Comment by ThrowawayR2
17 days ago
The Raspberry Pi 5's official heatsink comes with a fan and its collection of software is dwarfed by what's available for a x86 PC regardless of whether it's running Linux or Windows.
17 days ago
The Raspberry Pi 5's official heatsink comes with a fan and its collection of software is dwarfed by what's available for a x86 PC regardless of whether it's running Linux or Windows.
That fan stays idle on low loads, and if you wanted you could also leave it unplugged to just rely on the heatsink.
Then again, N100 can also be bought with passive cooling. But not so sure how the mini PCs of the article would fare without a fan.
I've been running a fanless mini-pc as a firewall for years. They work just fine. The ones you get from aliexpress come in a case where half of the case is a massive heat sink, and it will get a little bit warm.
> you could also leave it unplugged to just rely on the heatsink.
You can also expect your hardware to have a shorter life.
Pi will automatically throttle before running too hot. And in any case, I doubt most people run their Pis hard at all. I bet most use cases will be completely fine even without that heatsink, with no compromise on the lifespan.