How to cool our Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi 3 is a great sbc board Hardware Libre which has a lot of power but also generates a lot of heat. This is not usually a big problem for many, but now that we are in a time of high temperatures, it is many will need to cool their Raspberry Pi board in order to use it continuously.
Here are a series of tricks and ideas that will work to cool our Raspberry Pi board, tricks that are proven and that work effectively, and they will not need a lot of money or time to do them, so anyone can apply them to their Raspberry Pi .

Heatsinks

Already with the latest models, several companies related to the Hardware Libre decided to launch kits with triggers that make Raspberry Pi components not so hot. These kits are very effective but it must also be said that they are difficult to install as it is done using thermal paste. Thermal paste is a great binder but it conducts heat very well, so if we misplaced the paste, we can cause the heat to burn the circuit or component, so it has to be done by a person who knows how to use thermal paste.

We have said that there are kits that can be sold, but we can also get these heatsinks by recycling an old graphics card, for which we will have to remove the radiators that are in the chips, these radiators can be used as heatsinks, but they have to have the same shape as the Raspberry Pi chips, otherwise the effect will be the opposite of what we want.

Ventilators

Traditional computers have always used a fan to cool parts of Hardware, a simple and very functional method. We can apply this to Raspberry Pi. For this function it comes in handy small 4 cm diameter fans.

They are very inexpensive fans that can be installed on the plates of the ethernet and usb port and offer an alternative way to cool our Raspberry Pi. Regarding the power source, these fans can be connected to the GPIO port of Raspberry Pi.

Reduce power

Yes, I know that for many of you it may sound like a nuisance, but it is effective. There are several software methods that allow us to do frequency scaling. A frequency scaling reduces the maximum power of the processor, which causes less consumption and also generates less heat than it should. This method has the disadvantage of make Raspberry Pi less powerful but extend the life of the SBC board.

Conclusions

These methods are the most effective and best known methods out there, but this does not mean that other methods are not valid or do not exist. But they are more expensive than normal.


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