Raspberry Pi high temperatures

Support Raspberry Pi
1

I’ve recently gotten a Raspberry Pi 5 and encountered a concerning issue where it seems to be running at temperatures around 90 degrees (as reported by vcgencmd measure_temp). I’m not sure what could be causing this issue, as I’ve only got it connected to the monitor, a keyboard and a mouse, and I was not even running any programs on it at the time. I’m powering it off the official Raspberry Pi power supply, but I do get the message ‘this power supply is not capable of supplying 5a power to peripherals will be restricted’ upon booting up the Pi.

Any assistance with this matter would be much appreciated, thank you.

2

Hi Tama,

The Pi 5 does run quite hot. Do you have a heatsink or a fan on it? That will help prevent thermal throttling a bit (it starts at about 80 degrees). It is the hottest Pi so far after all.

The supply that comes in Core’s kits is the Pi 4’s PSU. It can only supply 3A, this is generally fine. The Pi 5’s power supply needs some safety certifications before it can be sold in Australia.

3

Ok, that makes sense about the power supply. With regards to cooling, I currently have the small silver heatsink that came with the Pi, and the cooling fan inbuilt in the case. The cooling fan is not working at the moment (sorry, should have mentioned this earlier).

I’ve tried the following commands in the terminal to check whether the fan is working but both have told me that there is no such file or directory.

“watch cat /sys/devices/platform/cooling_fan/hwmon/*/fan1_input”
“watch cat /sys/class/thermal/cooling_device0”

4

Hi @Tama262177 some pictures might help us out a bit here.
According to the cooling fan docs you should see fan activity above 50 °C so no fan activity is problematic

90 °C is pretty spicy :grimacing: what kind of work is the Pi doing?

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5

Currently I’m not running anything on it, I’ve just got it plugged into a monitor, keyboard and mouse. I have SSH’ed into it from my laptop but I’m not using that to do anything yet either. I have attached pictures below, please let me know if there are any more details that could be relevant.

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6

Hi Tama,

That’s unusual, and you’re running a recently flashed version of Bookworm as the OS on your Pi I’d imagine? Have you tried spinning the fan very gently with the tip of your finger to see whether there’s any jamming or debris stuck inside?

I’ve noticed it on a number of malfunctioning cooling systems and fans before where due to the manufacturing process used or damage in transit, some residue or loose excess material makes it into the fan (typically the motor driving it is not very powerful) and provides just enough friction to stop it from spinning.

If this is the case, a quick hit of no-residue contact cleaner (I recommend CO cleaner, but in a pinch compressed air works too) often does the trick to clear it out.

1 Like
7

Yes, I’ve got the most recent version of Bookworm. I’ve tried manually spinning the fan with my finger and it does spin smoothly. Is there any sort of terminal command I can try to see whether the fan is registered as connected, or to control it from there?

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8

Hi Tama,

Hm, how strange. No not that I’m aware of, fairly certain it is just passive.

Although you can try setting it to max speed at runtime with this:

$ pinctrl FAN_PWM op dl

Make sure to run this first to ensure you’ve got the most up to date raspi-utils package

$ sudo apt install raspi-utils
$ sudo apt get update
$ sudo apt get upgrade

If you still get no reaction at all let us know, you might have a damaged connection on the Pi or a faulty fan.

9

I made sure I had the most recent raspi-utils package and ran the pinctrl command. This elicited no reaction from the fan, is it most likely that the fan itself is faulty then?

It might also be worth noting that my pi’s power light occasionally flickers; infrequently it will go off (but not red) and then back to solid green. I’ve been powering it with the official power supply.

10

Hey Tama,

Definitely sounds like a dead fan to me, the only other potential cause could be if there’s a continuity issue on the connection to the Pi.

I’d recommend ensuring the pins inside that connector haven’t bent sideways (quite unlikely but still worth a quick look) and shooting through a message to the support team as a reply to your order confirmation email to let them know that the fan in your new case isn’t working and that you’ve been troubleshooting this on the forum.

They may have other troubleshooting suggestions, or can otherwise help you get a working fan for your Pi. Let us know if you have any questions.

11

Ok sure, I’ll contact the support team. Thanks for the assistance.

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