The best housing for the Raspberry Pi

The best way to protect your Raspberry Pi is to mount it in a case. Just like the range in a woman's shoe and wardrobe - ;) there are many different types of cases.

There are many plastic housings on the market, some of which have not survived the life of a week with my children (Why can't you stand on that then?). You also have variants with active ventilation where the fan produces so much noise after a while that you have the idea that the Pi starts to take off within a few seconds. With a corrective tap on the housing or fan it sometimes goes well again for some time.

So it was time to look for a robust housing (kidsproof) and whisper-quiet. After some time searching the internet I came across the flirt case against. It is an aluminum housing available in silver and black.

The advantages

The housing of the Flirc has a number of positive features:

• Beautiful and sleek design;
• Light weight;
• Robust;
• The GPIO and all main connectors are easily accessible from the bottom;
• Equipped with passive cooling and supplied with a thermal pad and 4 screws.
• A separate housing is available for each type of Raspberry Pi.

At first I had my doubts about the cooling. After all, you don't want the Pi to get too hot. But the case has two important functions:

• Cooling;
• Protection.

The aluminum housing is the cooling element of the housing. Aluminum has the property of absorbing and releasing heat quickly. That is why many frying pans are made of aluminum. Due to the thermal pad that is included, the heat from the processor is transferred to the cooling element (the housing).

Maximum processor temperature

Currently I have both domoticz if Home Assistant run side by side on two different Raspberry Pi 4. Both have a Flirc case. The temperature of the processor is not appreciably high. Critical temperatures were also not reached in the summer months when the ambient temperature can rise quite high. On July 19, 2022, the living room temperature was 31.8ºC with the processor temperature rising to 58.9ºC. At a living room temperature of around 20ºC, the processor temperature is approximately 50ºC.

For which Raspberry Pi is the Flirc case available?

Are you looking for a Flirc case for the Raspberry Pi 2, 3 or B+ model? Then you can choose the Flirc Raspberry Pi case Gen2.

For the Raspberry Pi 4, the Flirc Raspberry Pi 4 housing available.

Do you use a different housing? Leave a message in the comments.