Raspberry is a small computer and whenever I use it as a desktop system to watch something on YouTube or any other simple task. It becomes very hot, sometimes the temperature of CPU reaches to 85 degrees. There are many types of coolers and stock coolers available. Mini heatsinks with small surface area is not enough to do the job properly. Also, when you are overclocking the GPU and CPU to the preferred limits then heatsinks are not enough.
Either we need a big heatsink with good heat absorption constant or a stock cooler like mine one.
My Stock cooler:
This is named as ICE TOWER COOLING FAN. It includes thermal interface material (TIM) pads, mounting brackets and accessories for the raspberry pi 4 and raspberry pi 3 model B/B+, a tiny screwdriver and screws.
A RGB color fan, small radiator and 2 heat pipes with 20mm aluminum heatsink.
Features:
1) Color fan with automatic change in RGB
2) Single stack tower style heatsinks
3) DC 5v power wires (compatible with headers)
4) 5mm copper tube
5) Low power consumption (5v @0.08A)
6) Easy to setup
7) Plug and play
Installation:
First arrange all screws nut and bolts in a line. then mount the steel brackets on Stock cooler with help of two screws.
Get ready with your raspberry pi, mount the brass holders and then tight them properly to the bottom of raspberry.
Here the package includes two thermal pads, so hold them on main CPU and then Align the cooler on place.
Mount the cooler and tight the screws. Power up the stock system using GPIO and let’s get start to play more games.
Thermals after/before stock cooler:
I switched to raspbian OS after windows and testing the system, playing Youtube videos on 1080p high settings in chromium browser. At room temperature-26 degrees celsius.
Without Heatsink- without overclock temp- 40-45 degree Without Heatsink- with overclock temp- 75-85 degree With Heatsink- without overclock temp- 30-32 degree With Heatsink- with overclock temp- 38-43 degree
Means, we can see a huge drop in temperature and a massive performance increment. It locks the temperature at 38 most of the times. My overclocking settings are:
GPU overclock- 600 MHz CPU overclock- 2000MHz Over voltage- 6
Um, the ice tower low profile cooler isn't a stock cooler. It's a great cooler but it's not a stock cooler.