Tag: heatsink

Using a old intel cpu cooler on the raspberry pi 4.

Intel cpu cooler on raspberry pi

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.

A old intel cpu cooler without the fan.

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.

sawing the intel cooler in two parts

after cutting the cooler you can see that i was far from having a flat surface to put in contact with the cpu.

To flatten the surface , I used a sanding disc fixed on my drill

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
raspberry with cooler installed

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

With this cooler the idle temp is aroud 50c and jump to 65c under load (ffmepg encoding)
The thermal throttling temperature of 85c is nevec reached