Pimoroni Fan Shim for Raspberry PI

If you are using the offical Pi4 case, you will know that it doesn't take much for the Pi to get hot enough for thermal throttling to kick in. The problem is the case, there is no passive cooling and no vent for airflow, it is like a oven. Many possible solutions, and this fan is one option. It is very effective at keeping the temperature under control. There are many fans out in the market, but for me, this one has two things going for it,1) it fits inside the official Pi case. Even with the cover closed.2) it can be coded to turn on and turn off between two temperature range. This is very useful compared to other fans that on have one temperature value to trigger the fan.Due to size of the components, eg tiny screws and nuts, it takes a bit of patience to assemble and attach to the Pi. The instructions are very clear, and once assembled you will have it up and running with little effort. But it is not a quiet fan. No annoying rattling noise, just the sound of the motor and fan spinning. In a quiet room, you will notice it when the fan comes on. Oh, you cannot control the speed of the fan, it operates at one speed. Another thing, when the Pi has been shutdown, but the Pi power supply is still ON, the fan will run continuously. Apart from that, it is perfect and does exactly as intended. If you dont want the noise, you should explore other option, I strongly believe a better aluminium case with good passive heat dissipation will do the trick (google it, plenty of these in the market). Remember, the source problem is the official Pi4 case behaving like enclosed oven.

Wasted a couple of hours trying to figure out why the fan runs continuously even with thresholds set. Went around the usual route of reinstall and reboot many times to no effect. Suspect that the friction connections to the GPIO aren't making good contact as many others have reported. Don't know if I can be bothered to start fiddling with pin alignment to try and fix it as the risk of breaking the Pi 4 is too great. Would have given this zero stars.Update: after a long series of doing powerdowns, adjusting the SHIM position, restarting, and retesting I finally got it to work. Running stress now makes the fan start and stop correctly. Of course I'm now afraid to even breath on the Pi as it will doubtless stop working again. But at least I have proved that hardware and software are not faulty, just a terrible design.

Two parts to this review.1) HardwareSimple to put together and install on a Pi 4. Assembled, plugged in, restarted the Pi 4 and the fan sprang in to life: it's that easy. Took about 10 minutes. The screws / nuts are different to those shown in the the install guide but l don't think that's a big problem. It is very quiet when running - which is a plus.2) Software.A bit more difficult; especially if you are a not an experienced Pi OS user. The 'Getting Started' instructions on the PiMoroni website do NOT work unlesss you have GIT installed. Not obvious. However, after a bit of fiddling l got it all installed. Why not a simple sudo apt-get install? My guess is most users will simply want to set the on/off thresholds but having to run the install script every time seems a bit, well, clunky. I'm sure it could be made simpler.I'm testing this on a Pi 4 running World Community Grid so the CPU is running at full power 24x7. It is also overclocked to 2GHz so the CPU will rapidly get to 80 DegC The fan keeps it at a reasonable 65-67 DegC . Ambient temp is currently about 25 DegC so I'd expect slightly cooler when the ambient temp drops a bit.The fan is running pretty much 24x7 and I'm not sure it's really designed for that - l'd be interested to see how it stands up to the standard 5V Pi 4 fans (Pi-FAN) that you can get for just a few UKP.Would l buy another one? I'll run this one for a few weeks before making a decision. I like the design and the ability to control the fan is useful. Not sure I'm gaining much over the standard 5V fans.

Nice. Replaced heat sinks and a buzzing fan with this. Easy to control with simple commands from python library.One minor downside, the RGB LED doesn't appear to work. Doesn't trouble me greatly, but if it's sold as a feature, it should work. Will attempt to contact seller.Update: Contacted Pimoroni direct, they have sent a replacement, perfect! Missing star added.

I bought this as the Raspberry Pi 4 needs a fan to cool the processor and all the cheaper options was sold out.I was not disappointed.The fan works brilliantly and can be software controlled. It has a little led that visually display the hotness of the CPU.(green = cool and red = hot and colors between)The fan is absolutely quiet. I could not hear it at all when it was on and running. It is not even whisper quiet. It is dead quiet.It is a bit pricey for just a fan but really worth it if you can afford the extra few pounds.Can highly recommend.