Intro
This post details the last prize I received for the black box Halloween project.
The other prizes for this project are posted here.
The last prize was supposed to be a Raspberry Pi 5 4GB, but element 14 actually sent 2 Raspberry Pi 5's, one is 4GB and the other is 8GB.
I had procured some extras to turn a Pi 5 CCA into a computer, but now that I have 2 Pi 5's I have to get another case and power supply.
The Pi 5 Build
The first thing I mounted was an active cooler. These come with 3 thermal pads, but none of these pads sit on the CPU. They sit between 3 other hot chips and the cooler plate as shown here:
The thermal pads bring the height of the hot chips up to the level of the CPU so that all 4 touch the cooler. Note, I also added some silver heatsink compound to the top of the CPU to make sure it makes good thermal contact with the cooler plate.
Then I added the NVME hat and SSD:
Then I installed the stack into a case:
The Demo
Here is a little video of some of the build process including a timing video of the SSD booting the Pi:
Software
The Raspberry Pi operating system was installed on the SSD using the standard Raspberry Pi installer. To do this the SSD was plugged into a Bluendless adapter that interfaces an SSD to USB. One thing to note is that new SSDs need to be initialized using the Disk Manager before the external drive will be recognized.
Discussion
The inclusion of a second Raspberry Pi 5 with 8GB of RAM was unexpected and most welcome. The extra RAM really makes it worth turning the Pi 5 into a general purpose computer.
The metal case I am using has lots of ventilation and even space for another stacked Hat. If you have any suggestions what should go in this space let me know below.
Thanks element14 and JoRatcliffe for all the great prizes for the Halloween contest. The Pi 5 8GB is the best one of the prizes for me and I will find some good uses for it.
