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Review on πŸ“Ÿ Enhance Your Raspberry Pi 3B with Flirc Kodi Edition Case by Zane Myers

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Beautiful case, effective temperature management

I bought this to store my Raspberry Pi 3 B media center for a number of reasons. It looks good and acts as a passive heatsink for the CPU. I use LibreElec on my Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ and connect to video, music and picture shares on my home network. As a result, it works pretty hard when using the Raspberry Pi. So far I've only used small radiators that came with the kit. From time to time I got the "overheating" icon. I haven't seen this icon in this case since installing the RPi. I can say the case is working because it gets hotter than if it wasn't powered on. I regularly check the temperature in "Settings/System Information/Hardware". The RPi 3 B+ operates at 106F (41.1C) when idling. The highest temperature I've seen is around 130F (54.4C). With the stock case and heatsinks, temperatures sometimes rose to 76.6 Β°C (170 Β°F) and slowed down the processor. PROS: + Nice case, looks quite commercial/professional. + Works very well for CPU temperature control (see 1337Ninja's review of this article). This case uses passive cooling (quiet) rather than active cooling (potentially noisy fans). :- The case fits fairly snugly around the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B and you can use the included thermal pad to maintain contact between the heatsink post on the case and the CPU on the board. HOWEVER, you CANNOT use the mat with the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. The lining is too thick. The stand length seems adequate to use thick thermal grease INSTEAD of a spacer on the RPi 3 B+ to make good contact with the CPU. That's how I did it and so far everything is working fine. It's hard to see the status LEDs on the motherboard. However, if you're so inclined, you can carefully lay down the part of the case in front of the LEDs so you can see them. See attached photo. The GoBeavers test mentions that it is not possible to connect standard 40-pin cable connectors to the onboard GPIO bus. Is that so. I also tried just to see if it would work. For my purposes it doesn't matter as I won't be connecting to the GPIO with my LibreElec system. I don't think this case would be a good choice for those planning to use their systems for prototyping. With a little manual work, however, it will be possible to connect a standard 40-pin cable connector and cable to the RPi3 installed here. OVERVIEW: The CONS seem to outweigh the PROS, but they are very small compared to the pros. this corpus. This is a beautiful, well-designed case for Raspberry Pi 3 Model B(+) series boards. It does everything it claims to do, but has some very minor, easily fixable issues. I have several other RPi3s and will be purchasing these cases for the RPi3s that are not used for plugging. A big advantage for me is the silence of the system during use. There are no fans at all, so there is no noise. I highly recommend this case.

Pros
  • Satisfied so far
Cons
  • Quality