Got one of these at Christmas. You can boost the thermal elimination by flipping the fan around so that it is pulling heat off of the pi instead of forcing it back down onto the pi as it “cools” Also with no case I was able to hit only 30deg Cel at idle at 45 during stress test. However I don’t like my pi to be bare, so I tried to find the argon one but it was nowhere at the time so instead I got the argon neo. It has to mount points that will work for the ice tower low profile, but it will stand off by about 1 1/2 pennies. So I got a couple shiny pennies and used the other two thermal pads from the ice tower LP and it works like a charm. During stress the system barely topped 54deg Cel. Which when compared to everyone else on the forum I tested with. I still had the best heat elimination. And never hit throttled load.
That's pretty impressive to be within 6 degrees C of the original Ice Tower for the low profile cooler. It's actually kinda cool how they look like miniature versions of desktop rig coolers.
@@georgepitaru i got a basic labsys case/power supply kit and it was enough to run the pi4 at 2ghz without throttling... it was at 78 and running 5v for the fan but hey it did it lol
Someone once said (about cars) that enough is too little and too much is just enough - same thing applies to computers. Practically speaking, this should eliminate overheating (without throttling) for most useage and make your pi last longer (heat eats electronics, cooler lasts longer!) Thanks for the video.
I've got the original Ice Tower cooler and it's awesome. I've got the pi it's installed on sitting where every visitor will see it and everyone asks what it is and think it looks great. It really is the best cooler I've ever seen for a raspberry pi. A LP version is a fantastic idea. Active cooling really is needed for a pi 4, and this cooler looks and works sweet!
I have this cooler for a while. I filed the base of the cooler flat. Used mx4 thermal paste. OC 2.1ghz GPU 700mhz and my max temps only reached 38c after 5 minutes. That thermal pad sucks. I also slightly bent the mounting brackets so the cooler applied more mounting pressure to the IHS. Also to note.. I purchased a double stack acrylic case and removed the middle layer since I only have one pi in there and fits this cooler like a glove. The double stack case was only about 10$ on Amazon at the time I purchased it. Looks pretty. I may post a picture and review on Amazon shortly.
@@PERK-30 I would have gone longer, but it shot up to 38c in 30 seconds and just pegged that temp and didn't budge for 5 minutes. So I was happy. I also used mx4 thermal compound. When I slid the base over the file the cooler was far from flat. Took me about 20 minutes to file it flat. But I'm not sure if that played a huge role. I think mostly thermal paste is where gained the performance.
Paste is always better than a pad, but it's good to see the test done with what is provided in the case. Not everyone is going to have a tube laying around. Lol. Thanks for the info on the double stack case too!
This is the only guy on RU-vid that does videos on single board computers and does different projects for them. I love it! One thing I do wish to see is when you test out gaming on these sbc's, can you try Android gaming as well? I want to see if at some point we can game some high end games at like medium or low graphics that way we realize that instead of buying a new phone for 1k instead we can drop like 100-200 on an sbc and be able to game.
It’s the perfect combo. This cooler, a 8gb, and the rii controller/keyboard combo was $128 total at my local microcenter. It’s very shocking how powerful it is. There is way more horsepower here than 80% of people even need.
To recap: that is a SBC with bt:5.0 and 8gb ram on a 2.0ghz apu that refuses to hit 55c even pushed to extreme limits. For $100 those specs are pure insanity. This one sbc, that is about the size of a pack of cigarettes is powerful enough to exceed any average computer user’s use case. You have to be an enthusiast to even take advantage of this multi monitor beast. Hackers be foaming at the mouth for something this crazy powerful.
My expectation for this cooler would be that while it may not have as good a performance metric for the SOC as the original Ice Tower, having air blown down onto the card should give much better cooling to the other components of the Raspberry Pi itself.
I swapped out the rgb fan with a generic black one on mine. Love this cooler so much, would love to see a case for it (with the cooler on) in the future.
Why not just get a 30mmx30mm heatsink from eBay for 5$ and add a $5 pi fan from Amazon with thermal adhesive paste to attach the heatsink to the SoC ($1?) and then 4 m3 nylon screws to attach the fan to the heatsink? Max temp run with 2Ghz overclock under full load is 39c, running 24/7 as a desktop with performance governor enabled. These fancy coolers are not much better in the end and end up with a larger profile than with what I mentioned and you spend twice as much or more on them. My 2 cents. Cheers!
They'll gradually start producing cases for the LP fan. I think it would be neat to see a custom sheet metal case of your Dell Optiplex 360 for a Pi case.
Good to know! Just purchased one, off Amazon. Can’t wait to put it through it’s paces, and then maybe I’ll do a experiment with a Petier cooling pad mod with it. Awesome video!
I just tested the ICE tower LP and with regular cooling paste instead. At idle it is 26-29C and I've tested several cases, Argon One, FLIRC, the large passive cooler case and more. But this beats them all... and yes, it is overkill, but that's just cool!
I wonder how well a thin 40mm fan would work between the fins and the Heatsink base, blowing air upwards. I don't know how much space is there, but it looks like there's a few mm, and those fans do get pretty thin. 5mm to 7mm thick. Might even be able to use a blower with a large enough opening, in a pull configuration. Blow the hot air out the end.
Exactly 8mm, tho you might want one 7mm because it isn’t perfectly level. Measured using a caliper and my own 8gb model. I don’t think it’s necessary tho. Even pushing it to extremes running synthetic benchmarks my model never hit 50c @ 2.0ghz OC. At that point it’s still cool enough to touch. You’re probably not even doing damage to it.
Please note that the plastic under side is so you don't ground the bottom of it and kill it... I would strongly advise to use it or something else on the bottom
Remembered seeing this behemoth on your channel a while back. Think I’m finally ready to pull the trigger and give the Raspberry Pi 4 a shot. Came back to the video to grab your affiliate link :) Thanks for the great content as always!
A discussion of noise levels and fan curves would also have been useful. Imagine getting the fan down to e.g. 100 rpm for ultra quiet operation - probably not possible.
Thank you ETAPrime. I picked the low profile version, because i thought it would cool the rest of the SBC by its directed airflow onto the components. yes we normally only investigate the core temperature. The better performance of the older Ice Tower seems due to its larger heatsink area?! I didn't knew that the fins are wider than the LPs. Though i'm satisfied with the indirect RAM and DCDC cooling.
The case you show in the video is the Argon One. Did you use that or the flirc? BTW, following your instructions, I've overclocked my Pi4 to 2Ghz, and I haven't yet seen my temps go over 60 in the Argon One case. This thing is a different world from my 3B+
Great review, thanks! I'm currently very happy with my Argon One Fan Hat, with 3 customizable temp/speed settings, on my 2GHz overclocked RPi4. With 100% fan speed @ 60'C, it maintained 70'C with all 4 cores maxed out. 1080p YT videos cruise @ ~55'C, with the fan speed @ 60%. IOW, it does the job nicely. Appreciate your honest opinion that also confirms my suspicion that the Ice Tower is overkill, plus obstructs having an enclosed case design for outdoor weatherproofing. But, yeah it looks kind cool, if that's the prime objective. :-)
I hardly get to 43°C after several minutes of 100% CPU load with the Low-Profile ICE Tower Cooling Fan on my RPi4 with the fan plug to 3.3V !!! (I can't hear the fan AT ALL!) and I don't even get to 40°C with the fan on 5 Volts (still very silent)! I highly recommend the Low-profile ICE Tower! IMHO the best active cooling solution! Period! And it looks cool too. BTW the ambient temperature is around 23°C.
You ever finish it? That’s what I use mine for. It is genuinely a full on PC. I run kali on it and I’ve yet to run into something that you can’t do with a PC 10x this cost. Buy 10 of them, attach each to a cheap drone and go full watchdogs irl. For less than $2000.
I have one of those armor style cases that has three points of contact,.. the cpu, ram,and usb3 controller that has 2 little fans...the whole thing is no higher then the usb ports... and is keeping it around these same temps...
I have this cooler on my OC Pi4. I don't Crack 48* OC, but I'm using kryonaut instead of the thermal pad. Noctua also makes a drop in 5v replacement fan that blows better than the RGB one. I havent installed and tested the fan yet, but bench "hand dyno" is pretty obvious. Oh and I'll be making a mini PC tower case for this that will fit this heatsink. If it comes out well, I'll send you one to play with (if you're interested)
If you look on ebay, apparently there is a case designed for the ice tower, it actually looks really good. Not sure if it would work with the low pro though
This fan model now has a specific aluminium case available for about $25 on eBay with awesome amount of air flow :search; low profile ice fan case, hope this helps if people want one :)
It's really too bad that the company that makes this doesn't also make a optional case. One case could be clear and the other could be black. Many people that purchase this fan and heat exchanger would purchase the case. Nice video!
How about trying the original Ice Tower cooler, the one that looks like a block of apartments, with a second fan on the opposite side of the heatsink, blowing air in, rather than pulling it out ... I imagine it would be noisier (two fans, twice the noise), but would be interested to see the thermal effects of the forced-air setup ...
I have this cooler and mine I noticed the aluminum base plate and heat pipes were on 2 separate planes. I sanded this down till they were level with each other. I get 27c at idle and at 2.3 ghz with a synthetic load I did not exceed 50c.
The only case in my opinion should be a 3d printed miniature computer tower. Like an Alienware or something cool like that. Like that, both Ice towers can be hidden within a case.
I like the Flirc case, but I am so worried about it throttling when the Pi is overclocked. It seems like overclocking really requires some sort of active cooling.
There is a single case listed on eBay, shipping out of China that claims to fit a Pi and this cooler. It claims to be aluminum. Has anyone seen these in person? Or anywhere else selling anything similar? There's something so awesome about this heatsink.
Is there anyway that an Asetek Vapochill Lightspeed PC Case could be used to cool a Raspberry Pi IV just that the electronics have to be protected from the condensation caused by the cooling system by said case.
How can we use while building smart mirror. It's a video i am looking forward ETA. We definitely need to see a 2020 Smart Mirror update with the old ice tower cooler and new ice tower cooler. How will it fit in the smart mirror frame ?
Great video, I’ve been getting into Raspberry Pi since the start of the year. Got an old Pi2 and have been looking into getting a Pi4 soon. Have you got a measurement for the height without the base plate to the top of the fan? Love that fan, it’s giving me ideas for an install.
@@iflnr978 All In One, the entire cooling system comes pre-assembled with no filling or plumbing to deal with. There's a cooling block that goes where the cooling fan would normally go on the CPU and it has tubes connected to a radiator and one or more fans depending on the size of the radiator.
Do you have an over clock video for the 3b+ basically how to and the highest is safe it's for running Nintendo 64 roms the base clock isn't quite up to snuff
Got here looking for the acceptable temps of the pi, I have the Ice Tower but had to remove the fan now after 4 months (it started making HORRIBLE noise. (I also didn't get the acrylic plate on either of the two cooler even tho they had the plate mentioned in the documentation.)) and I'm wondering at what temp the CPU/GPU throttles. (with just the ice-tower metal it seems to be running between 48 and 52 Celsius. edit: Its not idle, but running a few things on the network.(which crashes the Pi3b without active cooling.)
