Is This The Best Raspberry Pi 4 Case? The New Argon One M.2 - Review

hey what's going on guys cta prime back here again today we're going to be taking a look at the all-new argon one m.2 case for the raspberry pi 4. now i'm a big fan of the original argon one case for the pi 4. it's one of my favorite cases it's one of my go-to's but i can tell you right now that with the new features on this m.2 version i'll definitely be sticking with this one now before we get into it i just want to give you a quick look at the original argon one case for the raspberry pi 4 and as you can see it's constructed of aluminum we have passive and active cooling in here we have access to all the ports on the raspberry pi 4 from the back and on the top we do have this removable plate to access the gpio overall it's a great case it's around twenty five dollars and i think it's well worth the price but we now have the new argon one m.2 version which obviously supports an m.2 drive and they've also added some really cool features like dual full size hdmi and a built-in ir receiver so as making this video it is up for pre-order price on this is a bit higher than the original argon one coming in at 45 dollars instead of 25 and inside of the box you're going to receive the case itself and the argon one user manual this has full instructions on how to assemble it and it also tells you exactly how to install the scripts to control the fan and the power button on the new argon one case so let's take a look at this case it is a bit taller than the original argon one they've had to add some extra space in here to add an m.2 drive on the bottom and i do have to mention that this does not support nvme ssds it'll only do up to sata 3 m.2 ssds but uasp is supported for the raspberry pi 4 and this maximizes the high speed data transfer for the raspberry pi 4 over usb 3.0 so obviously there is some assembly required with this case but it's pretty easy we have this little breakout board here micro hdmi to full size hdmi we also have that audio jack so this plugs into the pi and brings all of those ports around back to this case now the m.2 drive is actually connected to the pi over usb 3.0 so they do have an adapter included and the drive actually mounts in the base of the case so we have a plastic bottom here inside we have a pcb with the m.2 connector key b or key m and you can use up to a 2280 m.2 and this is actually going to connect over usb to the bottom usb 3.0 port on your raspberry pi using this included connector so the argon 1 m.2 case does provide active and passive cooling the top of the case is made out of aluminum plus we have this fan in here that can be adjusted through software so when the raspberry pi is sitting inside of here it's actually going to make contact with these two aluminum protrusions here one's for the cpu one's for the ram chip and that's going to pull heat from the cpu and soak it up into the aluminum case itself and then the fan is going to keep all that cool another thing that argon 40 is added to this case is an ir receiver now it is compatible out of the box with the argon remote but unfortunately i don't have one on hand and i actually don't have a programmable ir remote so i really can't show this off in this video but as soon as i get one i will be making a video this will actually be great for turning this into a media center they've also added this little jumper pen here and the way it's set up out of the box we're set at pin one and two and you need to press the power for the raspberry pi to come on but if you set this up with pin two and three as soon as you plug power into the raspberry pi the raspberry pi will start to boot this is the always on mode assembly on the argon one m.2 case is pretty easy we have these rubber feet here that we can put on the bottom so it doesn't slide around on your desk we also get our thermal pads here these are going to go right on the cpu and the memory block and for this setup here i'm actually going to be using a raspberry pi 4 8 gigabyte model now the very first thing we need to do is plug this little breakout board into the raspberry pi so as you can see we have that 3.5 millimeter audio jack and the micro hdmis just make sure everything's lined up properly and it'll slide right in there this is going to bring those full-size hdmis and your audio jack out of the back of the case the next thing i'm going to do is install these thermal pads on the cpu and the memory block they do have plastic on each side so it's a bit hard to get off i'm going to do this off camera but if it really came down to it you could use thermal paste if you want to so i've got those installed and i have my daughter board installed on the raspberry pi it's time to place the pi inside of the case i'm just going to line it up with the gpio pins press it down make sure everything's lined up on the back and the raspberry pi is now installed in here we do have a few screws that we need to put in the raspberry pi to hold it down inside of the case but keep in mind the outer four screws here are going to come in through the bottom of the plastic shell when we put the bottom of the case on so leave those empty until we put the lower half of the shell on so i've got my raspberry pi and daughter board mounted up inside of the case it's time to move on to the bottom half of the shell like i mentioned nvme drives will not work so i would pick up a sata 3 m.2 you can get these silicon power ones pretty cheap this is a 256 gigabyte version i'll leave a link in the description in case you want to pick one of these up because i'm 100 sure that it does work with this case and the raspberry pi 4. this is what i'm going to be running my operating system from and personally right now as it sits i prefer using berry boot because i can install different operating systems super easily we're still going to need a micro sd card and the raspberry pi but that only contains the boot files and berry boot as soon as we start into the operating system everything's going to be running from the m.2 drive but if you do want to flash the eeprom on your raspberry pi 4 so you don't need a micro sd card this case will work i just personally prefer using berry boot because i always have a fallback and it makes it super easy to install several different operating systems to a single drive so i think i got everything ready to go all i need to do is insert my micro sd card in the raspberry pi 4 and unfortunately you cannot access the micro sd from outside of this argon one m.2 case that's one downside that i'm seeing so far but it is pretty easy to pull this bottom back off and get right to that sd if you ever need to replace it or change it out so i've got the bottom on i've installed the rubber feet here so it doesn't slide around last thing i need to do is plug in the usb adapter it's going to go into the bottom port on the raspberry pi 4 and this is going to connect that m.2 to your raspberry pi 4. so boot times on this thing are crazy fast now i am using berry boot here so it does have to read that micro sd card at first but as soon as we get into that operating system this thing is lightning fast to boot up so if you are on the new official version of the eeprom you can boot without a micro sd and boot times are going to be crazy fast but even just using berry boot this is so much faster than a micro sd card and it's ready to use as soon as the desktop pops up all right so i can say that booting this thing up is super fast let's just check this out as you can see using that m.2 i have 215 gigabytes free on this m.2 drive first thing i wanted to do was run a quick speed test we use the built-in raspberry pi diagnostics and i'll run a test i can show log and uh here we go right here so we have sequential right random right random read on sequential right target is ten thousand we scored a two hundred and two thousand eight hundred and ninety seven so yeah that's a lot faster we definitely passed that random write speed target is 500 we scored a 5 953 and for the random read speed target is 1500 4 537 so yeah this is much faster than a micro sd card and i can actually feel it just even opening windows and especially boot times this thing comes on really quick so along with the m.2 drive the argon one m.2 case also has a built-in cooling system and a safe reset slash power button in order to get the script installed it's actually pretty easy it's just a one-liner we're going to curl and download that argon 40 script this is going to do everything for us and now as you can see we have the argon one configuration and we can uninstall it if we'd like to let's run the configuration we'll execute in terminal and i'm going to remove the existing configuration because i want to set up my own number one always on number two adjust the temperature so we can set the fan speed at a specific temperature from 55 degrees celsius to 65 degrees celsius customize behavior and cancel let's go with number two so when the cpu reaches 55 degrees celsius i'm gonna have this fan come on at 55 at 60 we'll go up to 70 and 65 i'll go to 100 because i want to keep this thing as cool as possible and that's it i just set that up and now that we've installed the script we really don't have to do anything with the button when the power's off you just press it once it's going to turn your raspberry pi on when it's running long press for three seconds it's gonna do a software shutdown it's gonna automatically shut down the raspberry pi safely if we short press that under three seconds nothing's gonna happen double tap it'll do a reboot and a long press for over five seconds it'll force shut down and that's not a safe shutdown it's just in case nothing else works and that's already set up because we installed the argon 40 software okay so the m.2 is working power button's working we've set up kind of a fan curve with this argon one configuration i think all that's really left to do here is some thermal testing and i use stressberry to get this done so i'm gonna start it here this is gonna stress out the cpu for around 10 minutes it's going to give me a log in the background right now i'm at 1.5 gigahertz that's what i'm going to be testing at for the first test then i'm going to come back and do a 2.1 gigahertz overclock and by the end of this i can create a nice little chart just to see how well this argon 1 m2 case cools the raspberry pi 4. so yeah i mean this actually cools the raspberry pi quite well and remember i did set up my fan curve a little differently it's a bit higher than most people would like but overall at that 2.1 gigahertz overclock we never even hit 60 degrees celsius with this unit and at 1.5 we didn't even break 50. so this is well under the temperature threshold that's gonna start underclocking that cpu so we can get sustained performance out of this case even with that overclock so i'm going to come out and say it this is my new favorite case for the raspberry pi 4. now i know these m.2 drives are a bit more expensive than let's say a 2.5 inch ssd but they can be had for pretty cheap if you go with an off-brand like silicon power and i've used them in pc builds and raspberry pi's and never had any issues with them the one and only issue that i'm seeing with this case right now is we cannot access the micro sd card externally we do have to pull the bottom off to get to the micro sd and with the newest official firmware for the eeprom you really don't even need a micro sd card anymore to boot your raspberry pi 4 but i personally like using berry boot now when we compare this to the original argon one which is on the right you can see it is a bit taller it does take up a little more space but not by much at all and having those full-size hdmi ports is a big plus i heard a lot of people wanting that on the original argon one and we finally have it with the m.2 version but overall this is a great case i can't wait to get a hold of the argon remote so i can mess around with that ir receiver but as it sits right now the argon one m.2 is my favorite case for the raspberry pi 4. now if you're interested in picking one of these up i will leave a link to their website in the description i'll also leave a link to the m.2 drives that i personally use but that's pretty much it for this video really appreciate you watching if you have any questions let me know in the comments below and like always thanks for watching you

Channel: ETA PRIME

Views: 256,240

Keywords: argon one m.2 case, raspberry pi 4, raspberry pi case with fan, raspberry pi case install, raspberry pi case review, how to raspberry pi 4, how to raspberry pi, best raspberry pi 4 case, argon one, raspberry pi projects, raspberry pi 4 desktop, raspberry pi 4 cooler, argon one raspberry pi 4 case with cooling fan, argon one mini computer case for raspberry pi 4 b, overclock pi4, pi4 cooling, raspberry pi 4 cooling, raspberry pi 4 cooling fan

Id: LLc4pF3jZQg

Length: 12min 18sec (738 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 06 2020