Raspberry Pi Firmware Update 4: significantly reduce power consumption and increase system speed

Compared with the previous generation, the recently launched Raspberry Pi 4 brought a lot of improvements: a more powerful CPU and GPU, more memory, and support for Gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.0 and so on. However, more robust performance and processing power means more power consumption, raspberry pie 4 in the series is the most power, the most vulnerable of a fever.

For this problem, the government has also been ongoing optimization, recently released a firmware update finally have more breakthroughs in improving the performance of power, the firmware update includes a USB controller, SDRAM and VLI power management.

According to official reports, the upgrade to Raspberry Pi 4 Beta firmware version of Raspberry Pi 4 brought many improvements, including more granular control of the SoC operating voltage and timing for HDMI video state machine optimization. Upgrade method is as follows:

First open a terminal and enter the following command:

sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade

Then you can restart using the following command:

sudo shutdown - r now

Beta version of the firmware by reducing idle power consumption to reduce overall power consumption, while adjusting the voltage of the SoC without compromising performance to reduce power consumption when the load. The end result is: idle power consumption down to 2.1W, when the load is reduced to 6.41W, and this is by far the best data. Representative reducing energy consumption also reduce heat production, improve the cooling effect, so the system does not need to be able Thermal Throttling "hype."

FIG thermal imaging contrast

Power Comparison (numbers are better)

Can be seen, upgrade to the latest firmware will effectively reduce power consumption and improve cooling.

Finally, the official also introduced a efficient cooling can "show the operation" - Raspberry Pi adjustment Placement direction 4, as shown below:

FIG display is mounted is Raspberry Pi Beta firmware upright 4, the GPIO module at the bottom, and the power supply is located at the top of the HDMI interface. Convection can be improved since the upright, so that ambient air absorbs heat faster, while the rear panel is lifted from the insulating desktop, greatly increasing the surface area available for cooling, the heat dissipation effect is naturally better than flat.