Assembling your fan with your case
- Remove any SD card, then put your Raspberry Pi into the lower half (base) of your case. Take care to align the mounting holes in the corners with the bumps in the case.
- Insert the fan into the upper half (lid) of the case, with the green label facing away from the lid. Push gently but firmly so that the two tabs on the fan housing click neatly into place inside the tabs on the lid. The slightly curved edge of the housing should be flush with the underside of the lid.
- If you are fitting the heatsink, remove the backing paper from the self-adhesive pad on the base of the heatsink, position it centrally over the processor, and gently press it into position.
- Connect the three leads from the fan to the Raspberry Pi's GPIO pins, as shown in the diagram below. Take care to connect each lead to the correct pin.
- Fit the lid of the case onto the base.
Using your fan
Once you have connected your fan, by default it will be on whenever your Raspberry Pi is running. You can configure it to turn on only when your Raspberry Pi reaches a temperature that you choose.
Using a recent version of Raspberry Pi OS, first update to retrieve any recent changes to the operating system:
- Open the Terminal, either from the Start menu (click the Raspberry Pi icon in the top left corner) or by pressing Control + Alt + T.
- Type sudo apt update and then, when the update has finished, type sudo apt full-upgrade.
Then open the Raspberry Pi Configuration tool:
- Click on the Raspberry Pi icon in the top left corner and select Preferences then Raspberry Pi Configuration.
- Select the Performance tab.
- Next to Fan, click Enabled.
- If you have connected your fan as shown above, the default of 14 for Fan GPIO does not need to be changed.
- Select the Fan Temperature at which you want your fan to turn on. The default is 80°C, which will stop the Raspberry Pi throttling on difficult tasks without having the fan on all the time.
