Raspberry Pi 4 Thread - general discussion

[alphanumeric]

Looking at reviews online many people have reported thermal throttling even with a heatink installed. Is this an issue with software or limitation of heat dissapation?

I would think heat dissipation more than software. If this same SOC was in a phone of tablet it would have a heatsink attached. Likely a fairly large one. You can likely mitigate some of it with software, that might cost you some performance though? I'm far from any kind of expert on the software side of it though.

I have a heatsink on mine, 40x30x5mm. I'm seeing 50+ c at idle not doing anything other than displaying my desktop. Ambient air temp was ~24 c

[epoch1970]

Looking at reviews online many people have reported thermal throttling even with a heatink installed. Is this an issue with software or limitation of heat dissapation?

Nice.
Throttling happens when temp inside the CPU reaches some limits. Whether the CPU is adorned with nothing, a lump of aluminium or a birthday cake. Repeatability is a sign of good quality in software.

I'm disappointed nobody mentioned yet liquid cooling or mineral oil...

[Fidelius]

Looking at reviews online many people have reported thermal throttling even with a heatink installed. Is this an issue with software or limitation of heat dissapation?

There's a lot of discussion and information in a separate thread about your question:
Raspberry Pi 4 temperature

[RaTTuS]

my Pi4 air cooled . no heatsink, no case
does
https://pastebin.com/zUbKrrLt

[Technocolour]

An anecdote:

Mine sits in the RPi box it came in, with the top lid and long side opened.

I haven't seen any issues at all since applying the USB firmware update. The room is perhaps 20-25C depending on the time of day. And then it was when running complies in the background while browsing and listening to to music via YouTube.

Regarding heatsinks. If you bungle the application of the thermal medium between the SoC and the heatsink, you may actually get worse thermal performance since the thermal resistance gets so high, and you want a fast energy transport away from the silicon. Add in being on the wrong side of the silicon lottery so your SoC runs hotter than average, and yup, you'll get issues.

[9pi]

The new SD controller is an addition, not a replacement. The Broadcom SDHOST device is now unused as the Arasan SD controller now talks to WiFi.

Is it still possible on Pi 4, eg in bare metal or a non-linux OS, to use gpio alt settings to connect sdhost to the sdcard, or is the sdcard now hard-wired to the new SD controller exclusively?

[jamesh]

This is a great example of WebGL performance on Pi4. Pretty impressive.

https://paveldogreat.github.io/WebGL-Fluid-Simulation/

[jdb]

The new SD controller is an addition, not a replacement. The Broadcom SDHOST device is now unused as the Arasan SD controller now talks to WiFi.

Is it still possible on Pi 4, eg in bare metal or a non-linux OS, to use gpio alt settings to connect sdhost to the sdcard, or is the sdcard now hard-wired to the new SD controller exclusively?

Effectively hardwired. The new controller is SDHCI compliant, so bare metal/alternate OSes should just implement a SD host driver.

[9pi]

Is it still possible on Pi 4, eg in bare metal or a non-linux OS, to use gpio alt settings to connect sdhost to the sdcard, or is the sdcard now hard-wired to the new SD controller exclusively?

Effectively hardwired. The new controller is SDHCI compliant, so bare metal/alternate OSes should just implement a SD host driver.

That's good to know, I have a driver which should work with that.

[american-pi]

This is a great example of WebGL performance on Pi4. Pretty impressive.

https://paveldogreat.github.io/WebGL-Fluid-Simulation/

James that is cool, and preforms beautiful on the Pi4!

[Gavinmc42]

James that is cool, and preforms beautiful on the Pi4!

Now I want to see that on a 4K screen.

Yep, sure beats a triangle, a dot and a line.
WebGL is so going on my list of Pi things to learn now.

[logcabin]

Pi 4 works flawlessly when I can get it to boot, which is about one out of five tries. It gets far enough to respond to a ping, but not far enough to start sshd (so I can't see where it's gotten stuck). I use an external SSD connected to a USB 3 port for the root device. I've reflashed with the new 7/17 bootloader, but the problem remains.

[timg236]

Pi 4 works flawlessly when I can get it to boot, which is about one out of five tries. It gets far enough to respond to a ping, but not far enough to start sshd (so I can't see where it's gotten stuck). I use an external SSD connected to a USB 3 port for the root device. I've reflashed with the new 7/17 bootloader, but the problem remains.

The current bootloader doesn’t touch any Ethernet related registers. When network boot is added it would reset the phy so that may help but for now it is completely under the control of the Linux driver.

It might be worth checking “ethtool -S eth0” to see if any of the many stats registers look weird

[HawaiianPi]

Pi 4 works flawlessly when I can get it to boot, which is about one out of five tries. It gets far enough to respond to a ping, but not far enough to start sshd (so I can't see where it's gotten stuck). I use an external SSD connected to a USB 3 port for the root device. I've reflashed with the new 7/17 bootloader, but the problem remains.

We're going to need more information than what you have provided.

1. Which OS, and how was it installed (clean install, upgraded, copied from another card/drive/system)?
2. Which SSD (and USB adapter, if you're using one) and how was it configured as the root OS drive?
3. Headless, or screen + keyboard and mouse?
4. What are you using for a power supply?

For this kind of troubleshooting a serial console cable is invaluable. I use inexpensive CP2102 adapters from eBay that cost less than $2 (more if you want fast shipping). You can also find serial console cables at most Raspberry Pi resellers. A serial console cable will let you monitor kernel and shell output messages and login without a network connection.


See this post for into on how I configured my Pi4 system to SD-USB boot with / (rootfs) on a USB 3.0 SSD.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... 1#p1502991

[Technocolour]

This is a great example of WebGL performance on Pi4. Pretty impressive.

https://paveldogreat.github.io/WebGL-Fluid-Simulation/

Neat! What's with the grid though? I can't see that on an Android or iPhone?

[kennyc]

Hopefully this is not Too Generic a question, but how much/how important is the speed of the micro sd card an issue on performance?

I just grabbed what I had lying around (probably not the speediest card) to set up my Pi 4 1Gb.

[Gavinmc42]

A1 rated cards are the best, A2's are a waste of money.

[kennyc]

A1 rated cards are the best, A2's are a waste of money.

Here's some further info on thost ratings (I didn't know what they meant til now...learning quickly!)

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/be ... osd-cards/

[bensimmo]

kennyc.
If you are using it as the desktop, there is a large difference, it the slowest part of the process and a fast small file random read&write μSD does wonders.
I've used slow normal class 4s and then class10s, but moving to Samsung EVO/EVO+ * style cards.
or the now A1 rated cards has made a noticeable improvement.
It's most noticeable when you grab an old slow card and use it.

*these cards had the A1 rated speed range before A1 cards became a thing.
A1 specified a minimum rating they should be able to perform, so no matter which brand it is , it should be quicker than a normal card.
But for a bit of datalogging or similar then cheap Kingston cards are perfectly fine. Especially if just at the command line.

No idea for use as server e.g hass.io/openhab, or for TV streaming servers.
I guess they may respond a bit snappier to requests.

But look at the cost when it comes to that. 16/32GB A1 rated cards can be had very cheap.
For £2.84 I grabbed 16GB Kingston Class 10s form 'Amazon from Amazon' cards
Yet 128GB Transcend A1 are £15 at the moment.
SanDisk have been up and down, 32GB A1 being about £6 at the moment of which I also have plenty and the 64GB versions.
All Amazon from Amazon as it easy if there is a problem.

I just didn't need more then 16GB or the speed in my sensor devices, just sending via MQTT and a bit of local logging even few minutes, from Raspbian Lite.

[bensimmo]

A1 rated cards are the best, A2's are a waste of money.

Here's some further info on thost ratings (I didn't know what they meant til now...learning quickly!)

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/be ... osd-cards/

That's a not quite click-bait article.
It doesn't actually tell you anything about the cards, just what the card might be.
There is no testing or actual reviewing, they are just using marketing claims to give.opinion, but really to make you see the adverts or possibly click some affiliate links.

http://www.pidramble.com/wiki/benchmarks/microsd-cards
Has some actual benchmarks on uSD on various Pi.
It not quite up to date and he's yet made it so others can add results. But should give you the idea.
(Aka for a.desktop, then yes uSD matters).

[logcabin]

Pi 4 works flawlessly when I can get it to boot, which is about one out of five tries. It gets far enough to respond to a ping, but not far enough to start sshd (so I can't see where it's gotten stuck). I use an external SSD connected to a USB 3 port for the root device. I've reflashed with the new 7/17 bootloader, but the problem remains.

We're going to need more information than what you have provided.

1. Which OS, and how was it installed (clean install, upgraded, copied from another card/drive/system)?
2. Which SSD (and USB adapter, if you're using one) and how was it configured as the root OS drive?
3. Headless, or screen + keyboard and mouse?
4. What are you using for a power supply?

For this kind of troubleshooting a serial console cable is invaluable. I use inexpensive CP2102 adapters from eBay that cost less than $2 (more if you want fast shipping). You can also find serial console cables at most Raspberry Pi resellers. A serial console cable will let you monitor kernel and shell output messages and login without a network connection.

OS is Raspbian Lite from a clean install. SSD:

ATA device, with non-removable media
Model Number: INTEL SSDSA2BT040G3
Serial Number: BTPR251601WH040AGN
Firmware Revision: 4PC10362
Transport: Serial, ATA8-AST, SATA 1.0a, SATA II Extensions, SATA Rev 2.5, SATA Rev 2.6

Adapter:

Bus 002 Device 002: ID 174c:55aa ASMedia Technology Inc. Name: ASM1051E SATA 6Gb/s bridge, ASM1053E SATA 6Gb/s bridge, ASM1153 SATA 3Gb/s bridge, ASM1153E SATA 6Gb/s bridge

Root drive configured in cmdline.txt with "root=PARTUUID=xxxxx"

It's a headless system using a Canakit power supply for the Pi 4. I tried connecting an HDMI console using an HDMI-microHDMI adapter, but nothing is displayed on the screen.



See this post for into on how I configured my Pi4 system to SD-USB boot with / (rootfs) on a USB 3.0 SSD.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... 1#p1502991

[kennyc]

kennyc.
If you are using it as the desktop, there is a large difference, it the slowest part of the process and a fast small file random read&write μSD does wonders.
I've used slow normal class 4s and then class10s, but moving to Samsung EVO/EVO+ * style cards.
or the now A1 rated cards has made a noticeable improvement.
It's most noticeable when you grab an old slow card and use it.

*these cards had the A1 rated speed range before A1 cards became a thing.
A1 specified a minimum rating they should be able to perform, so no matter which brand it is , it should be quicker than a normal card.
But for a bit of datalogging or similar then cheap Kingston cards are perfectly fine. Especially if just at the command line.

No idea for use as server e.g hass.io/openhab, or for TV streaming servers.
I guess they may respond a bit snappier to requests.

But look at the cost when it comes to that. 16/32GB A1 rated cards can be had very cheap.
For £2.84 I grabbed 16GB Kingston Class 10s form 'Amazon from Amazon' cards
Yet 128GB Transcend A1 are £15 at the moment.
SanDisk have been up and down, 32GB A1 being about £6 at the moment of which I also have plenty and the 64GB versions.
All Amazon from Amazon as it easy if there is a problem.

I just didn't need more then 16GB or the speed in my sensor devices, just sending via MQTT and a bit of local logging even few minutes, from Raspbian Lite.

Thank You!

[kennyc]

Well Yeah, that page was just to explain the different ratings more than a comparison...

here is one of the pages I used to look at actually test results before ordering a couple of cards...

https://havecamerawilltravel.com/photog ... osd-cards/

[webbsmurfen]

Well Cooling is a bit problematic. Do you guys have a suggestion on a case with good ventilation? I was a bit worried to se the case that comes with the desktop kit, its almost air tight when the lid is on



Although it is technically not a fire hazard, I do not like it being very hot, and i dont like the idea to drill a couple of holes in the lid to keep the temp down. Also warm plastic smells bad

[aaronc]

Should we start a seperate thread on what OSes are currently out and supported by the Raspberry PI 4? There's surprisingly few, so I would love to have a space where those interested can provide help to those distributions.

Rasbian 4.2 (Buster): Works, obviously.
Fedora: Has stated that it's on their roadmap for Fedora 31 (October)
CentOS: CentOS 8 is probably coming within a month. I'm honestly still confused here. aarch64 will have a build on day one. Others?
Ubuntu Mate: Confirmed by Wimpy?

This is actually my first Pi because I've always seen them as crippled by slow networking and low RAM, but I would love to contribute to those builds, and/or whatever OSes you would prefer to see running on it.