Raspberry 5 Support - What I'm doing to support it

I have been waiting for a EON type case for the Raspberry PI 5, and have decided to roll my own. I picked up a Radxa Penta Hat, some SSD’s and am in the middle of designing a case for it. The case will be cylindrical, have a fan at the top, pulling air from the bottom.

Schedule

  • I have the case designed, and have printed the bottom part, mounted the PI and and running diagnostics etc.
  • Next up, is printing the case body (being done as I type). I will make sure that fits, and when it all works continue to the case top.
  • Print case top
  • Print feet (out of TPU, a flexible material).

When I have these steps, I will post a link to the project and make it available to anyone.

Excuse the sparkly purple filament… I forgot to switch it out.

I’ll try and keep the project updated once a week, or as I meet the milestones.

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A less than stellar photo, but main body and top fit. Had and issue with the fan mount, so I need to reprint the main cylinder.

I’ll get some good photos.

Issues:

  • TPU need adjustment, didn’t get the size exactly correct…
  • Fix the case body to properly house the fan
  • Case top fits, however need to make sure air flow works, and it does not cause flow issues.
  • Need code to run the fan, and monitor disk/cpu temps

Switching to a Noctua 60mm fan, picking up an 80 as well for testing.

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Status

Case V1,0 is functional! However it needed a few updates:

  • Modified case to handle a 80mm fan. I picked up a Noctua NF-A8 5V PWM fan
  • Added a MicroSD access panel to the bottom. I may need to modify this as it is a little more difficult to insert the card than I wanted. (But then how often is this done when the system is operating well.
  • Modified the top for more exhaust flow, printing that now.

Software

Not really sure the PWM fan is needed, as running at 100% is very quiet.

NOTE: The Noctua fans are so quiet… I’m thinking about changing fans on other systems.

Putting together a build tutorial, and getting the STL files setup.

Used rpi-eeprom-config to modify the power consumption when off:

[all]
BOOT_UART=1
WAKE_ON_GPIO=0
POWER_OFF_ON_HALT=1

Other things

  1. Need to build in a power button (or access to the power button).
  2. Create light ports for the SSD’s. There are blue LED’s on the radxa board that light up when on, and flicker when used. I was thinking about building light pipes to move the indicators around.
  3. Add LED’s to the case
  4. Write up all the part I used to build this up (I extended the GPIO connections to give the PI a little more head room for heat dissipation.)
  5. Hope to have .STL files for V1.1 available with a week or two.

Case Status:

Uploaded everything to printables:

piStor case

I am using a Noctua 80mm PWM fan, but decided to NOT use the PWM part as the fan is very quiet at 100% (5v).

And you can see the fan:

Minor Edit:

You will absolutely need the Raspberry PI power brick!

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Argon40 folks… if you want to build these, DM me… :wink:

NHHiker