Argon Mini Cooling Fan Stressberry Test

Disclaimer:

This guide is provided for information and as it is. Cytron Technologies will not be responsible for any damage or data lost during the installation process. Do backup your microSD card if you have any concern.

Hardware:

• Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 2GB // Any RAM size such as 1GB, 4GB and 8GB should be no problem
• 15W Power Adapter with USB-C wire cable
• 32GB MakerDisk MicroSD Preloaded with Raspberry Pi OS
• USB microSD card Reader/Writer
• Argon Mini Cooling Fan

First of all, why subject your Raspberry Pi to this level of stress? In the case of Raspberry Pi 4, the A72 CPU is so powerful that it can overheat if it doesn’t have enough cooling. This results with the CPU being governed (slowed down) to reduce the electrical energy being consumed, and in turn, reducing heat generation. The RPi 3B+ and predecessors could also overheat, however, it was less of a problem for the majority of use cases. A quick stress test, in this case, will reveal if your Raspberry Pi 4 can run at full CPU-load in its case/environment without overheating and not slowing down.

The goal of this tutorial is to create a chart which depicts:

• A stabilization period at the beginning
• A period of time for full-load CPU
• View the CPU temperature
• View the CPU speed (to witness if the CPU is being governed, or not)

There are a million ways to cool down your Raspberry Pi: Small heat sinks, specific cases, and some extreme DIY solutions. Stressberry is a package for testing the core temperature under different loads, and it produces nice plots which can easily be compared.

The run lets the CPU idle for a bit, then stresses it with maximum load for 30 minutes, and lets it cool down afterwards. The entire process takes around 45 minutes. The resulting data is displayed to a screen or, if specified, written to a PNG file.

Step 1: Enclosure installation steps

The installation for this fan is super easy and the packaging also comes with the manual.

Paste a thermal pad on the CPU of the Raspberry Pi. This one is provided in the packaging.

Note: Silicon Thermal Pad is a must for proper thermal conductivity. Please make sure you place it properly.

Make sure that the header of the Argon Mini FAN HAT is aligned with physical PINS 1-12 of the Raspberry Pi.

Check if the heat sink of the Mini fan is in contact with the thermal pad.

Set mode of the Argon Mini Fan:

• ON: Mini Fan will always turn ON when the Raspberry Pi is powered, no script installation is needed.
• OFF: Turns OFF the Mini Fan.
• PWM: Sets the Mini Fan into a pulse width Modulation controllable mode, will need to install script in the Operating System.

Setting the PWM settings:

1. In Raspberry Pi OS (a.k.a: Raspbian), open the Terminal App
2. Go to the root directory and open 
          /boot/config.txt file
3. Open and edit the “config.txt” file by typing:
          sudo nano config.txt
4. Add the line:
          dtoverlay=gpio-fan,gpiopin=18,temp-55000
5. Press Ctrl+X to save changes and exit

Note: This setting will start the Mini Fan at a CPU temperature of 55 degrees Celcius (temp=55000). You may set your own desired initiation temperature as you wish.

The Raspberry Pi is now can be power ON.

Step 2: Result for the stress test

I have overclocked and ran the stress test on the Argon Mini Cooling Fan to observe how great the fan dissipates heat from the Raspberry Pi 4. The chart below shows the stressberry graph for the Argon Mini Cooling Fan.

From the chart, we can see that the Raspberry Pi can dissipate heat better with the fan. From my observations:

Bare board – the CPU is doing its best to deal with the generated heat. An interesting compromise that appears to be keeping the CPU well below 80 degrees Celsius.

Argon Mini Cooling Fan– this type of fan applies an active cooling mechanism and of course it is better than bare board in dissipating the heat. The heat from the CPU is absorbed and dissipated through the mini fan. The design is simple and it is suitable for minimalist type of person.

Overclock test – the Raspberry pi is overclocked to observe how far the clock frequency can be increased while maintaining the CPU temperature below 80 degree Celsius. The Raspberry Pi can be overclocked to maximum 2.1 GHz with this fan.

Now you can see that enclosure for Raspberry Pi 4 is really important in dissipating the CPU heat. Interested in having this type of enclosure for your Raspberry Pi? 

Let’s get the enclosure at our Cytron product webpage ?. 

Kindly refer this tutorial for the Stressberry test.

https://huongdan.cytrontech.vn/2021/11/18/stressberry-test-on-raspberry-pi-4/