With the holidays quickly approaching, you might be on the hunt for some stocking stuffer gifts for all the Raspberry Pi fans in your life. If so, check out the new Case Fan designed exclusively for Raspberry Pi 4  available for just $5 in time for the holidays.

This innovative new Case Fan has been developed to clip inside the lid of the official Raspberry Pi 4 case, and it will keep your device cool even when you’re running heavy workloads in a warm ambient environment. It’s the perfect gift for anyone who wants to maximize the performance of their Pi 4.

Optimizing Power

To understand the value of the new Case Fan, it’s important to know that the Raspberry Pi 4 was originally designed to operate like most smartphones, with a “sprint and recover” mode of power optimization. Like any other electronic gadget, a Pi will generate heat waste while it operates. If it’s running at a maximum performance capacity for an extended duration, it will start to heat up and then throttle back its performance in order to limit the temperature increase.

Over the past 18 months, a team of developers at Raspberry Pi have worked to improve the power output and have succeeded in eliminating the throttle necessary for an uncased Pi (so long as it’s operating at 1.5GHz in a standard ambient temperature).

However, a different solution was needed for boards kept within a case. And, of course, there are many good reasons why you might want to keep your Pi in a case. Hence, we now get the development and launch of the new Case Fan.

How the New Case Fan Works 

The new Case Fan has been designed to fit into the lid of the existing official Raspberry Pi 4 case. The Fan is temperature controlled and will deliver up to 1.4CFM of air flow over the device, including the processor, memory, and power management integrated circuits (PMIC) as necessary. It also contains a 18mm × 18mm × 10mm heatsink with a self-adhesive pad to improve the transference of heat from your Pi’s processor.

To get started using the Fan, you want to make sure to remove any SD card and be sure your device is securely aligned in the base of your case. You then insert the Fan into the upper half of the case with the green label pointing away front the lid. The Fan is designed to fit flush with the underside of the lid. There are three wire leads coming from the fan (red, black, and blue) that you will want to attach to GPIO pins on your Pi (5V, GND, and GND 14 TXD respectively). If you want to use the heatsink, just remove the paper cover from the self-adhesive pad and press the heat sink on top of the processor. Now just fit the case lid back to its base, and you’re ready to go!

Once your fan is connected, it will turn on by default whenever your Pi is running. If you choose, you can also configure it to turn on only when your device reaches a certain temperature.

Ready to Try the New Raspberry Pi 4 Case Fan?

Do you run your Raspberry Pi 4 inside a case and find that your device could use extra cooling? Will you do more with your Pi if you don’t have to worry about overheating? Let us know how the new Case Fan will be valuable for you!

Here at Vilros, we’re proud to be one of the few approved resellers offering the Raspberry Pi 4 Case Fan to customers in the U.S. Check out our website to  get yours today. (Note: the $5 offer is just for the fan – it assumes you already have the case that the fan is designed to attach to).

And don’t forget to check back here to our Vilros  blog to find out more news and updates from Raspberry Pi and Arduino!