Help me feed a Power Hungry RPi

Question

I've just completed building a kit with a 7" touch screen and RPi 3B.

The tutorial I found presented 3 options for powering the kit..

A. Cable from the USB power out on the display board to the Micro USB power in. Id rather NOT make holes in the case supplied to enable this.

B . GPIO power bridge to the display board via jumpers ( The option I selected)

C. 2 Micro usb power connectors, 1 to the display board and 1 to the RPi...

After assembly and some use I've noticed the "lightning flash" on the upper right, which I understand indicates a low power condition.

I'm using the "standard" 5V/ 2.5A RPi 3B wall plug.. and the unit "works" with power applied to either of the inputs...

My questions....

What am I really risking running the unit in an underpowered condition??? Is it just throttling the CPU back?

Is it safe to apply power to both USB inputs with the GPIO powers jumpers in place?

Are there any "known hacks" to reduce the power consumption of the display to minimize the impact?

shabaz · Accepted Answer

Hi, That's not normal if the official Pi 7" touchscreen and official power supply (with permanently wired cable with micro USB connector) is used. Depending on the work load, the Pi 3 can consume a lot of power (up to 1.4A at 5V), but you'd soon know if you were, because the CPU would get extremely hot, too hot to touch. If you wish to test with a supply powering the display separately, then the power jumpers connected to the 40-way connector should be disconnected. In the underpowered condition there could be a risk of corruption or any USB attached devices not operating correctly.