If you have been looking at cases for your shiny new Raspberry Pi 4, I am positive you have come across ones that either include heatsinks, a fan, or both. The question is, is that just a needless extra cost, or does it really help?
Well I ended up buying a case that came with both, and decided to test if it was worth running the fan or just keeping it off.
![](https://i1.wp.com/codecalamity.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/20190830_093344.jpg?fit=740%2C540&ssl=1)
Methodology
Now as this was my own hardware, I wasn’t about to undo stress onto it. I decided to arbitrarily run the stress tests for two minutes each, which actually turned out to be pretty good to allow the core to heat up and even out.
I would then wait for the temperature to return to idle before attempting another run. This was all run in a 26.5*C room. I followed this guide to run the programs stress
and cpuburn
.
No Fan, No Heatsinks
Open air | Enclosed | |
idle | 52 | 54 |
stress | 78 | |
cpuburn |
So by itself, as long as the raspberry pi is in the open air, it seemed to just hang in there for the stress test before hitting the 80*C thermal limit. Which, when hit, the raspberry pi will automatically start throttling the speed of the processor to cool it.
![](https://i1.wp.com/codecalamity.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/20190830_155911.jpg?fit=740%2C555&ssl=1)
No Fan, Heatsinks
Open air | Enclosed | |
idle | 52 | 54 |
stress | 75 | |
cpuburn |
We can see that the heatsink helped out minimally when in the open air, but it couldn’t keep up in an enclosed case without moving air.
Fan, No Heatsinks
Enclosed | |
idle | 48 |
stress | 64 |
cpuburn | 70 |
Now that’s a difference! That tiny little fan really does do more than I expected it too.
Fan and Heatsinks
Enclosed | |
idle | 44 |
stress | 60 |
cpuburn | 66 |
Well-well-well, looky there. Putting everything together really does make a difference.
![](https://i2.wp.com/codecalamity.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/20190830_164112.jpg?fit=740%2C555&ssl=1)
Conclusion and Chart
Lets make this a little more digestible with a chart.
![](https://i0.wp.com/codecalamity.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/pi_4_heatsink_and_fans.png?resize=640%2C480&ssl=1)
It’s pretty obvious that yes, both fans and heatsinks help. However, if you have to chose just one, pick the fan any day.