Raspberry Pi

How to prevent Raspberry Pi from overheating

Overheating is one of the concerning issues of many electronic devices. Like many other electronic devices, Raspberry Pi also overheats due to complex processing, making it a serious concern for its users. Due to the growing demand for the Raspberry Pi nowadays in many engineering sectors, solutions need to be provided to prevent Raspberry Pi from overheating.

Raspberry Pi itself comes up with only one solution; that is, it automatically shuts down and overlocks during overheating to prevent further damage to the device. The overheating or overlocks occur when the device’s temperature rises above 290 degrees Celsius.

If someone is working on the Raspberry Pi and facing the overheating issue then you are at the right place. Here, in this article, we will provide you with some solutions to prevent Raspberry Pi from overheating. So, let’s start explaining the solutions to prevent Raspberry Pi from overheating. The details are provided below.

How to Prevent Raspberry Pi from overheating

Here, if you don’t have any idea how you can speed up your Raspberry Pi and try to overcome overheating problems in the Raspberry Pi then below are the steps that will help you in this case. You have to carefully read each step and then implement it on your Raspberry Pi so that its overheating problem can be fixed.

1 : Install a Cooling Fan

One of the significant problems in Raspberry Pi is the absence of a cooling fan in its circuit board. This is why Raspberry Pi overheats when its usage increases for a more significant amount of time. The upgraded version of Raspberry Pi shutdown the process when maximum temperature is achieved, which results in affecting your work. So, mounting a cooling fan on the Raspberry Pi board is the safest solution to prevent Raspberry Pi from overheating. If you really want to prevent Raspberry Pi from overheating, the above method will surely work for you.

2 : Use a Heat Sink

Some people may not like installing a cooling fan because they do not like the noise of the cooling fan, which can be sometimes annoying for most people. So, don’t worry about that if you are looking for another solution for this then you might be happy using a heat sink to prevent Raspberry Pi from overheating. Installing the heatsink on Raspberry Pi is not tricky, and you can install it relatively easily by following the few steps. Although, installing a cooling fan is somewhat considered a better solution. Still, if you want to prevent Raspberry Pi from overheating, using a heat sink can be a good solution to reduce the risk of temperature rising.

3 : Use an external USB fan.

Some people are finding difficulties installing a cooling fan or a heat sink on the board. So, using an external USB fan will be the easiest and the most affordable solution in that case. The external USB fan can be purchased easily from an online store at a cheaper price. Its installation does not require any hectic process. The only thing you have to do is to attach the fan with the external USB port of your Raspberry Pi board. One thing you need to consider is to point out the face of the fan towards the Raspberry Pi board. The rest process will be automatically performed.

4 : Updating Raspberry Pi Firmware

The latest firmware updates usually have minimal failures compared to the old firmware. So, updating Raspberry Pi Firmware will be a more reliable choice to prevent Raspberry Pi from overheating. The latest version of Raspberry Pi has come up with updates of its firmware, including VLI, VLI-SDRAM, Load-Step Firmware and clock. The VLI firmware update allows you to run cooling fans on two USB ports, which increases the chance to prevent Raspberry Pi from overheating. The upgradation of VLI will help to run the LPDDR4 SDRAM cooling process.

5 : Using both Cooling fan and Heat sink

One of the better solutions to prevent Raspberry Pi from overheating is to use both a cooling fan and heat sink together. Observation shows that the heat sink is not as efficient as a cooling fan to prevent Raspberry Pi from overheating. However, using a heat sink is not a bad choice with a cooling fan, which significantly improves the performance of the Raspberry Pi board and cools down its temperature.

Conclusion

The demand for complex multiple tasking on Raspberry Pi is at its peak nowadays, and people are very much into it. They want to complete their projects within the required time. However, they won’t be able to do so because of the overheating problem in the Raspberry Pi. If they follow the steps mentioned above, they will surely do whatever they want. The above solutions will help you increase your Raspberry Pi performance, and I hope it will be an excellent prospect for people’s future.

About the author

Awais Khan

I'm an Engineer and an academic researcher by profession. My interest for Raspberry Pi, embedded systems and blogging has brought me here to share my knowledge with others.