Comparison, evaluation and recommendation of several raspberry pie 4B shell radiators

Raspberry pie

Background story

I believe many friends will have two questions after starting raspberry Pie: 1. Do you need to increase heat dissipation? 2. What method should be used to dissipate heat? Let’s answer them one by one.

1. Is heat dissipation required?

In the actual network test, the 4 bare board of raspberry pie will soon reach the upper temperature limit of raspberry pie of about 83 degrees under heavy use. After reaching this temperature, it will trigger the raspberry pie protection mechanism and actively limit the frequency of CPU to 600MHz, which will greatly affect the use of raspberry pie. Of course, it may have some irreversible impact on CPU, so I won’t do destructive test here.

2. How should I dissipate heat?

This question will be answered by the whole evaluation.

I looked up some information and found that few of them summarized and evaluated raspberry pie shells. During this time, I spent a lot of money to buy several shells at one go and experienced and tested them respectively. Now I share the evaluation experience and results with you. I don’t say much, just go to the figure above

Test list

The following common housings are measured (the test results are attached with drawings):

Housing 1 (acrylic multilayer)

Housing 2 (red and white ABS)

Housing 3 (black plastic, this is 3B / 3B + housing)

Shell 4 (aluminum alloy armor)

Housing 5 (aluminum alloy armor + fan)

Housing 6 (personal housekeeper + display)

testing environment

Room temperature 26 ° C

test method

1. Daily use experience: including interface plugging, fit, convenience, etc

2. Noise: mobile phone decibel app test

3. Temperature and pressure test: uses-tuiModule and streeModule to record the temperature change and dominant frequency change under pressure test (CPU100%). For the use of this module, you can see another article:Use of raspberry pie pressure measuring tool s-tui。

4. Price: a treasure knows the approximate price range

5. Additional use experience

Test process record

Only the temperature test records of active heat dissipation and passive heat dissipation are shown here

1. Shell 4 aluminum alloy shell, heat dissipation mode: pure passive heat dissipation

It can be seen that when the four CPUs run to 100% in the pressure test, the temperature can still be stabilized at about 67 degrees by relying solely on passive heat dissipation

2. Shell 5 aluminum alloy shell + fan, heat dissipation mode: passive + active heat dissipation

It can be seen that when the four CPUs in the stress test run to 100%, the temperature can still be stabilized at about 54 degrees, and the main frequency of the CPU remains unchanged at 1.5GHz

3. Several other active cooling + heat sink can basically be stable at about 62 degrees, so we can see the advantages of active cooling. However, according to the test results, fan + ordinary heat sink can fully meet the use in extreme cases. As for tower cooling on the Internet, it is not tested here. It is basically unnecessary for daily use.

test result

---

Housing: housing 1 (acrylic multilayer)

Daily use experience:

• Disadvantages:

1. The HDMI interface cannot be plugged to the bottom. You need to manually break off a layer or replace the HDMI plug with a longer tongue

2. The full package design makes the overall size of raspberry pie fat for a whole circle, which is difficult for individuals to accept

• advantage:

Not yet

Noise experience: About 60dB, high noise, poor experience, affecting night rest

Temperature control: pressure test, stability 62 degrees

Price experience: low, about 20 yuan

Bonus:/

Recommendation Index: 0 star, unbearable noise, difficult to plug in, not recommended

---

Housing: housing 2 (red and white ABS)

Daily use experience:

• Disadvantages:

1. As above, HDMI interface cannot be plugged to the bottom;

2. It is difficult to insert the wire at the 40pin row needle port;

• advantage:

1. Easy installation, top cover snap design, a little force can be easily opened;

Noise experience: About 60dB, high noise, poor experience, affecting night rest

Temperature control: pressure test, stability 62 degrees

Price experience: low, about 20 yuan

Bonus:/

Recommendation Index: 0 star, unbearable noise, difficult to plug in, not recommended

---

Housing: housing 3 (plastic housing)

Daily use experience:

• Disadvantages:

1. The fan will not stop working after shutdown

2. Heat sink required

• advantage:

1. Easy installation, top cover snap design, easy to open;

Noise experience: About 60dB, high noise, poor experience, affecting night rest

Temperature control: pressure test, stability 62 degrees

Price experience: low, about 20 yuan

Bonus:/

Recommendation Index: 2 stars, cheap, although there is noise, but fortunately, the wiring is convenient and compact, which is reluctantly recommended

---

Enclosure:Shell 4 (aluminum alloy armor shell)

Daily use experience:

• Disadvantages:

  1. Weight is heavier than others

  2. To install the cable, remove the screws to remove the top cover

• advantage:

  1. 40pin interface is exposed and easy to connect;
  2. No additional heat sink is required, and the whole shell is a heat sink

Noise experience: 0dB, pure passive heat dissipation, quiet

Temperature control: pressure test, stability 67 degrees

Price experience: medium, about 32 yuan

Bonus:/

Recommendation Index: 4 stars, moderate price, prefer quiet and not heavily used wall cracks

---

Enclosure:Shell 5 (aluminum alloy armor shell + fan)

Daily use experience:

• Disadvantages:

  1. Weight is heavier than others
  2. To install the cable, remove the screws to remove the top cover
  3. The fan cable is exposed, which has a slight impact on the appearance

• advantage:

  1. 40pin interface is exposed and easy to connect;
  2. No additional heat sink is required, and the whole shell is a heat sink

Noise experience: About 30dB, low noise, no impact on night rest

Temperature control: pressure test, stability 54 degrees

Price experience: medium, about 38 yuan

Bonus:/

Recommendation Index: 5 stars, moderate price, excellent temperature control, quiet fan and wall crack

---

Enclosure:Shell 6 (intimate partner)

Daily use experience:

• Disadvantages:

  1. Weight is heavier than others

  2. To install the cable, remove the screws to remove the top cover

  3. It needs to be used with ordinary heat sink

  4. It is not compatible with ordinary shells. There are screw posts at the bottom of most shells. They interfere with the screws of this type and cannot be installed. They need to be removed manually (they can be removed with pliers and cut off with art knife). They need a little hands-on ability and can be compatible with the base of aluminum alloy armor shell.

• advantage:

  1. The row needle is led out and marked with silk screen printing, which is convenient to use. There are no other models;
  2. All interfaces are external and easy to plug;
  3. With OLED, you can customize the display content;
  4. Temperature controlled fan, quieter, low temperature or shutdown can stop rotation (programming required);

Noise experience: about 25dB, low noise, no impact on night rest

Temperature control: pressure test, stability 62 degrees

Price experience: high, about 75 yuan

Bonus:

1. Fan with temperature control;

2. With a programmable OLED, basic information can be displayed: CPU, temperature, memory, hard disk, IP address, etc. other models do not have this configuration

3. With 3 full-color LEDs, programmable

4. Provide routines to learn the use of raspberry I2C interface, script startup and self startup settings, python programming, etc

Disadvantages:

1. It requires some hands-on ability to adjust the fan program to be compatible with the system, especially if the system has used I2C, it will toss some, but it’s necessary to toss after the raspberry pie.

2. After the program stops running, the fan is not controlled by default, but you can write a self recovery program to rerun the script

Recommendation Index: 4 stars, with custom OLED, temperature control fan, full-color programmable led, tossing tyrant friends, wall crack recommendation, non tossing tyrants can also find a treasure program.

Welcome to old fellow tie, and this will continue to update raspberry pie, STM32 related articles and knowledge.
Original is not easy, please explain the source.