Pi 3 temperature problems?

eroj · September 23, 2016 at 9:46 AM

Hi everyone,

I've got a new Raspberry 3. This Pi was bought from Amazon (the official Pi 3 Kit).
Within this kit, I've got the Pi, the official white case, the ac adapter and two heatsink.
I placed the heatinks on the CPU and the RAM.

The point I was wondering, is that the Pi CPU temperature is getting extremely high?!
Yesterday I was watching TV over the Pi (PVR Client Connection to my HTPC). Libreelec was showing me a little thermometer on the right top corner.
Therefore I've looked on the Pi (SSH) and see that the CPU actually had 83°C.
When just idling in the menu (for hours), the Pi has got almost a temperature of 50°C.

Are theese temperatures to high?
The Pi is not running in performance mode, just the "normal" ondemand mode with 600 Mhz each core.

Thanks in advance for any advise.

**Jocke.Sve** · September 23, 2016 at 11:09 AM

I run my PI3's without the 'lid' on.

Like this:

Temp is approx 60-65°C depending of usage.

It's not pretty but it works...

**Klojum** · September 23, 2016 at 2:03 PM Official Post

I'd say those temps are quite okay. Remember that this is a fanless device, so don't compare them with any computers in PC casings. If you use a closed housing, just drill a few extra holes in it, so the heat can escape at the top of the box.

Grimson · September 23, 2016 at 3:00 PM

Quote from eroj

Yesterday I was watching TV over the Pi (PVR Client Connection to my HTPC). Libreelec was showing me a little thermometer on the right top corner.

If live TV is using the MPEG2 codec you can buy the MPEG2 license, this allows the PI3 to user the hardware decoder which lessens the strain on the CPU considerably.

You can also get a case like this: The Official Kodi Edition Raspberry Pi Case | Kodi | Open Source Home Theater Software which cools the CPU far better than a simple heatsink.

papandy · November 28, 2016 at 7:04 PM

Hallo,

I also have temp problems with my rpi3 and libreelec 8 (008)
The thermometer showed up when listening to music.
I found out that the problem in my case is the Visualisation.
With Visualisation the GPU running on 100% and heating up to 80°C in about a few minutes.
I have tryed several Visualisations, but everytime the same problem.
I deactivated the Visualisation and the problem was gone.
But I love the Shadertoy!

Is there anything i could do to have Visualisation without overheating?

greetings

Papandy

**chewitt** · November 29, 2016 at 5:25 AM Official Post

Quote from papandy

Is there anything i could do to have Visualisation without overheating?

Add a heatsink. Use a case with better ventilation. Place the box/board somewhere with better air circulation.

**Iridium** · November 29, 2016 at 2:49 PM Official Post

Firstly. the "Temperature box", as you call it, is better known as the rainbow box and a sign of under voltage not temperature. I believe a total red box is used for over temperature. I would check your PSU is at least 2.5amp and you have a good quality USB lead.

Are you heat sinks copper or aluminium? As copper is much more efficient.

The idle temperature of 50 degrees is about right, the original RPi was about 45 degrees at idle with a copper heat sink. depending on ambient room temperature.
83 degrees does seem a bit high, so you may need to check what the CPU is doing. If it is going full pelt, then you need to investigate what is using all the processing power.

If all else fails, you could add a small one inch 5v fan and power it off of the 3.3v GPIO pins (This reduces the fan speed and thus noise - if noise is not an issue, then use the 5v pins.) This should reduce the temperature by around 10 degrees.

But first I'd solve the power issue first before worrying about the temperature.

@papandy I've just tried shadertoy - albeit on a RPi2 - and the CPU runs at around 90% idle. I'll try it on a RPi3 (when it become free) and see if there is an issue with the RPi3 but I think there might be another issue on your box. Can you provide a screenshot of "top" (and press 1 to show all the CPU's).

Grimson · November 29, 2016 at 4:59 PM

Quote from Iridium

Firstly. the "Temperature box", as you call it, is better known as the rainbow box and a sign of under voltage not temperature. I believe a total red box is used for over temperature.

Warnings have changed with the latest firmware versions: Raspberry Pi • View topic - Under-voltage warnings

Quote from Iridium

I would check your PSU is at least 2.5amp and you have a good quality USB lead.

The amount of power a PSU can provide has nothing to do with the stability of the voltage. You can easily run an RPI3 on a good 1amp PSU, as long as it keeps a stable 5 volts and you're not trying to power additional USB devices through the PI.

Quote from Iridium

83 degrees does seem a bit high, so you may need to check what the CPU is doing. If it is going full pelt, then you need to investigate what is using all the processing power.

@papandy I've just tried shadertoy - albeit on a RPi2 - and the CPU runs at around 90% idle. I'll try it on a RPi3 (when it become free) and see if there is an issue with the RPi3 but I think there might be another issue on your box. Can you provide a screenshot of "top" (and press 1 to show all the CPU's).

CPU utilization might not be high, but the GPU is used to it's limits. This will generate a lot of heat too.

**Iridium** · November 29, 2016 at 5:51 PM Official Post

Grimson Thanks for the info about the symbols - never seen them before (Guess because I haven't had any problems )
papandy I've tried shadertoy on IMX6 with the same results 90% idle.

papandy · November 30, 2016 at 6:48 AM

Thanks for your answers. I've tested it again but the Same. GPU to its max and heating up. I did'nt want a fan in my Pi so i think i have to stay without Visualisation.

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**Jocke.Sve** · November 30, 2016 at 9:30 AM

I had similar heat issues earlier.
Solved these by running all PI's with the lid open and additional "spacers" below the box to increase air circulation

trent · November 30, 2016 at 1:00 PM

Quote from papandy

Thanks for your answers. I've tested it again but the Same. GPU to its max and heating up. I did'nt want a fan in my Pi so i think i have to stay without Visualisation.

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Raspberry Pi 3 is not capable of running at full load for an extended period without throttling or additional cooling measures.

The question is, could the music visualization be optimized so it does not use max GPU? I don't know. Drawing some lines and stuff on screen does not seem like something that should require 100% GPU load (consider RPi can do much more impressive graphics without overheating). You should ask on the relevant section of Kodi forum.

papandy · December 1, 2016 at 1:26 PM

I have found this Version of Shadertoy Visualisation from milhouse. visualization.shadertoy-999.1.1.4-#1101-milhouse.zip
This one does the job without overheating. Max temp i got Till now was 65,5 °C.

Greetings

Papandy

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endor · December 8, 2016 at 9:25 PM

In case you decide to go with a fan, you can pick up a small 40mm or 50mm 12v fan and run it at 5v off the GPIO header. I did this on my odroid C2, using a 50mm (I think) fan I stole from a dead and very old Buffalo NAS device and just screwed on the top of their standard case.

Because it is running at less voltage than it is designed for, it spins a lot slower and is therefore extremely quiet (read: darn near silent to my ears) yet moves enough air to keep temps under control. My odroid was running 150-160F (65-70C) without the fan, and with it temps are down in the 100F (38C) range all the time.

On my Rpi3, I went with the C4Labs Zebra Virtue with their 5v fan... which is a little too loud, but the case is really nice otherwise. It does keep temps down in the 105F (40C) range with the aluminum heat sinks they provide.

UPRHome · April 23, 2017 at 3:49 PM

Quote from eroj

Okay, I found that I had the same circumstance occurring when running LE. But here's the odd thing. I wasn't running any codecs! I have them installed on another RPi3 which is running OE versions (Isengard & Krypton). The only thing I can surmise is that somehow the latest release of LE is transcoding the Mpeg2 stream and thereby forcing the CPU to work like crazy and overheat(??) I tried different SD cards on the same RPi3 box and everytime I ran the HDHomeRun addon for our live TV feed, they all did the same thing (buffer and stop). But everytime I ran the SD card that has the LE 8.01 it would play the live TV feeds fine, albeit with an overheating warning/icon in the top right corner. Weird!

Just curious if this means that someone has placed code in the LE OS that allows the Mpeg2 licenses to be bypassed by transcoding(???!)

**chewitt** · April 23, 2017 at 4:04 PM Official Post

RPi0/1/2 have a limited CPU and the licenses are needed to use hardware decoding to get output. RPi3 has enough CPU to software decode things under normal conditions.