Maximum PC - UK (2020-01)

©^

PI^
HU

T,^ G

TW

AN

G.O

RG

The Raspberry

Pi 4 is unusual

in its company,

because it’s a warm

little thing. We’ve

seen users out there

experiencing recorded

temperatures of

around 82 C sitting

idle, which is (as you

might imagine) not the

finest thing to happen

to your hardware.

Like most chips

these days, the key

components of the Pi

4 will thermal throttle

when they get too

hot: The CPU is set to

throttle at 80 C, while

the GPU joins it should

the temperature

make it to 85 C. If

either of these things

happens, you’ll see

a thermometer pop

up on your desktop,

half full to represent

the former situation,

and full red when

everything’s going into

slow-down mode.

This mainly happens

because these chips

are being pushed.

ARMv8 runs much

harder and hotter

than the cores of

Raspberry Pis past.

The first couple of

editions could run

happily with no

cooling at all; the

Pi 3 realistically

necessitated a small

heatsink on the major

chips; run the Pi 4 raw,

and you’re in a world

of hurt.

So, a case is an

absolute must.

Irritatingly, the official

red and white case

from the Raspberry

Pi foundation just

compounds the

problem, encasing

the board in a toasty

box that keeps it nice

and insulated. You

don’t absolutely have

to go to the full extent

of using a case with a

microscopic built-in

fan, or dropping on

Pimoroni’s $10 Fan

SHIM, though that will

obviously keep it cool

enough; the Aluminum

Heatsink Case from

The Pi Hut ($15) does

a highly credible job

of dissipating the

heat from across,

the board while still

keeping things passive

and silent.

If you want to see

how hot your board

is getting, run sudo

vcgencmd measure_

temp in a command

line to return your

core temperature.

Below: Passive

cooling can go

a long way with

the right case.

config. Head to option 7, then

select “Expand Filesystem.”

Restart with sudo reboot and

run df -h again—you should see

a marked difference in available

space. Make sure, when booting

your Pi in the future, that you use

the same SD card and keep the

USB drive in the same physical

port, to avoid any potential

problems. All being well, this

won’t be a workaround we have

to do forever, but for now, you’re

free to start filling that drive with

software and get working.

NAS-TY BUSINESS

There’s been some realignment

in the Pi’s hardware, which means

one of its biggest stumbling

blocks is now gone: The USB and

Ethernet ports no longer share

the same bus, restricting the

speed of both. The Pi 3’s gigabit

Ethernet, tied to a USB 2.0 bridge,

could only reach 300Mb/s—this

new version now runs at true

gigabit speeds. The flip side of

the coin is that there are also now

two ports of glorious USB 3.0 to

work with—we took advantage of

one with the SSD boot process,

but we can also use these ports

in conjunction with that higher

network throughput to use the Pi

as a rather competent network

attached storage device.

Optional, but recommended

if you’re planning to roll this out

MicroSD cards are nice and all, but they’re really terrible storage for running an OS.

The Pi 4,

particularly

with 4GB RAM,

offers up

enough strength

to run a desktop

with few

compromises.

maximumpc.com JAN 2020 MAXIMUMPC 39