ah - indeed - looks like 512 on 32bit systems (like Pi). - but yeah - you can increase manually as you have.
Our Swiss friend H. Spiess tried to compare several active and passive cooling solutions and got rather different results for the Fan SHIM (and pretty good ones for the Flirc Case). It may be a bit tricky to get reproducible temperature results without at least controlling ambient temperature and circulation. For now, I'm just running mine without a case and keeping an eye on it.
2 Likes
I understood that the chip has built in logic that slows the clock down if it gets too hot so provided you don't mind if it slows down during periods of heavy loading you don't need to worry. I have one that is running node red and also video processing with motion detection. It is in a case with ventilation holes and runs at about 70C. If I run something intensive such as building software it goes up to the limit of 83 and sits there till it is finished. Am I shortening the life of the chip by doing that?
Thermal degradation is real, but just how much it will shorten the life of the CPU is debatable. Just in time for a PI 8.0? 
A base of 70Ā°C does seem a little hot. My Pi2 runs at around 40Ā°C and my Pi3 at around 53Ā°C. From what I can tell, 70Ā°C would certainly be at the upper end of what might be considered comfortable. More importantly perhaps, it doesn't leave you much headroom before you hit thermal throttling. On the other hand, running at 83Ā°C for intensive tasks is absolutely fine. Modern systems are designed to run up to around 100Ā°C and most will shut down at that point to prevent damage.
It is working pretty hard all the time doing the video processing, a Pi 3 was nowhere near able to perform the task. I have replaced an old desktop machine with the Pi.
Well, in that case, I guess that you have to accept that if you shorten the life of a Pi from 10 years to 8 having made it work hard 24x7x365 then that is a trade well worth making.
Been using one for a week now and I'm very happy with it, It's a nicely made box and my automation box is currently running at 40-42Ā° sat on a cluttered bookcase shelf with no airflow.
Sorry if this is a bit off-topic...
Has anyone tried installing 'piVPN' on a RPi-4B running Buster??
I found one single post on Google where someone said 'piVPN' doesn't support Buster, so my next question is...
Will 'stretch' run on a RPi-4B and take advanatge of the device's latest functionality??
I believe that buster is required for a pi4, that's why they got released on the same day
Thanks Lena, I sort of suspected that.
I think I might ditch the idea of using a Pi-4B as my VPN server and try using a RPi-3+ (as I know it already works on one of my old RPi-1Bs).
I've one up and running too now, though I would definitely not advise for going with this set-up yet:
- ubuntu server 19.10 arm64
- elasticsearch 7.4 with openjdk 11
- nodejs 10 LTS
For one, elasticsearch is not supported on the arm64 architecture, not at this version at least which takes a lot of do-not-try-this-at-home messing around with dpkg. For another, nodesource does not have Ubuntu 19.10 support yet, which means manually downloading and messing with the script to still get the proper systemd setup
Furthermore, Ubuntu 19.10 still has some teething problems regarding ARM64 with the pi4, for example a kernel level issue for which a fix is underway results in the device not recognising any USB inputs, for example a keyboard plugged in for a first setup.
48.5C (with aluminium heatsink case) while compiling the Pi Userland repo (side libraries for interacting with the GPU, specifically for vcgencmd), with all of the above running as well. Not bad at all
1 Like
Aargh, that means the Pi install script won't work. I was about to upgrade my system. Perhaps I will leave it for a bit.
Really ? First Iāve heard of it. Ooo yeah. That looks fun.
Yeah, which is how I found out because the error message from the script is not too helpful, although you can find the answer in the nodesource readme. In the end I put in a repo that said Disco with arm64, installed 10.x and resumed the script. Mixing sources is not a wise plan, but Iāve a feeling this is a test install either way 
Itās been 7+ years since I last used Ubuntu... I can now confirm that this is definitely a test install and Iām going to start over tomorrow with everything I learned today, only to set it up properly now, using the cloud-init configuration for netplan rather than netplan configuration directly, and messy config files created/edited elsewhere. On the plus side, Node-RED is functioning good so far, and accessing ES works better than hoped so 
there. ES 7.4 plus node-red idling together is already good for 46% memory usage so thatās going to be fun, but definitely hoping the whole setup will work on a single pi4 for my needs. If need be, Mosquitto can be moved to a different pi. Thatās all without redundancy and failsafes, but something to think about over time.
I would recommend just using Raspbian Buster myself, it just seems to do the job OK for me.
If you do systemctl status nodered.service you can even see how much memory NodeRED is using.
2 Likes
Just coming back to cooling the Rpi4. While some may not like fans (I am not a huge fan), for any serious work a fan is mandatory. In fact plenty of testing (by respected youtubers) has shown that a heatsink only, makes very little difference to temps. A fan with NO heatsink is a lot more efficient at dispersing the heat than a heatsink with no fan.
So I think the RPi4 really does need a fan, unfortunately.
1 Like
I've no doubt that is true. Really a heatsync needs to have a really big, open surface area to do the same job as it relies on only thermal emissions. It also has to be carefully attached to the CPU in order to efficiently move heat away, a small amount of good thermal paste would be essential for that. The thermal pads aren't terribly good.
Does anyone know of a pi that has failed due to overheating? The chip has built in features to stop it self damaging. Mine has been running without complaint at about 70 and goes to the limit of 83 when working hard. No fan or heat sink.
