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!
You’re going to need a better heatsink case that comes with a better fan.
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.
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.
😂 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?
@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.
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
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
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!
That’s epic. Mine is running at around 55°, so I’d call that a certified win. Congrats!
I’ve just bought a 5 with the fan case, and it’s kind of ridiculous that it needs active cooling while under no load. I’m sort of disappointed how much power it draws. The whole point of a pi is supposed to be that it’s tiny and uses almost no power. My previous pi3 would be cold while idle and only ever got “warmish” under load and no active cooling.
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
