How To Improve Pi 5 Cooling

So I've got an 8GB Pi 5 with the offical Active Cooler and then the Pineberry NVME HAT on top in the Pi52 tall alumnium cooling case and thermals are not great. Looking for guidance and/or recommendations.

I already have the active cooler so I'm all out of fan headers, and I have 3 hard drives plugged in so I'm not sure about powering a whole USB fan.

I saw that Noctua finally came out with their desk fan and thought that may be a perfect solution. I was thinking of just slapping it under the Pi, but I was wondering if this would even make a difference.

Also wondering what the best configuration would be between push/pull & bottom/top or if anybody has better ideas, I'm all ears. Thank y'all!

7 points · 15 comments · view on lemmy.world

15 Comments

AcesFullOfKings@feddit.uk · 2 pts · 2y
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sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al · 2 pts · 2y (12 replies)

You're going to need a better heatsink case that comes with a better fan.

DARbarian@kbin.run · 2 pts · 2y (9 replies)

Do you know of any that fit the NVME top HAT? This was the only one I could find where I was sure it would fit.

sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al · 3 pts · 2y (8 replies)
DARbarian@kbin.run · 2 pts · 2y (7 replies)

This is the exact case I own lmao I guess PiHut doesn't credit the manufacturer (52Pi). I have the active cooler on the Pi. Since I have the NVME top HAT, I didn't think the fan in the top of the case would cool enough with the HAT in the way.

sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al · 2 pts · 2y (6 replies)

😂 okay, well since that's the one you've got. We can work from there. Is it a snug fit in there or do you have lots of room?

DARbarian@kbin.run · 2 pts · 2y (5 replies)

@sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al There's quite a bit of space above the NVME HAT, which is why I thought about buying the default case fan as well, but I only have one fan header. Plus I feel like the HAT would get in the way of any real cooling for the Pi board.

sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al · 1 pts · 2y (4 replies)

Given all the space you've got, maybe you can switch to something like this?

https://thepihut.com/products/argon-neo-5-m-2-nvme-case-for-raspberry-pi-5

DARbarian@kbin.run · 1 pts · 2y

I would hate to make this HAT and yet another case obsolete lol Is the Noctua fan underneath / on top really that pointless an idea? I wouldn't think the official active cooler would be much worse than this

DARbarian@kbin.run · 2 pts · 2y (1 reply)

UPDATE: Got the new Noctua desk fan and slapped it on top of my Pi, seems to have lowered temps by 20 DEGREES. According to my monitoring, I was around 70 before and now I'm around 50. So it seems way more than worth it!

sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al · 2 pts · 2y

That's epic. Mine is running at around 55°, so I'd call that a certified win. Congrats!

Eternal_Dark_1227@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y

Power drill some holes in the RPi official case

DARbarian@kbin.run · 1 pts · 2y

I realize that in all reality I was a fool for not getting the Pineberry bottom NVME HAT so that I could still put an ICE tower on the Pi board, but I'm in too deep now