The MagPi - February 2020

T

he Raspberry Pi 4 Stand is about as simple

as a case could possibly be. Laser-cut from

a single piece of acrylic, there’s no complex

assembly required: simply slot the stand between

the Power over Ethernet (PoE) header and Ethernet

port of Raspberry Pi 4 and pop it on your desk.

The stand is designed to improve cooling by

aligning Raspberry Pi 4 vertically, rather than

flat on a desk. Previous thermal testing in issue

88 showed this is surprisingly effective, and the

Raspberry Pi 4 Stand solves the stability issue

which comes from balancing the board on its edge.

There’s a bonus trick up the Raspberry Pi 4

Stand’s sleeve, too: it holds up to three Raspberry

Pi 4 boards side-by-side, making a very cost-

effective computing cluster. Whether you install

one, two, or three boards, the Raspberry Pi 4 Stand

is surprisingly stable and not unattractive – and it

retains access to all ports and headers.

Made from a single piece of acrylic, the Raspberry Pi 4 Stand is as pure as it gets

Free with issue 90 of The MagPi magazine

Verdict

The Raspberry

Pi 4 Stand is

smart, free, and

the only case on

test to support

more than a single

board. Its cooling

performance,

though, is

the weakest.

DIMENSIONS:

120×20×2.8 mm

MATERIAL:

Acrylic

WEIGHT (INC. ONE

RASPBERRY PI 4):

54 g

NUMBER

OF BOARDS

SUPPORTED:

Up to 3

COOLING

METHOD:

Vertical

alignment

SPECS

Raspberry Pi 4 Stand

The Raspberry Pi 4 Stand improves the bare

performance, but Raspberry Pi 4 still gets hot

under sustained synthetic load.

Without additional cooling, the Raspberry Pi 4

Stand can’t prevent Raspberry Pi 4 from hitting its

throttle point during testing.

Thermal imaging Thermal load

The Raspberry Pi 4 Stand

holds up to three boards

side-by-side, making a very

cost-effective cluster

CPU Temperature CPU Clock CPU Clock (Moving Average)

Frequency

(MHz)

850

1100

1350

1600

Temperature

(Degrees Celsius)

45

55

65

75

85

Time (Seconds)

200 400 600 800

Testing Period Cooldown Note!

We don’t score our

own products. [We

think our Raspberry Pi 4

Stand is perfect – Ed.]

Raspberry Pi thermal case group test magpi.cc 67

REVIEW