Is your Raspberry Pi 4 running a little hotter than you'd like? The Raspberry Pi Foundation issued a firmware update in July that was supposed to lower temps and reduce throttling, but if you want kick things up a notch, check out the new Blink Blink ICE Tower.
Seeed Studio is accepting preorders for what's essentially the RGB version of its previous ICE Tower cooler. It runs $19.90 and, according to Seeed Studio, can reduce the temperature of a Raspberry Pi from 80C all the way down to 40C.
It's not entirely clear what specific scenario would yield a 40C drop—the only thing Seeed Studio mentions is seeing that kind of reduction when overclocking.
I did some digging and found a review of the non-RGB version when used with a Raspberry Pi 4. The review noted the Raspberry Pi 4 would idle at around 65C and ramp up to well above 80C under load without a cooler attached. With the ICE Tower, idle temps dropped to 37C and load temps hit 46.2C.
Those are impressive results, if accurate. The ICE Tower certainly looks stout—sort of like a smaller version of Cooler Master's Hyper 212 Evo, one of the best CPU coolers for a standard PC. The numbers are also roughly in line with what YouTuber ETA PRIME saw.
There are plenty of things you can do with a Raspberry Pi, such as building your own Steam box or a computer for your car. Of course, not every project requires or would benefit from using a cooler, and attaching a tower cooler limits your chassis selection.
Head to the product page on Seeed Studio to check it our and/or place a preorder. If you don't care about RGB lighting, the regular version is in stock, for the same price.
