Friday, August 16, 2019

Raspberry Pi4 Quick Cooling test

After seeing high temperature with resulting CPU frequency limiting I ran a simple test with my wet-dry shop vacuum. Just held the intake over the Raspberry Pi 4 case for around 3 minutes with the vacuum exhausting air flow. It's rated at 34 cubic feet per minute.




Serious "overkill" heat removal for a tiny hobby board, but it was simple enough, parts on hand as it were.

I had set up temperature and CPU frequency data collection with RRDtool (see: https://jspath55.blogspot.com/2019/08/48-hours-with-raspberry-pi-4-4gb.html ) and could view the results right after.

I expected the temperature to drop, and it certainly did, from around 70 degrees C in  quiescent state down to around 35 degrees C in short order. After I shut the vacuum off the readings gradually rose back to the prior levels within 25 minutes.



Next step might be to relocate the Pi4 into a leftover computer case that has a working fan. Or stick a 5 volt fan on the case with a switch.

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