Raspberry Pi Launches The Official Case Fan For Raspberry Pi 4

The Raspberry Pi 4 can run pretty hot when it's pushed, which has resulted in a number of cooling options appearing, including custom cases that double as a heatsink as well as fans for pulling heat away from the system-on-chip (SoC). Now we have an official Raspberry Pi 4 fan available for the official case.

The Raspberry Pi 4 case fan only costs Rs. 449 and is being seen as a "stocking-filler product" for the holiday season. It's designed to clip inside the official Raspberry Pi 4 case, but it doesn't come into contact with the board. Instead, the fan includes a heatsink which attaches to the SoC to draw heat away from it, the fan clips into the top of the case and sits directly above the heatsink at a slight angle to create an airflow.

Eben Upton, CEO on Raspberry Pi Ltd., explains how "the power optimization work that we’ve done over the last eighteen months has largely eliminated throttling for an uncased board, operating at the stock clock frequency of 1.5GHz, and in a typical ambient temperature." It's a different story inside a case, though, and especially so if you decide to overclock the chip.

Using the Pi 4 for a heavy workload inside the official case without additional cooling can see temperatures go north of 80 degrees Celsius at stock speeds. Adding the official fan drops that by around 10 degrees and therefore is well worth the investment if you use this case. However, there are better cases available if you regularly work the Pi 4 hard, with Upton mentioning the Flirc case as a good alternative solution.

Other cases that offer additional cooling include Akasa's Pi-4 case with a custom thermal kit included. Or for those of you who wants something nice to look at, Desalvo Systems offers a very expensive solid copper heatsink case, or a much more affordable aluminum version, both of which will help when overclocking the Raspberry Pi 4 as high as 2.1GHz.

Source: PCMag