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Turkey, Ankara
1 Level
737 Review
52 Karma

Review on RETROFLAG Raspberry Splitter Heatsinks Controllers by Jacob Guerrero

Revainrating 2 out of 5

Fewer USB ports than the Pi and tighter cables. The fan never goes off. The LEDs do not light up.

Good for a start. case looks great. However, some details with a mention. The assembly was a bit fiddly. You have to be careful not to damage anything when trying to fit the internal USB cables into the Pi. This could have been avoided with shorter cables and angled plugs. When everything is assembled, you can see the sideways pressure that a connector puts on the USB 3 Pi port. The fan is a nice touch, but there's no thermal interface between its shell and the chips, just sticky pads. Without a true thermal interface, I can't see how heat would transfer from the cake to the sink. And you know this is important because the cake itself comes with three heatsinks and a recommendation for applying thermal paste. When you're done building, you'll find that there are fewer USB ports than on the Pi. 2.1 USB 3 only, not sure about the other one. Pi has 2 of each. Why do less? You could be put on your back. This is quite frustrating because you really have no choice but to hook up a splitter for each of them. If you want to plug in a USB drive for your ROMs or whatever, you just can't when using these connectors. What if you need a mouse and keyboard in addition to the controls? There is no point in throwing away two ports and leaving only two ports. Also, the cable between the SSD interface and the cake is white inside, which makes me think it's not USB 3, although it connects to USB 3. The instructions say it's USB 2. That might be enough. But I am not sure. Next power. When you turn off the operating system, the fan stays on. The OS mentions the fan but doesn't seem to have any control over it. The shutdown scripts seem to only apply to retro game emulation systems, which you may not want to fully install. However, I'm not sure if they do anything other than allow for a smooth shutdown. If you use Retropie and tell it to turn off via Retropie, the fan still won't turn off. The power button and reset button work mechanically the same as the original, but the light is not on. So when you turn on the car you might see a red light for a while, but that's about it. The device stays on and you won't notice it until you touch it and feel the fan. So far everything else is working but I'll post an update if it is or not. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the micro side of the HDMI cable was VERY brittle and broke very easily. Luckily I had a backup made of more durable material. . .

Pros
  • This is amazing
Cons
  • Low maintainability