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Mozambique, Maputo
1 Level
752 Review
55 Karma

Review on πŸ“¦ iUniker Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Case with Cooling Fan and Heatsink - Simple Removable Top Cover, Black for 3B+/3B by James Daniels

Revainrating 2 out of 5

Nice case, can provide enough cooling

I just got my first Pi 3 B+ to try and tweak the Pi a bit for retro gaming. I bought this case hoping that the fan would provide more cooling. I did benchmarking to check it. I ran the linux tool "Stress" to load the CPU and the glxgeek raspberry pi gl test tool to load the GPU for 15 minutes while monitoring the CPU temperature and speed with vcgencmd observed. The Pi had a stick on heatsinks. First I tried 3B+ in this case without the fan, it quickly went up to 70 degrees and down to 1.2GHz (from 1.4) and the temperature slowly continued to rise and the CPU throttles until then. reached 80 degrees and 1.1 GHz after 15 minutes. With the fan on at 5v and set to vent (level up), pi still climbed to 70 degrees fairly quickly, but stayed there, cruising between 1.4 and 1.2GHz for the entire 15 minutes. Protocol. It's pretty good, but probably not what extreme overclockers are looking for. While not the focus of this review, the 3B+ with its heat spreader is a notable improvement. compared to the old 3B. In a similar test in a standard Pi Foundation case, the Pi 3B with heatsinks gradually increased to 84-85 degrees and dropped to 600-900MHz. The exterior of the case is clean and simple. The three-layer case is an interesting idea, with all ports labeled. I have a few minor issues - the LEDs aren't visible (a few small holes in the case can fix that), the reset pins (for 3B+) are covered (again, the middle layer can be cut off), the top lip clips wouldn't allow full 40 GPIO pin drop cable (but there is room for GPIO pins if you use specific pins). I was thinking of putting in a high-low switch for the fan, but the exhaust position is so quiet (blowing seems louder) that I won't do it for now. I'll just leave it up.

Pros
  • New to my collection
Cons
  • Sad hardware