The new Raspberry Pi 3 single-board computer is the same size and price as last year’s Raspberry Pi 2. But the new model has an updated processor which is said to offer a 60-percent performance boost over the older model.
Unfortunately, with more power comes… more heat. While that might not be a problem for some workloads, Phoronix pushed the tiny computer to its limits while running a series of benchmarks recently, and notice that it gets much hotter under stress than its predecessor.
But there’s already a simple, inexpensive solution.
A company called LoveRPi has introduced a $5 heatsink set for the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3. Just place the tiny aluminum heatsinks on top of the CPU and LAN chip using the thermal adhesive and they’ll dissipate heat generated by your tiny computer without the need for fans.
The company says the heatsink can reduce temperatures by more than 20 degrees Celcius.
Why does this matter? While it’s unlikely that a Raspberry Pi will run hot enough to cause permanent hardware damage, under some situations it could get hot enough to cause stability problems until the system cools off.
LoveRPi also notes that the temperature sensor on the Broadcom BCM2837 sensor is inaccurate at high temperatures, which keeps firmware throttling from kicking in and allowing the system to cool off on its own. So installing a heatsink can help keep the little computer from getting hot enough to cause problems in the first place.
via Phoronix