rpi-cool-hat

• At least Raspberry Pi 4 makes additional cooling mandatory.
• Most cooling solutions (all but oil?) do not allow stacked HATs (and at least musicians do not accept built-in audio).

This KiCad project suggests a glue-PCB letting coolers and HATs live in peace:

RPi is connected left / HAT connected right / cooler's fan connected to pins in the back as (example pictures are 180°rotated):

Note that the project:

• was created by Kicad 5.1.5 as shipped by Fedora 30
• 's author is not a professional layouter - awaiting PRs/issues - teach me :grin:
• was tested with HifiBerry DAC Pro and Flatmax AudioInjector
• IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND!

If you want one:

• drop rpi-cool-hat.kicad_pcb to a supplier of your choice
• if your supplier does not accept Kicad: clone this project, go through gerber and send that to your supplier. To get an idea of how to accomplish it might help to watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENmDnoKs2hM
• or visit https://aisler.net/p/IRBRWUAC. Note that the author has no relation to Aisler. It was chosen because their production was considered close at time and place of writing.

Tips:

• Start soldering with J1
• When using Ice Tower Cooler cables are a bit short. To get around: Unmount fan, rotate 90° clockwise and mount again. Be careful not to over-tighten screws!
• For Ice Tower Cooler noise can be reduced significantly by using 3.3V supply on J1 (as written in the handbook). With reduced voltage I never saw CPU temperature rising above 45°
• If space is limited one might want to use a 90° variant of J2: