Keep Your New Raspberry Pi 4 Chilled with the ICE Tower CPU Cooler

The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B recently launched, and it’s a major upgrade over the previous Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. Though the new Broadcom BCM2711 has only marginally faster clock speeds than the outgoing Broadcom BCM2837 — 1.5GHz vs. 1.4GHz — overall performance is reported to be 2–4x better. That’s because the new processor is designed for performance, while the old processor was intended for balanced mid-range use. But that extra power means more heat, and early reports suggest the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B runs hot under load. Luckily, you can cool it down with the ICE Tower CPU fan cooler.

The ICE Tower CPU fan cooler was originally designed for the Pi 3B, but Seeed Studio says that it’s compatible with the Pi 4 Model B, too. That’s because the latest model has the same mounting hole pattern as its predecessor. And the ICE Tower CPU cooling fan is a lot more substantial than most Raspberry Pi heat sinks. This cooler looks more like something you’d use with a desktop CPU than a single-board computer processor.

Seeed Studio, who is selling the cooler on pre-order now for $19.90, claims that it can lower the Raspberry Pi 4’s CPU temperature from 80°C to a mere 40°C. You certainly don’t need this cooler to use the new Raspberry Pi — it’ll still work fine without any active cooling if you’re not doing anything too heavy. But it’s certainly worth considering if you plan to use your Raspberry Pi for resource-intensive tasks like machine learning.

Want to learn more about passive and active cooling for thermal control? Be sure to check out Alasdair’s evaluation here.