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Dont buy the official case. They will run hot.

Get one off amazon that has a fan. - "Acrylic case for raspberry pi 4"

edit - well it might not matter actually, I'd rather not spread false concern.

The official case is fine. The Raspberry Pi 4 is thermally stable. It may run a little hotter but far below the throttle limit under normal loads and no longer uses incremental thermal throttling like the Pi 3.

This is commonly repeated but it really depends on what is meant by "normal use" and caused me a lot of headache when I thought my board was defective. If you mean watch youtube videos on one display at regular quality, the pi4 hits 80+ degrees c, at which point the metal is burning hot to the touch and starts throttling.

Desktop / gui use requires either hanging the board so there is air passing on all sides or a cooling solution.

Didn't the thermal situation radically improve after the first firmware update?

Didn't see any improvement. I think the fix was about the USB chip temperatures only. I'm planning to get heatsinks on the hottest chips + fan.

I have not experienced that in this context.

Mine started to throttle in less than 10 minutes watching Youtube. About ~24C (75F) ambient temperature. 4 GB model, SD-card, no case, mouse and keyboard connected to USB.

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