Raspberry Pi 5 - is the active cooler or the housing with fan worth it?

Martin Jud

1-2-2024

Translation: machine translated

Is it worth using the new Raspberry Pi 5 with the official case including fan or the official active cooler? To find out, I tested it in various configurations in Geekbench 6.

In order to be able to provide answers, I had the DIY computer compete in the Geekbench 6 CPU benchmark in various configurations. The predecessor Raspberry Pi 4 is also included for comparison.

I sourced the following products from our warehouse for this test:

You can find an overview of the specifications of the new Raspberry Pi 5 in its datasheet or in the following article:

The results: Multi-core tasks benefit from active cooling

Before I present the results in detail, I would like to briefly discuss the fans.

The official case comes with a case fan and a small heat sink that you stick onto the CPU. As the case fan is removable, you can also use the case with another fan or without. However, the latter makes no sense, as the case fan runs quietly and you don't want heat build-up.

My recommendation: definitely cool, but with what is secondary

In terms of price, both the official case with fan and the active cooler are worthwhile. For around 17 and 10 francs/euro respectively, you get around 16 per cent more performance in multi-core tasks

As the increase in performance is the same with both cooling options, it is not worth buying both in order to install the active cooler in the official case. This combination is also not recommended due to the resulting loud noise. You should therefore only buy the active cooler if you want to operate the Raspberry Pi 5 without a housing. Or if you have another case to hand that has larger ventilation slots than the official one.

Martin Jud

Senior Editor

martin.jud@digitecgalaxus.ch

I find my muse in everything. When I don’t, I draw inspiration from daydreaming. After all, if you dream, you don’t sleep through life.

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