The RPi4 was designed with bursts of activity in mind, but for more sustained work without thermal throttling I have had very good experiences with the Argon One case (https://www.argon40.com/catalog/product/view/id/52/s/argon-o...) and the Flirc case (https://flirc.tv/more/raspberry-pi-4-case).

Does the Argon One fan push air through the case? In the pictures it looks like it just circulates air inside the case over the CPU.

I did an article on the topic after the Pi firmware update made the situation a lot better. A bare Pi is okay without a fan, but if you want it in a case, the Flirc case is your best option (IMO): https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2019/best-way-keep-your-co...

Great article, thanks. The Flirc case looks good and for $15 it's an obvious buy.

Having just spent a bit north of $1k on a new CPU, RAM, and mobo for my desktop, I'm having a bit of sticker shock (in a good way) at how low these RPi prices are.

A year or so later, you think back "how did I accumulate a box full of Raspberry Pis?" And "I had no idea I had this many power supplies!"

For my use case, I need access to the GPIO pins. The blurb on the Flirc says that access is possible but I don't see any opening. Can you confirm that GPIO access I possible?

I use this case: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/aluminium-heatsink-case-f...

Doesn't look as flashy as the Flirc case, but cooling performance is supposed to be similar and you can access all the pins.

The gpio access requires a header cable routed out a slot in the base of the case.

I have several pi in flirc cases, one is a pihole and one runs CI jobs (slowly) for PhotoStructure, and they don't get too hot even under sustained cpu load.

Flirc cases are great.

If you don't want to think about thermal throttling ever again, get one of these:

https://www.seeedstudio.com/ICE-Tower-CPU-Cooling-Fan-for-Ra...

Isn't that overkill? When are we going to start liquid cooling our raspberry pis? I expect someone to tell me that's already a thing....

Of course it is:D

https://hackaday.com/2017/05/15/liquid-cooling-overclocked-r...

https://modmymods.com/water-cooling-kits/raspberry-pi-coolin...

I have a fan shim on mine, and it keeps it well within limits. The shim is controlled by the on die temperature, so it runs slowly most of the time, but if you run the CPU/GPU hard for any length of time, the fan really cranks up. You have to add a driver to have the automatic control.

I had a passive aluminum block heat spreader on it, and that works if you have good thermal bonding, unless you are really working it for a long duration. The problem is, if you hammer it long enough to throttle, that same mass takes a long time to cool back down.

The fan shim on a naked card just seems to work.

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/fan-shim

I would like to see one of those wicked vapor cooled heat pipes on a spreader built for the Pi.

I have this heatsink on it, and I've never seen the cpu temps above 60C. It gets hot, but I think it does the job.

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/aluminium-heatsink-case-f...

I have the same case and share your opinion. It gets warm, but CPU temperature is well within limits. And somehow the idea of passive cooling is very attractive.

With a $10 case/fan combo mine idles around 30c and hits about 60c under load (this is in a room at about 21c). The Pi doesn't start throttling til about 80c