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Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi

by Pimoroni

Make your Raspberry Pi 4 seriously cool with Fan SHIM! This 30mm no-solder, controllable CPU fan with RGB LED and tactile switch will give your Raspberry Pi significantly better thermal performance. It's whisper-quiet too!

Fan SHIM uses a friction-fit header, so it just slips onto your Pi's pins and it's ready to go, no soldering required! Note that, due to the height of the fan, if you want to use HATs or pHATs with Fan SHIM, then you'll need to use a booster header.

Thermal images of Raspberry Pi 4 with and without FanSHIM installed. Images by Gareth Halfacree - check out his full benchmark blog post.

The fan can be controlled in software, so you can do crafty things like toggle it on when the CPU reaches a certain temperature. Use the LED as a handy visual indicator to show fan status, CPU load/temperature, whatever! The tactile switch can also be programmed, so you can use it to toggle the fan on or off, or to switch between temperature-triggered or manual mode.

You can read some detailed benchmarking of Fan SHIM's cooling performance here on the Pimoroni blog.

Oh, and it's compatible with our new Pibow Coupé 4 case for Raspberry Pi 4!

Features

* Note that variation in manufacturing tolerances on both headers and boards can affect the tightness of the friction fit. If you find that yours is not making a good connection, you could try bending the two rows of GPIO pins away from each other very slightly to improve the fit.

Soldering the SHIM (either to the Pi's GPIO directly, or to a socket header) will provide the most robust connection.

Kit contains

  • Fan SHIM PCB
  • 30mm 5V DC fan with JST connector
  • M2.5 nuts and bolts

Assembly

Assembly is really easy, and will take less than two minutes.

  1. With the component side of the PCB facing upwards, push the two M2.5 bolts through the holes from below, then screw on the first pair of nuts to secure them and act as spacers.
  2. Push the fan's mounting holes down onto the bolts, with the cable side of the fan downwards (as pictured) and the text on the fan upwards. Attach with another two nuts.
  3. Push the fan's JST connector into the socket on Fan SHIM.

Software

Our Python library lets you control the fan (on/off), RGB LED, and switch. There's a handful of examples to show you how to use each feature, and a script to install a daemon (a service that runs in the background) that runs the fan in automatic mode, triggering it on or off when the CPU reaches a threshold temperature, with a manual override via the tactile switch.

GitHub user "jane-t" has made a really useful LibreElec add-on to enable CPU temperature-based control of Fan SHIM: https://github.com/jane-t/rpi-fanshim

Tutorial

You can read our Getting Started with Fan SHIM tutorial for a really detailed guide on assembling Fan SHIM and installing the software, with photos for each step of the assembly.

Notes

  • When mounting or detaching the fan, or assembled Fan SHIM, do not push on the fan itself, as it is liable to break.
  • Be careful to mount your Fan SHIM on the correct pins on your Pi, with the Pi shut down and power disconnected. Shifting it left by one pin or down a full row of pins could cause damage to both the Fan SHIM and the Pi. Check out the photos in our tutorial if you're not sure.
  • Not heatsink-compatible!
  • Because Fan SHIM uses pin BCM18 to control the fan, and this pin is also used by I2S audio devices, you won't be able to use I2S DACs like pHAT DAC, pHAT BEAT, and the IQAudio boards at the same time as Fan SHIM
  • Dimensions: 45x39x11mm
  • If you're using it with Ubuntu, the fan control won't work as it uses the serial pins which are enabled at boot by default. To disable these and allow the shim to work add enable_uart=0 to system-boot/usercfg.txt.

643 customer reviews

7 months ago
Had a bad one the first time. Pimoroni sent out a replacement and that works perfectly. Company stands behind its product with great customer service. Highly recommended!!
by Ricky about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io
7 months ago
Can’t get it to work. Don’t waste your money. Must be a bad unit. I guess 1 in 100! We’ll see if the company does the right thing. I’m keep all posted.
by Ricky about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io
10 months ago
Easy to fit, used a jumper on ONE of the pins to keep in place (please don't put a jumper across two pins, it lets out the magic smoke!). In operation at full speed it's quiet enough for me, I haven't felt a need to control it based on cpu temp. A nice practical addon for my Pi4.
by Owen about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io
a year ago
I'm really happy with the fan shim, I use it on all my raspberries, they don't take up my gpio pins and only use the space needed without the bulk. I had a hard time finding them, in fact I can only find them in the Pimoroni shop. I had a problem with one of these fans and the seller immediately sent me a new one, excellent customer service. Furthermore, on the site you can find instructions for activating the fan only when needed, a very clever thing. Excellent product, I recommend it.
by Rodolfo about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io
a year ago
These fans work quite well "when they work". I have purchased and used them since 2019 on PI4's. However, for the latest order of 2, I could not get them to work on the Pi4s. I reinstalled the software a couple times and tried both fanshims from this order and a couple different pi4's. Seems like the gpio overlay is not making good electrical contact with the gpio pins. I tried putting headers on top and various other tips from the forums. No luck. The fans run continuously, which is OK from the cooling standpoint but not ok for noise and wear. I wonder if there is an issue with the latest raspberry pi OS on account of the requirement to use python venv's. Or maybe I did something else wrong. Still good hardware - quite and effective when working.
by Cluchey about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io
a year ago
quiet small very easy to install. It doesn't move alot of air but think it will help alot. Also becareful the heat sink that was under it was higher then i thought and i broke my fan mounts
by Anonymous about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io
a year ago
I soldered mine onto a gpio connector and use it with a heatsink. Mostly the fan is off and the board is passively cooled, but when required it does a great job to prevent overheating and throttling. Thanks Pimoroni.
by Anonymous about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io
a year ago
Seems to work but it's v delicate - I've broken 2 of the 3 arms holding the fan already! Seems to still work though
by William about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
Works very well, but assembly was tricky due to small interference between fan shroud and mounting bolts (although this is easily fixed).
by Anonymous about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
2nd fan shim from Pimoroni, just as easy to set up as before. Will buy again if I ever get another Raspberry Pi.
by Jesse about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
It arrived speedily the instructions for use and fitting were excellent apart from two minor issues. The reset button is hidden by their own case and difficult to spot, so the instructions could be a bit more specific about where it is, and github for the library now requires proper authentication and an account (again a note stating this would be helpful). The program works perfectly and so does the fan.
by Andrew about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Simple to attach to RPi, elegant solution. However, the plastic arms holding the fan motor to its frame are very flimsy - hence buying a second one!
by Howard about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Managed to squeeze this into a Retroflag NesPi 4 case, using some stand-offs above heatsinks. Works really well to keep it cool, only triggering at configured temperatures when required. There was a pin clash with the switching for the LED's on the fan shim, but given it's inside the case it didn't matter and I just ran the config script to leave the fan shim LED's off.
by Richard about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Very well made. It's fun to assemble and easy to install the software. It fits perfectly with the PiBow case too.
by Sean about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
I coupled this with a heatsink (also needed a booster header for mounting the fan) and now my RPi 4 is chilling even under load. Great value for money and easy to install, including the software!
by Daniel about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Worked well with minimal setup, hopefully I don't need anything bigger because with this tiny footprint it's great for my application.
by Daniel about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Works as advertised and was extremely easy to install. Word of advice, be sure to copy every piece of code and to not skip any lines. I made the mistake of not copying over cd example and couldn’t get it to work until I did that with the rest of the code. I’ve had it up and running for the past couple weeks without issue and it’s doing a great job of keeping the RPi temp in check. It also looks great with the rainbow case they sell. Would absolutely buy again if it went down for any reason.
by Jesse about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
My first fanshim was damaged (fan it's always on) and technical support send me a new one that works OK!. It's a great product but pin connection could be improved. Thank's a lot to pimoroni technical support.
by jose about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
I wanted to install it on my piboy DMG, but the size of the connector didn't fit, so I couldn't install it. I should have checked before I bought it.
by SHIOTA about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Wow love your products and design, the fan worked very well and thanks for the prompt delivery, will do business again, love the website
by Bernard about Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi via REVIEWS.io

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