No compromises

CooliPi was designed as a no compromise heatsink/case. What does it mean?

Best passive cooling performance
No finger burns as per BS EN 13202:2000 or UL 60950-1 even under high ambient temperatures and low pressures at higher altitudes. No thermal throttling either, even under demanding synthetic loads. Cools main hot chips directly to a heatsink using only a thin layer of thermal paste. All the heat is moved upwards, fins are aligned vertically to ease airflow.

Mechanical protection
Raspberry Pi must be mechanically protected inside a coolercase. Heatsink fins must not bend (excludes very thin fins). Must hold addon HATs.

Must cool and protect the microSD card
microSD card is hidden under a cover. microSD card's longevity is dependent on operational temperature. Generally, for about every 10˚C hotter, the MTBF halves. With CooliPi, idle temperatures around 34˚C at the BCM chip are common. Go compare it to a naked or encased setup without airflow, guess the difference in reliability and lifespan.

Must be QUIET!
No noise allowed. CooliPi is a passive solution. The recommended chosen fan has 17 years MTBF and is quiet at decreased voltage. A fan is recommended only for extreme use cases - overclocking on air or industrial use in high temperature environments. Massive fins and a big fan have the advantage of relatively small impact of dust buildup on performance degradation.

No interface blocked
Must not block any of the interfaces - wire or wireless. GPIO, camera, LCD, reset ports and POE header must be accessible and usable. WiFi and Bluetooth signals must be reasonably strong. GPIO addons must not block airflow.

GPIO extensions
Must allow to mount additional extensions in HAT or pHAT mechanical factor and secure them using screws. If not used, GPIO port must be closed with a cover able to be further fastened by two screws.

Must have reset
We wanted it to have reset buttons from the beginning, because sometimes it's necessary to reset it. Both reset inputs are connected. All combinations of reset inputs and two buttons are possible, and even a few modes which connect the buttons in series or in parallel. No soldering allowed - it's connected using telescopic POGO pins from underside. One reset input on a RPI4 also starts it up after being shut down by software.

Must look good
It must look good, too! CooliPi's semi-industrial, massive look attracts/raises many questions. Available in 3 surface colours, combined with multitude of case's colours allows to fine-tune the desired look to your preferences. We sell only stainless steel screws.

Industrial use
The heatsink has to be able to be used standalone, as part of some other industrial chassis. It's aligned with a RPI PCB's edge at the I/O ports, effectively allowing it to be mounted behind some front panel.

Supreme ergonomy using laser marking
Must allow to easily connect individual wires to some sensors without lengthy GPIO pin counting. Laser marked GPIO wiring is very instrumental. A customised, laser marked front side logo of yours can attract bystanders' views. Laser marking is planned, now available only on some review units.

Must have good ingress protection
The heatsink/case combo must protect Raspberry Pi mechanically. GPIO port and microSD card both have sliding covers. The top heatsink protects Raspberry Pi against entrance of objects bigger than 0.5mm

Must protect against dust and moisture
The heatsink/case combo must protect all the chips from dust. It must also be designed in a way that allows to cool all the necessary chips, but allow to protect the surface of a PCB by silicone rubber for use in high condensation prone and salty environments..

Must cool all the chips directly and the rest indirectly (via rubber, thick paste)
Three main chips are necessary to cool - a BCM chip, USB3 bridge (it throttles itself too if not properly cooled) and a ETH PHY. In addition to this, RAM can be cooled using a thick layer of thermal paste (cca 0.05mm) or a thin rubber, WiFi chip cage can be cooled by using cca 0.6mm thick rubber and a hot PMIC chip can be cooled via a metallic bridge that's in the development now, allowing high stability when overclocking.

Must be 3D printable by users
3D files for print must be available under a permissive license, to allow 3D printing by end users as well as by system integrators for 3rd parties. It means not only that you can print it in any colour, you may also print it for anybody and even charge $$ for it. We don't collect any royalties on these! 3D printing on your own and selling it to other people is officially blessed! A simplified 3D model of a heatsink is offered to let you evaluate its sheer size before buying - contacting islands of metal and sharp edges are cut off to save filament and allow seamless 3D printing without supports.

Must be mountable on a VESA mount
The case has to have a system of snapping on a VESA mount. The VESA mount has cable supports, keeping the delicate USB and HDMI cables in place. It may be mounted on a monitor or TV or lay down on a table, just to support cables.

No slave work
We don't accept slavery nor slave work. CooliPi is manufactured in EU from Czech, Slovak, German, French, Swiss and UK companies' best components. 3D printing is done on Czech Original Prusa printers using Czech filament, preferrably Prusament if available in the desired colour. Heatsinks are CNC milled from a profile extruded in EU. SMT placement and soldering is done in Czech Republic.

Recyclable
We design our products to be easily recyclable. CooliPi heatsink itself is a big piece of Aluminium, easily recyclable and even valuable as scrap metal. PETG 3D printed cases are easily recyclable. Screws can be reused. PCB boards are to be recycled as electronic waste.

Premium value and lifetime warranty
We teach our customers to evaluate products by long-term value, i.e. its total price divided by operational time. Total price means initial price including maintenance costs, repair costs, profits and time lost due to outage, support costs. In the case of CooliPi, it may well be the cheapest long-term solution, all things accounted for. The initial price is higher, sure. What about lifetime warranty? How do you evaluate your time? And nerves?