Argon One for Pi 4
Les Pounder is trying to keep his cool, but another case and cooling solution for the Raspberry Pi 4 has him a little hot under the collar.
Les Pounder is trying to keep his cool, but another case and cooling solution for the Raspberry Pi 4 has him a little hot under the collar.
There’s no shortage of cases for the Raspberry Pi, and that includes the recently released Pi 4. We covered many different cases and cooling options in LXF258, but the Argon One Pi 4 arrived just a little too late for our test.
The Argon One Pi 4 is a stylish piece of kit that measures 140mm long, 93mm wide and 31mm tall. It looks like a prop from Star Trek and is made with an aluminium top piece and a plastic lower section. The Pi 4 is placed sideways inside the case, and a custom circuit board is used to break out the micro HDMI and composite ports to the chassis. There is another custom circuit board inside the case, and this contains a small 5V cooling fan, USB-C port to power the Pi 4, and two unused infrared ports for remote-control projects. Moving to the outside of the case, and all of the ports are located at the back, thanks to the custom circuit board and novel orientation of the Pi 4. There is also a power button! Yes, we can power the Pi 4 on and off, but more on that later.
You may now be thinking, “How do I get access to the GPIO and camera?” Well, the Argon team has thought of that, and underneath a magnetic hatch is access to the GPIO, colour-coded and with all the pin references printed on the case. But do take note of the pin orientation to ensure that any add-on boards are correctly attached, and you may also need to use a header extension to ensure that the board clears the aluminium case of the Argon One. Located just next to the GPIO hatch is a small slot, which is very useful for routing the Pi’s camera cable through.
To accompany the case there is a downloadable install file that is provided via a URL, which offers enhanced functionality. After installing the file – and yes we did check the source code before installation, it appears safe, if a little dated in its use of Python 2 – it enabled us to safely shutdown the Pi 4 by pressing the power button for 3+ seconds. A double tap of the power button is a reset, and a long press will force the system to power down. The software also controls the internal fan, with temperatures over 55°C triggering 10 per cent fan speed, anything over 65°C will force the fan to go to full power.
In our tests, we used sysbench to compute prime numbers using all four cores, and temperature data was recorded to a CSV file using a little Python code. The idle temperature was 36°C and even after 10 minutes the system temperature was just over 46°C. This makes the Argon One similar to the Jun_electronic case, though the Argon One is a much better product.
Overall this is a great case! It offers great cooling, easy access to the GPIO and the other ports. The form factor is stylish, not too large, but there are still a few downsides to the case. It would have been nice to have VESA mounting points to hide the Pi behind a screen. The included thermal pads for the CPU and RAM chips are usable, but some thermal paste will see a bigger drop in temperature than here.
Overall though the Argon One for Pi 4 is great, and if you need solid cooling and access to the GPIO in a stylish package, look no further.