Raspberry Pi NESPi 4 Case: Retro Housing with SSD cartridge

[Music] welcome to another video from explaining computers this time we're going to take a look at this the nespi 4 case for the raspberry pi 4. this not only makes a raspberry pi 4 look like a very famous retro gaming console but it also includes a usb to sata adapter so the two and a half inch ssd can be fitted in a cartridge slot so let's go and take a closer look right here we have the nespi4 case from retro flag which i purchased from pymeroni for 28 pounds 50. and at the time of making this video it's selling on amazon.com for 40.89 note that when this was first sold it came with a usbc power supply and indeed this is still listed under tech specs on the product's web page but this box doesn't list a power supply on the back i don't think there's one inside and that's clearly not a problem i'm going to be using this with the official raspberry pi 4 power adapter and i would imagine that most people who own the raspberry pi 4 also have a power supply because if you don't the raspberry pi 4 is a lot less fun it does work so much better when you plug in a power supply anyway enough of such things let's open up this box i think we just uh flick it over and there oh there we are and aha oh yes look it's in the sort of bag to keep it protected anything else i always check inside boxes or we've got a leaflet maybe we'll look at that maybe we won't we should do of course and in here we have there we are the nespi4 case which it's good and chunky it feels a good solid case and as you can see on the front we've got some switches power and reset switches these can be linked to a soft reset and power using scripts that run on the pi although i don't personally think i'm going to be doing that we've got on the front here also usb 2 and usb 3 ports we've also got a little cover here covers i imagine the cartridge slot i've seen the pictures yes in reality it's just the same there's the cartridge slot we can put a two and a half inch ssd inside here and slot it in that's that's a really nice system i really like that around the back i imagine that we've got these things we would expect yes we've got holes for the pi's hdmi connectors and its foot audio connector over here power will go in and we have ethernet over there on the that side it's a gloriously blank and on this side we've got the slot for the pi's micro sd card and then on the base anything on the base oh yes i remember on the nest pi cases i've looked at the previous ones we have this little compartment which comes off i think like that like this there we are and you can store all kinds of things in here things like half a matchstick or maybe i don't know some dead insects you want to preserve or even maybe a micro sd card to use in your raspberry pi good to have a little storage compartment on the base of the case and so there we are this is the nespi4 case for the raspberry pi 4 and i think it's now high time to go and grab an unsuspecting raspberry pi 4 and to fit it inside right i've now grabbed a raspberry pi 4 and also one of these fantastic value kingston ssds which we'll put in the cartridge slot in the case so let's bring the case back in here we are and it's supplied without the screws into i think i haven't tried this yet but i think we can just lift the top off yes we can like that under oh it's even more exciting inside and just before we look at that you can see this is the inside of the top piece this contains the the cartridge mechanism and also the sata connector will be on the back of here which leads to this usb 3 port by the sata to usb adapter so this will plug into the pipe when we put the top back on the case but let's go back to the base of the case there we are we can see we've got some screws here and some pads for the heatsink and the screwdrivers even provided and talking of the heatsink here is the heatsink this is rather neat this is uh get this thing out of the little bag and there we are that's a pretty that's a pretty good heat thing for pie isn't it and it's got a fan built into it so that's clearly we'll be fitting that and the pie will be going in here there's a bit of paper saying uh make sure we remove the sd card from the pie or we'll snap it off by trying to get it through the hole when the sd card's still in so the pi clearly is going to be going something like that i imagine like like this when we've all these connectors come out of the way yes the pi will be fitting in there but before we do that i think we need to take the pie and we need to fit some thermal pads before we put the heat sink on so let's take the pie and do that and there we are our thermal pads are now in place and if like me you're wondering about the levels here because the soc the system on the chip is higher than the ram that is accommodated for in the heatsink indeed if we go back to the heatsink to take a look at that you can see hopefully here that this is the part of the heatsink which will contact the thermal pad on the ram and this bit will contact the thermal pad on the soc several levels are accommodated for and i do really like this cooler for the raspberry pi 4 it'll be very interesting to see how well it works when we test it out in practice anyway let's go back to putting the raspberry pi in the case where i think we start fitting the usb connectors or things that will go to the front port we'll put the usb 3 one in at the base like that because the sata one will go in the top and then this usb 2 connector has to go in at the top i think and then we have to put the ethernet connector all this is tricky isn't it that goes a bit later there we are the internet connector will go in hopefully like this get in you little swine there we are that's in there it's just the strength there we are you probably heard it click there and this hopefully now we'll drop in these are some very solid cables this will go in but it's going to take a little bit of there we are it's coaxed into place and what you can hopefully see here is we've got this usb 2 connector on the top this usb 3 on the bottom we've got the spare usb 3 port for the sata 2 usb adapter but we've lost access to one of the usb 2 ports because of the position of the circuit board here you can't even leave as a dongle internally in the case so we do lose one of the usb ports on the pi using the spy 4 case which is a bit of a shame i can accept losing the port for the saturday usb adapter that's perfectly fair but that one well there we are that's that's life not everything can be perfect anyway i think we can now take the heatsink the heatsink the cooler i really like i've got it the right way around i think in terms of which bits go where i think i have so this will drop in here like this i think that's going in there i can feel it making contact with the thermal pads and we have to plug in the fan on one of these little itty bitty connectors oh that's a small connector does it want to go in go on it's going to go in there we are the fan is connected and i think we can now grab two of the correct screws and drop them into the heatsink down here to go in on this side of the heatsink and then the other side is held by the case screws i'm actually using the official screwdriver here i don't know what this screwdriver is called maybe it's called michael to me it looks a bit like a screwdriver that might be called michael anyway i'll finish off these screws there we are and then finally here we need to fit this connector this goes onto the pi's gpio connector it goes in that way it seams that red to the front and this will actually provide power to the pi which will come into the power input on the side of the case which is not the pi's own power connector and also if we're going to be using the soft reset and power switches this gives us links to gpio pins to control that so that's in there and talking of the front buttons and the potential to use a safe shutdown script with them over here there is a switch let's just move the wire out the way so we can see the switch properly and the default position for this switch is off so you don't use safe shutdown script that's why i'm going to leave that switch because maybe it's just me i can't see the point of using the safe shutdown scripts running in software when i want to turn off a raspberry pi i close down the operating system and turn off the power adapter i don't want to have a script running that means i can press a switch on the front of the case to tell the pi to shut down rather than be shutting it down properly so i'm not going to use the safe shutdown script so let's put that back where it was and check everything is properly in place which i think it is and it's therefore now time to put on the top of the case very exciting this has got its usb 3 connector for the cartridge the sata interface so that plugs in here like that everything is in place okay pull that wire around and hopefully this will drop on the top it will so i now just need to grab one of the longer screws and we'll flick the case over and put those screws in with the help of our new friend michael the screwdriver let's sort that out and here we are the last screw it escaped onto the floor but i went and found it it wasn't going to escape and get away with it was it not with me and michael the screwdriver sorting it out there we are so that's got that all together we've now got a good solid final case but of course we've not dealt with the cartridge slot so let's open that up like that and take out the cartridge itself and we'll go across to our ssd this is a 128 gigabyte kingston ssd waiting very patiently and we're going to fit it in the cartridge and i think this just clips open like that and then as we can see the ssd will drop in like that that seems to be pretty straightforward and then this has to somehow clip back on top which is a little bit i think like oh yes that's gone on and that hasn't clipped that's clipped that's gone in actually very very well there are some screws we can put in but we don't need to put the screws in because clearly that's going to hold very well and as you can see on the end the sata connector for the ssd goes straight through to the connector inside the case this is a very good design in fact it's a very very similar design to the cartridges that are used in my atomos recorders on which this very video is being recorded right now anyway i will put in the screws just for completeness there we are our ssd is now secured against all things including probably a nuclear attack so let's go back to the case whereby jingo we can just slot in the cartridge that's a very good slotting in effect put down the cover and we're now all ready to give the nest pie for test greetings here i am back again i've now got everything wired up as you can see so let's turn on power like that there we are little led has come on and i should tell you that i've got raspberry pi os installed here on the kingston ssd we just put in the cartridge slot and there's no micro sd card in the pie and so clearly as the pie is booting up i think it is various messages here coming up from the mantra itself but the pie seems to be booting up is it booting up are you putting a pie i think you are things are happening probably yes the pie is booted up and as it's booted up it means that the saturday usb adapter in monash pi 4 is bootable when used with a pi 4 with appropriate firmware or of course you could run your operating system from a micro sd card and use an ssd in the cartridge slot as extra storage or indeed you could not use the cartridge slot at all oh and if you're wondering about the case fan which is not temperature controlled it is pretty quiet you can certainly hear the case fan but it isn't one of those really high pitched noises you sometimes get with raspberry pi cases because the fan is so small this is a fairly low pitched noise it's in the background it's not the sort of thing that's going to distract now talking of the case fan over the years i've tested out many different raspberry pi cooling solutions with this table being one that was included in my most recent video where i run temperature tests this was a video where i tested out the argon 1 m.2 case but also here you can see cooling results from different cooling solutions for a raspberry pi 4 so let's see how the nest pi 4 compares so if we go across to the raspberry pi desktop here we are where by the magic of filmmaking i've run up the genie editor and loaded in my test script just to remind you what it does and it basically runs a nice little loop as it says up there where it first of all takes a temperature measurement and it then uses suspense to stress out the pi's cpu for a couple of minutes roughly by factoring prime numbers up to a value of 25 000 and with the output from sysbench being suppressed by the bit on the end of the command there and then at the end of that loop it takes a final temperature measurement so we get eight temperature measurements with apply doing a lot of work between them so we can see how well our cooling solutions are performing so let's get rid of that and i've brought up the terminal like that so we'll start off the temperature test and there we are the test has finished we've got our results so let's transfer those across to our table where as you can see they're pretty respectable certainly the nespi case is no match for an ice tower or my own noctua fallon heatsink rig when it comes to extreme raspberry pi 4 cooling but performance is very much in line with popular pi4 case and cooling solutions like the primarily fan shim the flirt case and the argon 1 m.2 case and indeed the nespi 4 is a very solid alternative to a case like the argon 1 m.2 as whilst both include a usb to sata interface with ssd the nes pi 4 has active cooling and currently sells for a lower price the nest pi 4 is a very solid a very well-built raspberry pi 4 case for retro gamers with its only downside being the fact you've only got two available usb ports but now that's it for another video if you've enjoyed it you've seen here please press that like button if you haven't subscribed please subscribe and i hope to talk to you again very soon [Music] you

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 50,524

Keywords: Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi 4 case, Raspberry Pi retro gaming, Raspberry Pi retro case, NESPi4, NESPi 4, NES Pi4, Retroflag, NESPi cooling, NESPi 4 cooling, Raspberry Pi SATA case, SATA case, SATA cartridge, Christopher Barnatt, Barnatt

Id: gdSsGWzNEO0

Length: 16min 16sec (976 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 17 2021