BIQU Aluminum Raspberry Pi 4/Raspberry Pi 4B/4B Plus Case Enclosure Box (Black)

Honestly, this is a three or four star case, but trying to average out the nasty / misleading ones I'm padding it high.Overall: This case is a project, like everything else with to do with a Raspberry Pi. It is a bargain among the passive heat sink cases and that comes with a few quirks. If you take care of the two items in the "bad" section you'll have a great case for Kodi or Retropie without the annoying fan hum.The bad:1) There are no thermal pads provided with this case. If you want decent heat transfer, you'll need a decent pad. I have some pad materiel so this was not a big deal for me but it may be for you. If you want this case after reading the full review look at something like Artic's Silicone based one sold elsewhere on Amazon, thicker would be good.2) Like almost all aluminum heat sink cases, this one painted the heat transfer pads. If you took physics, you would know that and additional boundary layer for efficient heat transfer is not a good idea. Again, a little time with a file I already owned and some sandpaper and it was plenty shiny.The good:1) The heat transfer was better than anything I've tested so far, though I've not found that many passive cooling cases and won't shell out close to $75 to get one of the Wicked Aluminum cases. I've attached a graph of how this case's temperature rises while running "stress" on all four CPUs.2) The case is rock solid once assembled. Some of the cases I've tried felt like they were not going to hold together very long, this one is solid.3) NO FAN - I wanted something that could transcode 1080p video for Kodi and run all the emulators in RetroPie, that puts a lot of load on the CPU and that means heat. With most other sub $10 cases the CPU would get throttled as it hit its thermal limits which meant that the video and games stutter and lag. Other people elect for fans on their RPis but I find fan hum really annoying. This case uses the entire case as its heat sink so that fans are not needed.The Meh:1) Having spent 15 years working on international standards, I can say that USB and Ethernet are designed to survive shorts. People do all kids of bad things to interface cables (shut them in drawers, close doors on them, drop heavy metal stuff on them) and the people who design the standards make it so that once you remove the short things will still be functioning. While it might be possible to disable a port while it was in the case, if it was permanently fried that would be on the RPi designers not the case guys. That said, I put thick tape under inside the case to test this with a known bad board I have, the only thing that dimpled the tape were the connector shield legs and no signal leads. As the connector faces short the shell to the case at their openings I can't see this mattering. Someone may have permanently killed ports while using this case, but, it would not have been the case's fault.2) You can't see the LEDs once the case is in place. There is a slot very close to the LEDs that looks like maybe someone thought it might allow you to see the LEDs but they missed in the placement and the best you can see vague light through the slot only if the room is very dark.3) I have no idea how the WiFi works. Some people have said metal cases attenuate the signals severely for the RPi 3's onboard WiFi, I doubt it would kill it completely. There are holes in the case and its mating faces are not gasketted to seal well enough to close out everything. It probably drops the signal somewhat but probably also allows it to work OK. In my case, I use wired Ethernet so I can ensure the bandwidth is there.4) There is no way you can safely use the mounting holes on the bottom of the case. Even a slim pan head screw would short out the real electronics on bottom of the RPi and this would do permanent damage no doubt. Obviously someone clueless added the cut outs, or someone was having a joke.To make this at least a little objective, I've attached a plot of the temperature rise of the CPU under load using the command "stress --cpu 4 --timeout 600". Temperature rise above ambient, not absolute temperature, in degree's C. It is worth noting that the CPU frequency was not throttled due to heat for the ten minutes of testing for any of the metal cases, that definitely happens with most RPi cases and certainly official RPi case I used as a baseline (the blue curve). The cases plotted here are the RPi standard snap together plastic case, FLIRC / Kodi case, the GeauxRobot CNC case and this case BIQU. Given this is a sample size of one case, tested one time, I can't say definitively that it is the best case ever; but, it did do the best of the ones I tested and it is at least a very efficient case for cooling.So -After testing I did end up buying more of these while their prices are depressed by the other one star reviews. I really like the GeauxRobot's feel but it costs more than twice these and I don't need any I/O expansion or wireless.

To say this case keeps a Raspberry PI 3 cool is an understatement. Of course, I had to do a few things to get the results I got....but anyone can get these results with these steps.First off, I'd like to thank the reviewer with the review titled "Best investment I have ever made"...the copper idea is a miracle...works fantasticGet yourself a roll of copper foil. Not copper Aluminum foil, but Copper Foil. Copper all the way through. Either 1mm or 2mm thick.There are 3 heatsink points in this case, measure the size of each chip on all points on the Raspberry Pi.Cut the copper squares to the size of each chip on the PIYou can use sandpaper or something sharp...but scratch or sand the paint off of the top of the heatsink points...bare metal. I used a pair of sharp scissors. Worked like a charm. Make sure you clean off the case..there may be bits of metal in the case from sanding or scraping. Don't want that on the PI board. Can anyone say...SHORT OUT!!!.Put some thermal grease on the bottom chip first..then place the Copper square on the chip just enough to where it'll hold in place. Next, put some more thermal grease on the other side of the copper and place the PI board onto the bottom of the case where it goes..let it sit thereDo the same for the top chips. thermal grease on chip...place copper square on chip...thermal grease on copperPlace the top of the case on the Pi board and screw it in place.I used some 1080p camcorder files that were 8mps bitrate...using Librelec...i had no issues at all and my max temps were 43c..Idle was 38c...the case is warmish to the touch but nothing compared to a case with just those little heatsinks.Not everyone will buy copper foil, cause of the expense(I got lucky...my neighbor had an old roll lying around)..but if you can find a small roll...its worth it. The thermal grease I use is Arctic Cooling mx-4This combination of items I mentioned really keeps this PI super cool. If your looking for a PI case thats keeps it cool and quiet. Look no further.

I have 2 of these with Raspberry Pi3s in them, they work great. No short circuit issues. In fact after seeing a review that states this case wrecked some RPI boards by shorting them out I grabbed a multimeter, set it to continuity, and jammed both probes onto the case HARD, pointed end down.Not a single peep out of the meter. The paint is an insulator an appears to be pretty tough.As far as sanding the paint and mold flash off the heat sink pads, you have to do that with the FLIRC case too, with the added bonus that the CPU heat sink in the FLIRC case is HOLLOW. Really, it has a plastic cover to hide that.. which TBH is going to inhibit heat dissipation as well. Also the FLIRC case, for all the hype and higher price only has one heatsink, instead of the 3 solid ones that this case has.This case has extra internal clearance on the side with the GPIO header and the two tightly/perfectly fitting halves of the case have a slot right there for a ribbon cable.I also like the fact that this case is solid metal all around, with no junky plastic parts like the FLIRC. The entire bottom of the FLIRC is a flimsy plastic piece.Who would have thought the less expensive case is both higher quality, and a better design.FWIW this does have a design flaw, there are slots on the bottom, as if it was designed to wall mount with screws .. since there is no insulating material, or even enough clearance for any screw head, don't even bother. Maybe this is how the other reviewer shorted out their Pi.Also, no heat pad or grease, you will need to sand/file the paint and mold flash off the heat sink surfaces. I used an emery board from the dollar store, as it is rigid and makes it easy to keep the sanding flat. Then I wiped it down, added a little dab of heat sink grease to each heat sink and closed it up.

Well build encloser if you want to overclock the Pi. keep it cool so you can get a bit more out of the processor.Do as all the other reviews say, remove coating of place where the processor make contact and use good thermal paste.