Raspberry pi 4 canakit fan

For Christmas, I received a CanaKit Raspberry Pi 4 4GB Starter Kit with Clear Case (4GB RAM).

The kit contains everything you need minus an HDMI monitor and USB keyboard/mouse.

It includes the Raspberry Pi 4b (I received the one with 4GB of RAM, but it’s also available with 1GB or 2GB of RAM), heatsinks, a power supply with a removable inline switch, case (I ordered the one with a clear case), case fan, micro HDMI to HDMI cable, micro SD card with NOOBS preinstalled (I ordered the one with a 32GB card), and a USB micro SD card reader in case you need to reload NOOBS on the SD card.

The Raspberry Pi 4 is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand which is amazing considering it has gigabit ethernet, wireless, bluetooth, and support for dual monitors.

The first task was to install the three heatsinks. The documentation wasn’t clear on which chips to install them on, but based on my research, the heatsinks go on the processor, RAM, and USB controller.

Now for the installation of the Raspberry Pi into its case. The case snaps apart into three pieces.

Place the Pi onto the bottom which has numerous small holes in it and feet on the bottom of it.

Snap the middle portion of the case back together with the bottom piece.

I’ve gone ahead and placed the cover on the case, but will need to remove it again to install the case fan.

I researched to determine which direction the fan should go for proper airflow, but based on the results I found it didn’t seem to matter much so I installed the fan label down since that looked better.

Initially, I plugged the fan into ground and the 5v header but ended up moving it to the 3.3v header to make it run a little slower and quieter. I tied the fan wires together in a knot.

This keeps the wires from being too long and gives it a cleaner look.

The SD card plugs in face down.

Upon booting the Raspberry Pi, you’re prompted with two installation options. I chose the Raspbian Full installation option.

If you connect the Pi to the Internet first, you’re presented with more installation options.

The remainder of the installation options from this point forward are self-explanatory but can be found on the “Finishing the Setup” page of the official Raspberry Pi documentation.

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Last year, I wrote a blog post titled The Raspberry Pi 4 needs a fan.

And in a video to go along with that post, I detailed the process of drilling out a hole in the top of the official Pi 4 case and installing a 5v fan inside.

But that solution wasn't great. The fan was a little loud and annoying, and would stay on constantly. And who wants to damage the nice-looking Pi Case by putting a hole right in the top?

Well, the folks over at Raspberry Pi Trading—in this particular case, engineer Gordon Hollingworth, as detailed in his post about Designing the Case Fan—must agree with me that the Pi 4 case needs a fan, because they just started selling the five dollar Pi Case Fan.

The fact that the Pi 400 I tore down last month has a massive heat sink built in means the Pi engineers know how important it is to dissipate heat from the Pi's main processor.

Video: Check out the video that goes along with this blog post:

Raspberry Pi Case Fan - How Loud is it?!

Fan Specs

Some people are interested in knowing exactly what fan is used, and how big it is, so here's an up-close picture:

It looks like this is the AD0205MX-K50 2.5cm 2506 25x25x6mm DC5V 0.13A fan, and from AliExpress, at least, it costs ~$4. It is the 7000 rpm, which according to the spec sheet is the quietest version of that fan model.

Installing the fan

I love how the box has the installation instructions right on the outside. Regardless of how well the fan works, the box designer deserves a shout-out:

To install the fan, pop off the top of the Pi case, line up the Case fan inside the top of the case, and push it in until the tabs click into place. Plug the red, black, and blue wires into the Pi's GPIO header like it shows on the side of the box.

The Case Fan also includes a little heatsink you can stick on top of the system on a chip. If you don't, the Case Fan alone still keeps the Pi from throttling, but spreading the heat using this heat sink makes the fan's job a little easier, so I stuck mine on.

Pop the top cover on the case, and the Pi is good to go!

The fan intake and exhaust are the gaps around the USB and network jacks, and the gap around the microSD card slot and the other ports on the side of the Pi 4, respectively. Read Gordon Hollingworth's explanation about why this was ultimately chosen. It would definitely be better to have actual vents, but the airflow is adequate using this technique to keep the Pi cool using the fan.

Here's a preview of what it looks like on a thermal camera. You can see it still gets slightly warm on top, even with the fan going:

Fan software controls

To support the hardware, a new Pi OS update released on December 2 that made it easy to configure options for the Fan, like which GPIO port the blue wire is plugged into, or what temperature the Pi should reach before the fan is powered up.

I enabled the fan in the Pi Configuration utility, and left the defaults, which are pin 14 and 80 degrees celsius:

If you want to configure the fan settings in the boot config.txt file, the settings are:

Testing the fan

Here's a graph of the Pi running with the fan set to run at 80 degrees during a 20 minute stress test using the Pi CPU stress script I maintain on GitHub.

And wouldn't you know, the fan works!

You can see the point where the fan kicked in and kept the Pi from throttling before it reached 80°C. At no point when I had the fan installed did the Pi throttle its CPU.

I ran the same test without the case fan installed, and the Pi started throttling around 9 minutes into the CPU stress test:

In both cases, the Pi will behave similarly until the set temperature is reached when the Case Fan turns on.

I could compare the Case Fan to other Pi cooling solutions I tested before, but I don't think that's too important here. The Case Fan is built to do one thing: keep the Pi 4 from throttling when it's inside the official Pi 4 case. And it does that.

So it's a good improvement, but the most important thing for me, especially since I'm used to the blissful silence of my fanless Flirc cases, is how loud the fan is when it runs, and how often it runs.

How loud is the fan?

To test how loud it is, I used the dB Meter app on my iPhone, and put the iPhone a few inches to the left of the Pi in the case:

A little unpleasant, and it has a high pitched whine that reminds of of the sound you get in an unbalanced audio system with a bit of electrical interference.

In the video Raspberry Pi Case Fan - How Loud is it?!, I also compare that sound to the sound of my 5v 'PiFan' and the blissful silence of a passively-cooled Flirc case.

When you're dealing with fans that cost less than five dollars, you're not going to get some silent noctua-quality fan—you're more worried about controlling the temperature than the noise. But it is something to consider. The smaller the fan, the more likely it has some annoying pitch.

But there is good news. If you set the fan to only come on at 80°C, then it seems to only have to run for 30 to 60 seconds every three to five minutes if the Pi is under constant one hundred percent load.

It cools it down to around 70 degrees, then shuts off until the Pi hits 80 degrees again.

It's a reliable enough compromise that I'd recommend it to anyone using the official case. But if the Pi Foundation plans on making a similar case for the next Raspberry Pi, I hope they consider the thermals in the case design itself, and either build a passive heat sink into the case like the Flirc, or build a fan into the design of the case itself, instead of as an addon.

Conclusion

If you already use the official Pi 4 case, then for five bucks, the Case Fan isn't a bad deal. It keeps the Pi from throttling, and only kicks in under the heaviest loads.

But it does sound a little annoying and makes its presence known.

I'd still recommend using a different case, like my favorite, the Flirc case, or finding other creative ways to mount your Pi 4 so it keeps its cool without a noisy little fan.

Worried about your Raspberry Pi 4 overheating? The CanaKit Raspberry Pi 4 case and Raspberry PI cooling fan is a must have!

I purchased the complete CanaKit Raspberry Pi 4 Start MAX Kit from Amazon (link here). It’s a great little starter kit, easy to get going, and best of all it was same day delivery with Amazon Prime (for those of us who are impatient).

I placed the order, and within 8 hours I received the package and was up and running with the Pi 4!

The PI cooling fan on the CanaKit case for the Raspberry Pi 4 can be somewhat loud once installed, however when doing CPU intensive operations, it’s a must have to keep your Pi cool.

Pi Cooling Fan stats

Originally I left the fan unhooked until I was compiling a linux kernel on the Raspberry Pi 4. I could feel the heat coming from the top of the case so I decided to check to see what the temperatures were.

You can see that the CPU was running very hot! I sampled the CPU temp 3 times over a period of a minute to confirm it was running that hot.

Immediately I decided to hook up the fan and install it in the case. After installing the fan and letting it run for a while, the temperature dropped dramatically.

As you can see, the temperature went from a toasty 83 Celsius, down to 51 Celsius with the fan running. Please keep in mind these temperatures are after the latest firmware update which reduces operating temps.

Fan Connection

One thing that wasn’t included with the kit, was what pins to connect the PI cooling fan to. If you look at the manual included, or the GPIO pin out schematics, you’ll see that a 5V is available on pin 4, and ground is available right next to it on pin 6.

You can view the CanaKit Raspberry Pi 4 Quick Start guide here: https://www.canakit.com/Media/CanaKit-Raspberry-Pi-Quick-Start-Guide-4.0.pdf

I hooked my black wire up to ground (pin 6) first, and then connected the red wire up to the 5v pin 4.

Make sure you don’t cross or use the wrong pins or you may damage your Raspberry Pi!