Cool Running
Retrofitting a Raspberry Pi with a cooling element does not cost much; however, does the Rasp Pi really need one?
Monitoring Raspberry Pi temperatures
The noise accompanying classic PCs originates from the continuously whirring and humming fans moving hot air generated by the CPU out of the computer housing. In contrast, the Raspberry Pi does not need a cooling system. In fact, you will not find any place for a fan or passive cooling element on the Rasp Pi board. In this article, I use monitoring software to determine if and when your Rasp Pi needs help keeping cool.
Rasp Pi SoC
With standard settings, the ARM processor for the Broadcom BCM2835 system on a chip (SoC) found on classic Raspberry Pis works at a constant 700MHz, even though manufacturer guidelines permit a clock frequency of up to 1GHz [1]. This means the Rasp Pi has roughly the computing power of a 300MHz fast Pentium II from 1997. The integrated VideoCore IV GPU makes it possible to run graphical interfaces like the LXDE environment at an adequate speed.
For some time now, the official position of the Raspberry Pi Foundation has been to permit overclocking and overvolting [2]. The developers have approved raising the voltage and the clock rate to 1GHz as long as the core temperature in the CPU of the BCM2835 SoC does not exceed 85°C (185°F).
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