EDATEC, a specialist in embedded electronics, has released two enclosures for the new Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer (SBC), designed to reduce the possibility of thermal throttling without the noise or reliability concerns associated with an active fan – cooling the device totally passively.
EDATEC’s early Raspberry Pi 5 case offerings, brought to our attention by CNX Software, do more than just protect the device. The business has presented two designs, both of which are CNC milled from aluminum and attached to hot-running portions of the board — allowing excess heat to be bled off passively without the need to connect anything to the Raspberry Pi 5’s new fan connection.
EDATEC, a specialist in embedded electronics, has released two enclosures for the new Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer (SBC), designed to reduce the possibility of thermal throttling without the noise or reliability concerns associated with an active fan – cooling the device totally passively.
EDATEC’s early Raspberry Pi 5 case offerings, brought to our attention by CNX Software, do more than just protect the device. The business has presented two designs, both of which are CNC milled from aluminum and attach to hot-running portions of the board — allowing excess heat to be bled off passively without the need to connect anything to the Raspberry Pi 5’s new fan connection.
Early Raspberry Pi models could run at full speed as a bare board, but as the performance of subsequent designs improved, so did the power required to run them, with the latest and most powerful model, the Raspberry Pi 5, reaching its thermal throttle point in around 40 seconds of stress testing. To remedy this, Raspberry Pi has released two accessories: a plastic case with an integrated fan and an aluminum cooler with a blower, both of which include moving parts.
EDATEC’s designs, on the other hand, rely on passive cooling. The first is the ED-Pi5Case-B and -S, which indicate a black and silver finish, respectively, and are enclosed case designs that cover the entire board. A full-size silicone sheet conducts heat from the Raspberry Pi 5’s PCB to a huge aluminum base, while smaller targeted pads conduct heat to the upper lid for the system-on-chip and power management circuitry.
The ED-Pi5Case-OB and -OS, on the other hand, have a two-layer rounded open-frame design that keeps the sides clear. According to EDATEC, this decreases the weight of the casing when compared to the full-coverage variant — but less aluminum implies less cooling capability, with the board offering a stated 15°C drop-in board temperature to a 20-25°C drop for the closed version.
Both cases include cutouts for the Raspberry Pi 5’s GPIO header, two MIPI Camera Serial Interface/Display Serial Interface (DSI/CSI) ports, Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) header, and PCI Express connector, with the open-frame version also including cutouts for the RTC battery, debug UART, and fan headers. According to the business, the closed-frame version additionally includes a plastic glass on the side of the board’s PCB antenna to prevent metal from interfering with reception.
Both board variations are currently available on EDATAC’s AliExpress site, with prices starting at $18 for the closed-frame model and $10 for the open-frame edition — however, this does not include a costly shipping fee that practically doubles the price.
