I thought I'd start a Pi 4 thread. Mainly just to say that I have managed to fry mine in less than 5 minutes. Managed to reboot twice. I just managed to install kodi on it, and reboot once. Then I decided that the radiator was pretty damn hot, and put a fan on it, like I have done with all my previous Pi's. A 5V Noctua 40mm fan, plugged into the 3.3V IO pin, and ground. After doing this I have no video output. It seems like the Pi is booting, due to the flashing LED's, but I have no video output on any of the two micro HDMI sockets. There is a nice "I burnt something" smell that you get when a PSU goes up, if you smell the USB ports. I had a USB keyboard/mouse combo plugged in to the USB ports. I was using the official Power supply. I was using a HDMI to micro-HDMI adapter. (There was lots of swearing ) I had read somewhere that the Pi4 is sensitive to the 3.3V rail (after the problem) so it might be that. I may also have just connected the wrong pins on the IO port, I cannot say for sure. Strangely not a huge amount of info on the Net about burnt out or fried Pi4's... So, just be careful, these might not be as indestructible as the previous Pi. I have ordered another, hoping to not do the same thing twice, got a large passive heatsink to go with it. And an official micro-HDMI to HDMI cable, because the micro-HDMI adapter pushes up against the power supply.
Just got my 2nd Pi4 2GB, and an official microHDMI to HDMI cable from the post office. Tried the cable on my previous Pi4, it works , it was the microHDMI to female HDMI adapter that had died. Was going to get a 2nd one anyway, and i also have the "Pi4" heatsink i got at the same time. Its totally flat on the bottom, so i'm going to have to get a thickish thermal pad for it to hit the Power delivery part as well, since it covers it. Compared to the pic below i have it 90° turned, as it actually touches both of the ribbon connector brown things on either side in the position they have it in the picture. It is very low in z-height, 5mm, so I can fit a PiHat on it. ~3mm clearance with the HifiBerry Dac+. Link to French shop where i got it, and where the pics are from (re-hosted). https://www.kubii.fr/raspberry-pi-4...query=Heat+sink+pour+Raspberry+Pi4+&results=1 edit : basically, two 0.5mm thermal pads did the trick. You see on the right image, in the bottom left, the power delivery/converter chip. Rotate the Heatsink 90°, and put the thermal pads on, and its good so far. The chip that is large and black between the power and the first microHDMI slot is roughly the same hight as the CPU heatspreader top. The choke that is just to the top-right of the power delivery/converter chip is about 0.5mm higher than the power chip itself, so i made a cutout for that choke on the bottom layer 0.5mm thermal pad, and laid a second 0.5mm thermal pad over the lot (thermal pads do not include the black chip in between the Power connector and 1st microHDMI connector). Seems to work fine so far. The fan is doing 90% of the cooling though. If you look at the top right image, the fan is on the left pointing to the right. With the heatsink rotated 90° the fins are all in the right direction. USB/Network chips don't seem to get warm, even under sustained load, then again, the fan does help, again. Not really in need of heatsinks in my opinion.
So just ordered 3 heatsinks, one for the other Pi4, one for the B450 chipset on my Mobo (Its better than the original) and one to try on a B3+. Also 2 microHDMI to HDMI cables to test dual screen on the second Pi4 (Not going to try any adapters again). And a second PSU for it, as i was half expecting the first Pi4 to be dead . After the tetsts, it will become the TV Kodi box, as LibreElec 9.0.0.1 iirc, seems quite stable, even with my HifiBerry Dac+ dual Analogue output. TV box uses HDMI out for sound. Very, very, happy with it so far. Pi4 needs a fan, no matter the heatsink, lol. I'm at 38-40°C with a Noctua 40mm 5V fan on the USB power, side-on to the heatsink. Very slight whine, but thats why i like to run it at 3.3V (not possible with the Dac+ Hat). Worked fine btw with the fan on the 3.3V and ground pins. The only problem i had was with the microHDMI adapter that may have a bent pin inside. edit : aiming to test RetroPie on it as well. Have a 128GB mSD for that.
One last thing for tonight, the heatink above by itself, passively, gets very hot. I can't stress it enough, Pi4's get very hot. Fan required. 5V fan @3.3V is silent.
Just noticed that the Pi4 Safety and User Manual has a list of all the variants. 1GB, 2GB, 4GB + 8GB So, maybe an 8GB Pi4 is in the pipeline ? edit :
