If there is a product that sells like hotcakes and millions of units per month, it is undoubtedly Raspberry Pi, also in any of its versions. But if what we need is power within this device, we will find that opting for the newest and most powerful model is a small problem due to temperatures. Therefore, there are many accessories that alleviate this problem, but as a user you will think, is a fan or a heatsink better for my Raspberry Pi? Let’s see it.
Playing with a component of this size and price means for the manufacturer to cut as much as possible within safe margins. And although any task with it supposes temperatures above 60º C or 70º C, in summer these figures are higher and produce Thermal Throttling, something that we do not want and hence the question of many users about what to choose.
Raspberry Pi, better a heatsink or a fan?
Well, it is a decision that is marked by another key component, because although there are unitary and loose heatsinks and fans to include in your Raspberry Pi, most prefer other types of systems that also help other functions such as protecting the system from dust. or the blows.
Logically we are talking about the cases, which on many occasions already include a fan, a heatsink or even both. Everything really depends on the performance expectations that we expect, that is, using the USB port compulsively increases the temperature of the SoC and therefore, a small type of VRAM heatsink for PC GPUs hardly solves anything.
For this reason, we are going to be more strict when making a recommendation between fan and heatsink. It is not the most practical, perhaps not the best aesthetically speaking, but we are going to solve the temperature problem once and for all, which is ultimately what we want.
Blink Blink ICE TOWER or GeeekPI ICE TOWER
We are going to kill two birds with one stone and although we refer to this specific heatsink we really want to refer to the concept of it and not so much to the model. If you want to be calm with your Raspberry Pi even in summer, be able to get all the juice out of it and even overclock it to gain performance, then you need a tower heatsink with heat pipes and a fan, like the one your PC might have but in a mini format.
This type of heatsinks will lower its temperature between 30º C and 40º C , they provide some noise of course, but they achieve all the objectives that we had set for ourselves and there is no better way to achieve them at present, since neither the casings Passive ones manage to keep the SoC below 40º C at full capacity , which this type of heatsink does.
Its installation is simple and as soon as we include a good thermal paste we will improve even more, so there is no need to choose between a fan or a heatsink for your Raspberry Pi, the best thing is to combine both and forget about any present or future inconvenience.
