leverage. [/QUOTE]

Like salt on assault, there are no provisions on the PCB to physically attach a heatsink. The best and most effective way to attach a heatsink to the chip is mounting it using clips or screws. that is not possible here. I am from India. In summer the atmospheric temperature will climb to 40-42 Degree Celsius here. It is not practical to avoid some kind of cooling. But the FLIRC case and ICE Tower cooling set is very expensive. The 16$ FLIRC case will cost here about 70$ after shipping, VAT, GST and retailer's cut. Hence I found my own way ;
Plucked a brass heatsink from old &faulty Motherboard and attached it to the CPU using cheap white heat sink compound. The system is kept open. When idle after about 20 Min usage the temp settled around 50-60 and then I stretched the cpu with a script

#!/bin/bash
clear
#nice little loop

for f in {1..7}
do
vcgencmd measure_temp
sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=25000 --num-threads=4 run>/dev/null 2>&1
done

vcgencmd measure_temp

Without any fan the temperature readings as follows;
56, 65, 69, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78.
No throttling occurred.
With a ceiling fan with average speed, the readings are;
52, 58, 57, 59, 60, 59, 59, 58.
I am now using the pi 4 as my Desktop las 2 weeks. It found quiet stable with this set up
So I am not going to buy any expensive things for this.

[cobratbq]

Talking about temperatures and zero is always difficult besides absolute zero i.e. 0K of course. I think it's reasonable for such measurements to start at room temperature in the diagrams.

Well, that makes sense, except that the starting value is arbitrary (32, 37, 38, 39) and seemingly dependent on the measurements. On the other hand, I see your point of starting from 0 doesn't mean that much. I'm mostly bothered about the the skewed impressions of relative difference between the lines. Anyways, good point, though.

[andreano]

Let's not forget to appreciate that some level of power management is actually implemented, which is why it can work without a heatsink at all.

Decent drivers, hereunder thermal throttling, is a luxury you don't always get with even expensive SBCs. My WandPi managed to overheat when idling, despite the generous heatsink that came with it. I measured 107C (heatsink temperature) with IR thermometer.