The raspberry pi 4 has one of the fastest CPU on a SBC , but it doesn’t come with any cooler ,
The raspberry is indeed capable of running without a cooler , but if you do anything other than idling, or something very lightweight like pihole, you are going to thermal throttle.
Since i have a old intel cpu cooler laying around i figured i could adapt it to cool my raspberry pi.
![](http://www.d0wn.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_20190720_190654-1024x540.jpg)
the cooler is way to big to be used the way it was designed. so i need to cut the cooler with a metal saw to make a new flat face , and put part of the cooler on the raspberry pi CPU.
![](http://www.d0wn.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_20190720_190807-1024x484.jpg)
after cutting the cooler you can see that i was far from having a flat surface to put in contact with the cpu.
![](http://www.d0wn.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_20190720_192434-1024x522.jpg)
![](http://www.d0wn.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_20190720_192554-617x1024.jpg)
To flatten the surface , I used a sanding disc fixed on my drill
![](http://www.d0wn.com/wp-content/uploads/sanding.gif)
After sanding the bumps , I obtained a kind of flat surface ,
i’m aware that it’s not truly flat , so to remedy that fact , i putted some thermal paste on the cpu surface.
The thermal compound will fill any irregularities enabling a good contact between the cpu and cooler.
![Intel cpu cooler on raspberry pi](http://www.d0wn.com/wp-content/uploads/DSC3662.jpg)
Then to maintain the cooler flat on the cpu surface , i added a rubber band around the raspberry .
It will help put pressure on the radiator keeping it well pressed on the raspberry cpu
![](http://www.d0wn.com/wp-content/uploads/thermal-rpi4.png)
The thermal throttling temperature of 85c is nevec reached