The plastic lid prevents the Flirc from cooling entirely efficiently, while the hollow pillar can be seen as a cooler spot to the centre-left. Installation is simple, requiring only two protective sheets to be removed from the pad, and four screws to hold the case together.įor those not interested in attractive home theatre setups, though, the Flirc comes with a major drawback: it offers no ready access to the GPIO, CSI, or DSI headers, though all external ports are easily reached. The case itself makes contact with Raspberry Pi 4’s system-on-chip (SoC) via a single hollow pillar and a bundled thermal interface material pad. It’s an understated design, but one which does compromise efficacy: the plastic lid covers much of the surface area of the aluminium case, reducing its ability to bleed off heat. Weight (including one Raspberry Pi 4): 134 gĬooling method: passive heatsink (SoC only)Ĭreated as a means of drawing attention away from Raspberry Pi 4 when used as part of a home theatre installation, the £16/$16 Flirc combines a matte-finish silver aluminium housing with soft-touch black plastic to the top and underside. Flirc Raspberry Pi 4 Caseĭesigned to blend in with home theatre products, the Flirc case is undeniably attractive Specifications Its cooling performance, though, is the weakest. The Raspberry Pi 4 Stand is smart, free, and the only case on test to support more than a single board. Without additional cooling, the Raspberry Pi 4 Stand can’t prevent Raspberry Pi 4 from hitting its throttle point during testing. The Raspberry Pi 4 Stand improves the bare performance, but Raspberry Pi 4 still gets hot under sustained synthetic load. Whether you install one, two, or three boards, the Raspberry Pi 4 Stand is surprisingly stable and not unattractive – and it retains access to all ports and headers. There’s a bonus trick up the Raspberry Pi 4 Stand’s sleeve, too: it holds up to three Raspberry Pi 4 boards side-by-side, making a very cost-effective computing cluster. Previous thermal testing in issue 88 showed this is surprisingly effective, and the Raspberry Pi 4 Stand solves the stability issue which comes from balancing the board on its edge. The stand is designed to improve cooling by aligning Raspberry Pi 4 vertically, rather than flat on a desk. Laser-cut from a single piece of acrylic, there’s no complex assembly required: simply slot the stand between the Power over Ethernet (PoE) header and Ethernet port of Raspberry Pi 4 and pop it on your desk. The Raspberry Pi 4 Stand is about as simple as a case could possibly be. Weight (including one Raspberry Pi 4): 54 g Made by Pimoroni from a single piece of acrylic, the Raspberry Pi 4 Stand is as pure as it gets (and comes free with issue 90 of The MagPi magazine) Specifications Full details of the workload can be found in The MagPi issue 88. This workload, which stresses both the central and graphics processors, runs for ten minutes followed by a five-minute cooldown period. How we testedĮach case was given a heavy synthetic workload to represent a worst-case scenario. You’ll find one, the Raspberry Pi 4 Stand, mounted on the cover of this magazine, while the others in this group test can be found at all major retailers.Įach case here has been tested for aesthetics, complexity of assembly, and its performance in keeping Raspberry Pi 4 running cool. Raspberry Pi 4 – like all the other members of the ever-growing Raspberry Pi family – is entirely usable as is, and plenty of people appreciate the aesthetic of a bare board on a desk.įor those who don’t, there are a wealth of cases – both first- and third-party – available.
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