Posted on Leave a comment

McPi Raspbery Pi Case Thermal Performance

So, you like the way the McPi case looks but are afraid to ask how she performs? Is this box too hot for you? We realize the importance of a first impression and that beauty is more than skin deep. Hot boxes can be intimidating so we opened the hood and did the dirty work for you. Here is the telemetry.

Can you believe the size of that heat sink? We have been assured it’s for real. No hollowed out die cast junk here.

First we enabled overclocking and set the pi to a max of 1.55ghz. We told you the stig may not be able to handle it. That’s ok we at MACSBOOST are trained professionals. Too lazy to pick up a keyboard yet we enabled the retropie overclock feature from our joystick.

Next up, some keyboard action was required. Using this post from Core Electronics a few test stress test scripts were installed. https://core-electronics.com.au/tutorials/stress-testing-your-raspberry-pi.html

Stress Testing

Once the stress test was installed we ran them hard. Our results were a peak of 45.1C after 900 seconds. Not bad! But wait, can you hear it?

Nope, we can’t hear it either. There is no fan on this case and we love the silence.


cpuburna-53

After a successful run, we ran the dreaded cpuburn-a53 test. No worries here, After 20 minutes we were only at 66.6C and still no throttling. This must must be work of the ice devil… We digress.

Stabilized McPi case temperature of 66.6C while running the cpuburna-53 test.

Wow, the performance is phenomenal! No throttling after running the most extreme processor test at full load. No fan needed. Excellent! Passive cooling FTW.

How does it work?

1: Physics my boy. Heat transfer is largely a function of cross sectional area. More real area = lower thermal resistance to extract the angry watts trying to escape. Thus, our heat sink feature is solid 6061 chunk of billet fury, not a die cast hollow illusion of a heatsink. Plus using our extra gravity technology we gain a significant amount of thermal inertia.

2: Virtually all crappy pi cases use thermal pads. In kindergarten we learned pads are for sissies. How quickly we forget. While thermal pads are better than air, they are no where near the performance of a properly machined surface. Think for yourself. If pads were better cpu fans would use them. The McPi Case is precision machined so the processor and Ethernet chip are directly and precisely matched with no pads.

Performance never looked so good:

Perhaps we should have painted the case in British racing green? After all, this thing hauls the email. Fortunately we didn’t satisfy that urge and left the McPi case in its natural state. We can always keep our Pi’s British racing green PCB heritage faraday caged and out of sight. Bare aluminum with the naked carbon looks sooo much better.

Wifi?

Don’t be ridiculous, Wifi performance is still great. We use Wii U pro bluetooth controllers for retropie and have a great wifi signal back to our network at the official MB HQ.

#piday

#piday is just around the corner and there is no better way to enjoy a slice!

Order now and see what high quality is all about!

The McPi Ultra Premium Rapsbery Pi case on Faux wood desk with P-touch labeled SD card.

Do you have more Questions? Stay tuned, we have answers. Will it blend???

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *