BATC Forum

Has anyone found the need to go beyond basic airflow cooling to active cooling within a cased Portsdown?

There are many options, from poor to outstanding, for active cooling of the RPi 3B+. I have been looking at the options and as I intend to build in to some form of mini ATX case I will probably have plenty of spare space and power to run good cooling throughout. My current front runner is the Ice Tower which has been shown on independent testing to lower to running temperature to around 42C when under a reasonable load.

I am also looking at this from the perspective of having an RPi based repeater using modified Portsdown units as the receivers and transmitters - it will regularly go up to 45C with 98% humidity here.

Andy, KA5BBC/MM0BQV

Andy

The RPi 3B does not need much cooling. The only unit that I have had problems with was when I put one with a mains PSU and a Portsdown Filter-Modulator board with a 7 inch screen in a very small plastic box. Any metal box with reasonable space should not have a problem, although at 45 degrees, you might need a simple fan.

Dave

Andy,
I have built a Portsdown streamer that has run for two years in GB 3ZZ. I fitted the self-adhesive heatsinks that you can buy on Ebay for the RPi and arranged a small fan to blow over it. It has never over-heated despite being in quite a warm space.
I have found that it is prone to the odd crash and this can be a real nuisance if it is at a remote site. I have now fitted two timers which operate in sequence to first shut down the RPi with the optional hardware shutdown button, then interrupt the power to reboot it. It does this twice a day and hence if it crashes, you don't have to wait long for a reset.
73 Shaun G8VPG.