Seeed Studio water cooling kit for Raspberry Pi 5 brings better overclocking abilities

Seeed Studio and 52Pi partnered to launch a water cooling kit for Raspberry Pi 5. While this custom liquid cooling solution may seem a little overkill for the SBC, Seeed Studio is promising a big thermal improvement. When the board is overclocked to 3.0 GHz, the Broadcom SoC tends to be around 70° C to 75° C (158° F to 167 °F) with good air coolers.

On the other hand, with the new custom liquid cooler, Seeed Studio says that the Pi 5 can maintain 55° C (131° F) with the same 3 GHz overclock. This temperature rating also means that the SBC can possibly be pushed beyond 3.0 GHz. That would eventually allow the board to offer much higher performance than stock speed.

Speaking of stock clock speed, Seeed Studio did a test with and without the water cooling kit for Raspberry Pi 5 in factory settings. As shown in the shared images (attached below), the PCB of the SBC had a temperature of 76° C (168.8° F) without and 35.1° C (95.18° F) with the custom liquid cooler attached.

As for the temperatures near the Broadcom SoC, images shared by Seeed Studio point that it’s 38.6° C (101.48° F) with the liquid cooling kit installed. In short, the test carried out by the manufacturer suggests the cooler can offer around 41° C (105° F) of reduction in temperature.

Pricing-wise, the Seeed Studio water cooling kit for Raspberry Pi 5 is available at $120. It’s a bit steep for a cooler designed for the board, as the 8 GB variant of the SBC costs less than this. But the promised cooling capacity is better than any air-based Raspberry Pi coolers.

Get the CanaKit Raspberry Pi 4 8 GB starter kit from Amazon