Comparing Cooling Solutions On A Raspberry Pi 4 - Is Water Cooling Worth It?

Last week, I put together a water-cooled Raspberry Pi 4 and overclocked it to 2.0Ghz. It worked really well, but the system is really big and quite expensive. So, I wanted to compare it to a couple of other Raspberry Pi cooling solutions to see which is the most cost-effective, while still being efficient.

I compared the thermal performance of plain aluminium heatsinks, a compact case with a cooling fan and heatsinks, an Ice Tower, and then the water-cooled Pi.

Purchase Links For Cooling Solutions

Laser Cutter Used - K40 40W CO2

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If you've got any ideas for tech or electronics projects or tutorials which you'd like me to try out, let me know in the comments section.

[adventureridergirl]

I use a 3D printed case for my Pi with aluminum heatsinks and a 60mm 5V Noctua fan on one of my Pis. This setup performs nearly as well as the Ice Tower as far as cooling goes @ 1.9GHz.

[richards]

It’s more expensive but i think that water cooling looks great!

PS can we get some LEDs? :D

[xlazom]

You should try to remove SOC metal cover. I did it wit scalpel and temperatures are even better.

[prestonbruno]

I just put my pie on the windowsill like Grandma used to do

[xConundrumx]

I think the water cooling might be good for a Pi cluster... 1 loop for 4 or 8 nodes. The others don't seem to offer enough cooling and the ice-tower would be too much hassle for multiple nodes.

[micaiaskauss]

Power consumption for each setup would have been nice to see. Also, can you overclock past 2GHz with the water cooling? Can you reach 2.5?

[AveryChow]

I use an acrylic case with a fan for my raspberry pi 4 which runs as a Plex server. for my pi 3 I just use heat sinks as it only runs pihole.

[Stridsvagn]

I'm using a fan case for my Pi, but since it's loud as hell and doesn't perform well, I either switch to a ice-tower case for an ice tower or modify my current fan case to fit a larger and silent fan

[dirkpbroerdirkpbroer]

I use one upright Ice Tower and two low profile Ice Towers to cool my three Raspberry Pi 4 Model B boards, but I use a Noctua NC-U6 with 60mm Noctua Fan to cool a Banana Pi M2 A31s and a HB-802 with 80mm Noctua fan to cool my Odroid-C1 and I will soon use a Xigmatek Porter N881 with 80mm Noctua fan to cool my Odroid-XU4.

[kahloy]

I made a diy radiator go put onto my raspberry pi 3b+ at 1, 4 Ghz, and when stressing the CPU on the four threads I reach 34 °C, was a cool experiment to do ^^

[rochefortpierre]

Great video! I wonder how the Pi 400 would fare if overclocked this way. The Pi 400 has a heatsink that is essentially a big metal sheet spread over the width of the keyboard. It also runs at a somewhat faster speed of 1.8GHz.

[kees-ftyb]

I had used a peltier element. Then regulate it with powersupply till 12v 1 amp, > stresstest > temperature kept below 38 degrees. I use now alu cooling block with ribs and on top 2 40mm fans on 3.3 v, so slow speed, and it stays below 50 degrees on full stress, or at 37 degrees at normal use

[sensorequipment]

I use CooliPi 4B in passive mode. At 23˚C ambient temp, I get at max 48˚C with the Pi overclocked to 2350/750/550MHz (CPU/GPU/core, respectively). Send me an address to deliver one to your door for comparison. No strings attached, just fair review.
Use 8GB units, because they have 50% higher PMIC frequency (tahn 1/2/4GB ones), effectively delivering 50% more juice to the 1V rail.
FYI, denote an ambient temp in your graphs, because that adds offset (yeah, the ambient temp one) to every run.

[LeftJoystick]

The fan case was run at full speed yeah? You can also run the fan at a slower speed to reduce noise by using pins 1+6 on the GPIO (rather than pins 4+6).

[JamesRuleGR]

Awesome project. I have used the "whiny little fan in a case" option in the past. Might have to try a 120mm fan and some heatsinks to make a not-noisy solution.

[cloakableLIVE]

I wonder if that radiator could keep a cluster cooled. Chain heatsinks together, run into the pump/res combo and the radiator, and see what overclocks you get. It would knock the price per pi down quite a bit, and may well look awesome.

[wezyap]

I use argon one case to cool my raspberry pi 4s, overclocked to 2147mhz for CPU and 750 for the GPU, during normal use (emulation of GameCube, Wii, and Dreamcast) I rarely see temperature above 50 degrees Celcius (the fan kicks in when it reach 55 degrees. so under normal use, it is totally silent and just passive cooled) during stress testing I can reach as high as 55 degrees so the fan starts, but I have never thermo-throttled with this case, even during stress test overclocked to 2147mhz CPU and 750mhz GPU and over-voltage to 8.

[Brandon-nvbh]

I have the 3B+ one with the ice tower overclocked at 1.6ghz on force turbo mode with zram set. I use it as a light pc and occasional 1080p video editing never gets over 41 Celsius but sits at like 35ish

[spuds]

I would like to see your results against the Argon One case. Just to see how it stacks up. I don't think it's as good as the Ice Tower but it should be close.

[iEvlv_]

Use the porous ceramic heatsinks with this set up. They significantly helped my cooling with a basic fan kit