![]() ![]() In ideal conditions, the case was about 1.5m from the router and in typical, the Raspberry Pi was taken to another room to simulate a typical use case scenario with walls and furniture as obstacles.ĭespite running the iperf3 for a minute at the time, I could see a lot of noise in the results in both Argon NEO and benchmark scenarios. There were 2 scenarios in which Argon NEO was tested. I run an iperf3 test along some WiFi signal strength to figure out if the case hinders wireless signals in any way. I decided to test the pi and see if the network was affected. ![]() There are 2 layers of aluminum and a plastic bottom to mitigate the issue. Shrouding Raspberry Pi in metal will affect the wireless connectivity. The free flow of the air was offset by not having that extra chunk of metal aiding the process. I removed the top cover to see what impact it would have on the thermal performance, but it had a negligible impact on the temperature. ![]() It’s pretty impressive considering that the “naked” board would thermal throttle at this weather with 80℃ on CPU. Argon NEO remained warm to hand thanks to the outer shell and the reported stress temperature settled at 65℃. I used cpuburn-a53 test to raise the CPU clock and stress the Raspberry Pi 4 board for a couple of minutes. It’s a reasonable temperature and in “normal” weather you should see the temperature being about 5-6℃ lower bringing it closer to the temperature you could achieve with active coolers like ICE Tower ( review) or the Power Board ( review). The ambient temperature for Argon NEO used with Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB RAM) is 48℃ while the same board would run at 55℃ without any cooling solution. The plate itself run warm, but the outer shell of the case has the room temperature thanks to the air trapped between 2 levels. It uses 2 thermal pads to transfer the heat from the CPU and the memory chip. Argon NEO uses a single piece of machined aluminium to dissipate the heat. This time is no different and I’m running this at 26℃ of indoor temperature. Thermal performanceĮach time I run a thermal dissipation test, the weather in the UK changes from wet and miserable to hot and sunny. You can slot the ribbon cable through the gap in the outer shell, but the outer shell as no options to mount the camera. The slot is fixed in place, so there is no control over the angle the camera is pointing at. You can mount the Raspberry Pi Camera module which will point at the direction of the USB and the Ethernet ports. I have a suspicion that there is a risk of shorting the GPIO pins on Raspberry Pi 4 if you get sloppy while using the top cover.Ī nice addition to the case is a camera slot. While on the subject of GPIO, considering that the top of the Argon NEO is made of metal, I would love to see a male-female GPIO adapter included. I’m spoiled by Argon ONE comb design which routes the wires through. Unfortunately, the pins, camera, display, and PoE connectors won’t be accessible with the top cover. ![]() The case comes with labels for the headers and ports which makes it easier to navigate all 40 GPIO pins used in projects. The bottom plate is made of plastic to aid the wireless signal, the middle shield provides the protection for the board and acts as a heat sink, while the top cover snaps to the case thanks to 2 magnets and keeps Argon NEO looking sharp. Made primarily out of metal, the 3 tier design takes just the space needed to enclose and protect the board. The marketing content doesn’t showcase this very well. The case is only slightly bigger than the Raspberry Pi 4 itself. I’m actually surprised how small Argon NEO is. Is it equally capable? Let’s test Argon NEO and find out. We can all agree it looks as handsome and Keanu Reeves’s character that bears the same name. After getting seriously impressed with Argon One ( review) case for Raspberry Pi 4, I reached out to Argon40 asking them to hook me up with Argon NEO – a more compact take on a premium enclosure for the most popular single-board computer out there. ![]()
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