I tried a heatsink but it didn't really help unless I had a desk fan providing some air flow.
Just adding a small fan (trying to avoid blowing our own trumpet too much here) absolutely demolishes the cooling performance of any reasonably-sized heatsink. Presumably there's just not that much passive airflow over something an inch square, even with convection.
I still wonder what would happen if a full desktop-sized heatsink was coupled to the Pi 4's SOC.
I still wonder what would happen if a full desktop-sized heatsink was coupled to the Pi 4's SOC.
I've been tempted for a while to build a big case with some sort of mounting standard (maybe a Peek array?) so that I can add whatever hardware I want to it (mostly electronics). This seems like a job for that.
Just slapping a normal CPU heatsink on the pi4 will probably work OK just do the thermal mass and exterior surface area of it, but you're probably not going to get much convection-cooling from it, either.
What I don't like about the article is that small fan have to spin fast (= noise) to generate enough flow. I'd much rather use a 80 mm fan, slowed way down, but I suppose I'd had to roll my own case for that. Better still, wait for someone to start offering this (or maybe this: http://blog.flirc.tv/index.php/2019/06/24/new-pi-4-cases/)