"Adrian Caspersz"  wrote in message
news:i3cku4F99kcU1@mid.individual.net...
> Yeah, I know the USP is a small circuit board is cool, but keeping the
> actual thing cool with a small poxy fan, while sticking a HAT on top - is
> calling for a much larger box with a better fan, or buying expensive
> miniature 30mm fans with questionable run time life.

I have a Pi 4 with an extra heatsink in the standard case that the Pi
Foundation provide. It's kept in a cupboard of a TV stand, so an enclosed
space with just a small hole for cables at the back, along with a Pi 3 and a
spinning hard drive, and a couple of USB TV tuners. The Pi 4 runs at 55 deg
C and < 5% CPU usage. I did try running Plex server on it, which is fine for
SD recordings which are served as-is (.TS file format) but the CPU usage and
temperature shoot up if I try playing HD recordings (again, .TS but it needs
to transcode). I forget the figures but I think it was about 65-70 deg C and
50% CPU. Shame that Plex clients (eg on our Roku box) can't handle any .TS
file (whether SD or HD) that is sent to them: transcoding on-the-fly to
another format seems a very clumsy way to do it. I'm tempted to use VLC on
the Pi to play recordings, and dispense with Plex altogether - SD and HD
play fine with only a small increase in temp and CPU, but I couldn't get any
sound, either over HDMI or out of the 3.5 mm analogue socket, last time I
tried. For the time being, I'm running Plex server on a Win 7 PC - even that
spins its CPU fan very noisily when it's serving an HD recording.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05