The Raspberry Pi 3 is running a little hot again

Posted By on August 7, 2016

Once again, the little Raspberry Pi 3 is running hotter than optimal for long life and performance. I’m adding the small heatsinks as with the first Pi3 which eventually failed to boot — exchanged under warranty BUT it was running consistently hot. I have purposely monitored and kept the case open (saves a few degrees) … but it still isn’t cooking like the ZDNet tests.

When not under load, the Pi’s CPU operates at 600MHz, increasing its speed to 1.2GHz when tasked with carrying out a heavyweight operation. Operating at this higher speed will begin to raise the temperature of the board and when it goes over 80C the Pi 3 will start to reduce its operating frequency in order to reduce the heat emitted by the CPU. Its speed is gradually reduced, dropping down to 600MHz if the board hits 85C or over.

The Pi 3 is based around a 64-bit processor, compared to the 32-bit CPU used in the Pi 2. The Pi 3’s processor is based on a newer architecture, the ARM Cortex A53, than that of the Pi 2’s processor, which is built around the ARM Cortex A7 core. This newer architecture is capable of carrying out more work per processor cycle. The Pi 3’s CPU is quad-core, like the Pi 2’s, but is faster – clocked at 1.2GHz, some 300 MHz higher than that of the Pi 2.

Source: No, your Raspberry Pi 3 won’t overheat in everyday use, says its creator | ZDNet

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