I guess I should have been a bit clearer. I've used lots of pi's and I've had them throttle because of thermal issues. I figure if I want to use this pi5 as a desktop on my home desktop, I can't have it constantly doing the heat up / cool down game.. plus that's not good for an SOC in any case. It's yet to be seen if that little fan is going to be obnoxious..
 
I realize that this isn't a gaming machine. What I really want is a super low power desktop I can tape to the back of my monitor and use to surf the web, write crappy scifi and maybe watch a video.
As a stretch goal if it's capable of letting me use OnShape, I'll be doubly surprised, but I suspect that's a cpu bridge too far.. Though I've managed to use OnShape on my phone.. so who knows..


On Tue, Jan 9, 2024 at 12:26 PM Jon "maddog" Hall <jon.maddog.hall@gmail.com> wrote:
"since it appears trying to actually do anything with it will kill it in any real sense."

That depends on the processor, existence or size of heat sink, heat transfer connectivity between SoC and heat sink, ambient temperature and OS settings.

Most modern SoCs have a temperature setting inside that the OS can read.  If the processor gets too hot the CPU can throttle back the clock and reduce the heat produced.  It could also schedule fewer or less powerful cores.  Of course this slows down your computer.

The other main consideration is ambient temperature.  If the air around the system is really warm the heat sink can only exchange so much heat.  The fan helps with this, but in the end you might still have the CPU throttled.

This explains why some over locked machines used by gamers even use liquid cooling to carry off the heat from the circuitry.

I have not looked into the RPi 5 enough to know the extent of the thermal protection it enjoys, but I would not discourage you from buying the fan to get maximum performance on benchmarks.

There was a good "Toms Hardware" video on this with regards to the RPi 5
 when it first came out.

On Tue, Jan 9, 2024, 12:12 Tim Keller <turbofx@gmail.com> wrote:
I did get my pi5 in the mail! I went off and printed a case for it! I'm going to head over to Microcenter (possibly for lunch!) and buy a cooler for it since it appears trying to actually do anything with it will kill it in any real sense.

Tim.

On Mon, Jan 8, 2024 at 11:54 AM John Stoffel <john@stoffel.org> wrote:

Here's an interesting article on using the Pi5 as a daily desktop. 


https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/what-i-learned-from-using-a-raspberry-pi-5-as-my-main-computer-for-two-weeks/




--
I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".


--
I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".