Raspberry Pi 4 temperature

[genodesiful]

Oh cool, so from what I understand, the Pi now supports booting from mass storage over USB by default! That's great, because the SD card holders are painfully delicate! Programming my 3B+to boot from USB before SD holder failure really saved my . Is this different to that? I was able to boot from USB flash dives on my 3B+, but never from an HDD or SSD. Can you do that now?

Also, I found a 20cm USB extender, so now my temporary case's fan is powered by the Pi's onboard USB, and so turns on and off with the board. Very useful. I've broken so many of these by not using cases, that I'm not taking any risks!

I still can't find a case I want to buy, so I'm going to 3D print one with a large (and therefore quiet) USB/GPIO powered cooling fan in a square chassis with screw holes. Maybe one on each end, blowing in the same direction like a wind tunnel! SD, USB and power extender cables will be fitted into the caseing's walls, as well as a GPIO breakout cable, and maybe fibre optic cables going from the "activity lights" baked into the walls.

Has anyone seen this before?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BQAMTRY5SI

On first viewing, I thought it was a "Destroy your stuff for lolz" trolling video, like the "charge your phone with a microwave" one, but I've looked into it, and who'd have thought? Mineral oil liquid cooling that directly submerges electronic devices in liquid is a real thing!

I'm going to try this on one of my Pi Zeros. Getting better-than-fan cooling for almost free, and that is completely silent, seems like a great idea! Linus Tech Tips did a 3 part video of a mineral oil called computer build, and as he was pouring the liquid into the case, all over the motherboard and other components (except for fans which need to remain outside of the oil) I couldn't believe what I was seeing!

This could have excellent applications for SBCs, since they have no mechanical parts... Maybe that's another case I'll considering making, also with all the connections (SD reader, USB, GPIO etc) extended and incorporated into the case chassis walls, so you never have to deal with touching the oil... You could technically even introduce active refrigeration, as long as you were careful to prevent water condensation and drops falling to the bottom of the oil... They could be made extremely cheaply! Just food for thought.

[rpdom]

Oh cool, so from what I understand, the Pi now supports booting from mass storage over USB by default! That's great, because the SD card holders are painfully delicate! Programming my 3B+to boot from USB before SD holder failure really saved my . Is this different to that? I was able to boot from USB flash dives on my 3B+, but never from an HDD or SSD. Can you do that now?

The 3B+ has always been able to boot from USB HDD or SSD - but some adaptors and drives just don't work with it. I have a 3B+ that runs entirely from a 2TB drive with a USB SATA adaptor. No SD card at all. I found the 3B+ to be better than the 3B for compatibility. That HDD/adaptor combination didn't work on a 3B.

Has anyone seen this before?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BQAMTRY5SI

On first viewing, I thought it was a "Destroy your stuff for lolz" trolling video, like the "charge your phone with a microwave" one, but I've looked into it, and who'd have thought? Mineral oil liquid cooling that directly submerges electronic devices in liquid is a real thing!

I haven't seen that video before, but yes, using mineral oil to cool electronics and electrical equipment is a real thing. Many big transformers in electrical substations are full of oil to keep them cool. Also high voltage switch gear sometimes uses oil to provide insulation when they switch over.

[trejan]

Oh cool, so from what I understand, the Pi now supports booting from mass storage over USB by default!

Only the 3B+ SoC has it enabled by default. The newer 3B boards that have the 3B+ SoC also probably have it enabled by default but I've not checked.

The 4 needs a bootloader firmware update which isn't ready yet.

Older Pi boards like the Zero don't support USB booting directly as the internal boot ROM doesn't have any support for it. You can partially work around it by putting bootcode.bin on a SD card. The rest of your install is on the USB drive.

I was able to boot from USB flash dives on my 3B+, but never from an HDD or SSD. Can you do that now?

It is the same mechanism. The problem is that some drives work slightly different or need a longer initialisation time.

I'm going to try This could have excellent applications for SBCs, since they have no mechanical parts... Maybe that's another case I'll considering making, also with all the connections (SD reader, USB, GPIO etc) extended and incorporated into the case chassis walls, so you never have to deal with touching the oil...

The mineral oil will get everywhere and start wicking up cables. You need to take special precautions when using oil immersion cooling because of this. I expect it to be a leaky disaster with a FDM 3D printed case. Oil immersion cooling isn't practical unless your situation absolutely needs it e.g. high voltages. Any PC builds using it are doing it for show purposes.

The oil is just to transfer heat from the device BTW. You still need to cool the oil itself if your device generates enough heat to raise the temperature of the oil significantly. You'll eventually get a fish tank full of hot oil and very poor cooling for the device inside.

[bjtheone]

The Pi is very unsuitable for this. As mentioned the oil is a heat transfer device. Pump it through a chiller and away you go. However either you have to seal all the ports (good luck with that) or deal with oil wicking up the cables if you just submerge the Pi in a vat of oil, plus you would need extenders on everything.

Beyond the weird factor, it is totally unnecessary. Easiest option a fan or heat sink case, next up a large heat sink, next up naked PCB, vertical orientation. Basically everything except closed case works fairly well.

I am seeing 40-44 C, horizontal mount in case with a fan. Have chromium with 12 tabs open (some active update), Slack, XChat, Spotify, and Calibre, running. Firing up Youtube takes it up to 46-48. Happily runs Kodi and youtube fullscreen.

[jamesh]

Oh cool, so from what I understand, the Pi now supports booting from mass storage over USB by default! That's great, because the SD card holders are painfully delicate!

Really? I've never had a problem with the SD card slot in 7 years, and that a lot of plugging in and out. Only time I had a physical problem in that area was when I lent on a board and snapped the SD card in half. The connector was fine...

[alphanumeric]

Most of the broken card holder posts I've seen were the result of not removing the card, before trying to remove the Pi from a case. The card edge hooks on the case and the card and or holder gets broken in the process.

[DougieLawson]

There was the broken slot problem with the original RPi1B (fixed with a clothes peg).

There was the push in, push out holder on the B+ & 2B where it wouldn't latch (fixed with an elastic band from the postie).

After that was replaced with the push in, pull out on Zero, 3B, 3B+, 3A+ and 4B the physical damage by failing to remove a card before removing a case is the only remaining risk. The damage can include tearing the slot off from the circuit board.

[alphanumeric]

Now that you mention it, I do remeber seeing issues with the original (non Micro) friction fit SD card slots. Loss of connection on some pins or something? I never owned a Pi with that card holder.
And some issues with the click in, click out, slots. I have some Pi's with those, A+'s. Working fine for me after years of use, but I don't remove those cards on any kind of regular basis. I have a friend who had the slot on one of his refuse to click and lock the card in. He had to tape it in place. A 2B I think? Even so, with all the Pi's sold, I don't think it was ever any kind of wide spread issue. Best guess is a bad run of holders from a manufacturer or something?

[travellingkiwi]

I have more than a dozen R-Pi's. Original (256MB RAM), Pi 1 with 512MB. Pi 2's and 3's. 3B+'s with POE and now Pi-4's (4GB). I've never had an issue with broken hardware apart from a Pi-1 (512MB) with an ethernet that doesn't work.

I have an original broken POE HAT that a dodgy amazon seller sold me after they were fixed (I never got around to sending it back). Apart from that the biggest problem I have is broken SD carsd (And SanDisk now inform me that the lifetime warranty on the SD Ultras is void if you use them in an R-Pi. You have to use the (more expensive) white Extreme cards

Those are really the only issues I've ever had. None of the older Pi's have had temperature issues despite the abuse I put them through.

As for the temperature issues themselves on the 4. I have a Pi-4-4GB sitting above my HW cupboard with a POE HAT and a zWave Razberry daughter card (Via extenders). The USB firmware fix has NOT been applied to this one. It's running OpenHAB 2.2 (Java app so quite a pig on CPU and memory) and have never had an issue with overheating. Even over the summer just gone where temps here got up to mid to late 30's.
Yes you can hear the POE HAT fan kick in now & again. But it's not continuous and you can tune the hysteresis if it really annoys you. The default kick-in temp is quite low and the turn off not far from it.

[oicfar]

For my Raspis (10 at the moment -> 2x Pi 3B+ and 8x Pi 4 B) I'm using this

71g83ctkcYL._AC_SL1500_.jpg (220.84 KiB) Viewed 2051 times

61y+S3ClaXL._AC_SL1000_.jpg (66.15 KiB) Viewed 2051 times

cases. There is an 30x30 mm fan. On max speed the temperature ist between 36-46°C (nothing to do) and 60-68°C (all 4 cores at 100%).

And on Pi 4 as this:

20191102_204247_HDR-01.jpeg (188.18 KiB) Viewed 2051 times

fan. Max. temperature (sysbench on 4 cores for 1 hour) ist 37-38°C.

[Vanx]

Hello guys! I’ve bought a passive “heat sink case” like some of you did, included I found a generic grey thermal pad, and the version of the case is one of the firsts with soc and ram contact points merged and not covering perfectly. My problem is that once screwed in, the pads make good contact, but even leaving only the CPU thinner thermal pad, the PCB get pushed and bent a little bit. Is yours the same? What could I do? Is it ok to place the pad only on the soc leaving the ram alone? Should i find a thinner pad? I’m now trying to squeeze the included one to get it flatter.

[dustnbone]

If there's really no clearance then you could try using a thermal paste compound instead of the pad.

[renice123]

If the board is deformed, then ask to replace your new case. You can ruin the computer board and the game is not worth the bonuses. If you do not want to replace a bad radiator-case, you can take a file or any device to grind excess metal on a defective case. Grind carefully and then polish. Cast metal cases are often defective. Unfair manufacturers do not eliminate defects at the factory, so you have to do it yourself.
You can also replace the thermal pad with a thinner one than was supplied.
But you can not expose the circuit board with electronic parts to deformation: you can not bend it, load it with weight, twist it and so on.

[Vanx]

If the board is deformed, then ask to replace your new case. You can ruin the computer board and the game is not worth the bonuses. If you do not want to replace a bad radiator-case, you can take a file or any device to grind excess metal on a defective case. Grind carefully and then polish. Cast metal cases are often defective. Unfair manufacturers do not eliminate defects at the factory, so you have to do it yourself.
You can also replace the thermal pad with a thinner one than was supplied.
But you can not expose the circuit board with electronic parts to deformation: you can not bend it, load it with weight, twist it and so on.

Thanks! There is half a mm on the cpu, and the main problem was with the ticker RAM pad, so I removed the latter and tried to stretch a little the cpu pad before placing the top case, of course it had to place a little pressure on the silicone pad but I read this is normal right? To fill the gaps... When I was screwing in the board seemed pretty firm, so no evident bending, just a little of pressure needed to spread the pad, the PCB seemed not perfectly straight even before placing it between the aluminum shields (when mounting it only the two screws near the front edge of the pi where a little raised to start from). It seems fine and the idle temps is around 41-43, and after running the stress test for 30 min it maxed at 60 degrees

[Imperf3kt]

Curiosity beckons.
How do you possibly bend the board while installing it in a case? The amount of force required to do so is quite large, you'd literally have to force the top down so hard your hands would hurt long before the Pi bent.

Or is it a matter of once it's screwed together? Even then you'd still feel pressure before the case was fully enclosed.

I would not trust a Pi that has been physically bent. It's not an iPhone 11, it isn't designed to be folded.