Recently I bought my self a Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB of fast DDR4 memory to add to my home lab, with the goal of using it as platform to run a 2 or 3 virtual machines by installing a compatible hypervisor.
The little green credit card sized computer does not come with a case, power supply or onboard storage by default, hence a few extra items need to be added to the shopping list.
Before buying anything, and extensively reading about how to maximize the performance, I attained that an external USB 3.0 storage device would increase the IO speed and lifespan of the storage, the CPU requires an active cooler to keep the computer free of thermal throttle under light overclocking, a good power supply makes it run better, and that a fast microSD card is required for the initial firmware updates and configurations.
After searching for case recommendations across the web and reading a pile of reviews, I decided to purchase the 52PI aluminum NAS case, because it came with a M.2 2280 SATA SSD disk to USB 3.0 adapter, double copper heat pipe cooling tower with a PWM fan, and it had a small footprint.
The box comes with all the manuals, thermal pads and tools necessary to the build the case. No soldering is required to connect the fan to the RaspberryPi’s IO pins.
The manual has all the instructions, plus, detailed pictures that aid in the assembly process and software setup.
The final product, in my opinion, is esthetically pleasing . The fan has a RGB led that cannot be turned off, yet its very quiet and keeps the Raspberry super cool and stable. I read somewhere that the fan can be upgraded to a near silent one from Noctua that has the same dimensions and voltage rating of the one that comes with the kit.
I personally recommend adding an additional external on-off switch for the power supply to make hard resets easier.
