Active cooling fan on the CM4

uConsole
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1

This totally destroys the aesthetic, but for the sake of research, and justifiable during heavy workloads. I’ll be testing out a fan and heatsink combo I bought on Amazon as well as designing a 3d printed case based on the STP files from Clockwork.

To make the fan work I will have to make use of the GPIO FPC connection in the back of the uconcole. This can be found right above the CM4. I will take a 0.5mm 40 pin ribbon FPC cable, and connect it to a fully functional 40 pin GPIO board, which I can then solder the wires from the fan to.

One thing to keep in mind is that the CM4 only supports 28 GPIO connections, so I will have to check connections to make sure everything works as expected. From my understanding there shouldn’t be any issues.

This will significantly increase the thickness of the uconsole, so to make this work, I will have to design a custom 3d printed backplate.

I don’t intend on keeping this on always, but there’s some installations that really work the CM4 and this will resolve that.

This is one of my first development projects, so any tips and advice or ideas will be greatly appreciated. Will update you guys when my GPIO board gets here Tuesday.

Products purchased are:
FPC 0.5MM Ribbon Cable
FPC to GPIO PCB
Heatsink with Fan

If I get poor performance with the heatsink+fan I will switch over to this other Product and see if it improves.

2

I personally don’t think it necessary. Compiling the kernel on all 4 cores for a little over 2 hours and the CM4 will only get to 65’c. I’m also overclocked to 2.1GHz, so making a lot more heat then stock.

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Strange mine has been clocking up to 85 degrees on heavy loads. Which is considered max operating temp. I put it in front of a fan and it cools off quickly though. I’m over clocked at 2GHz

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I think my mistake was not applying the thermal pad. Seems to be running a lot cooler now. Maybe this project won’t happen after all :smiling_face_with_tear:

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5

You can always look forward to trying that mod if the RPi CM5 works when it comes out. lol

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I’ll be here for it. Looking forward to contributing to the community.

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The case should provide enough passive cooling.