Raspberry Pi Temperature: Limits, Monitoring, Cooling, and More

When you buy a Raspberry Pi, you are on your own. Do you need to cool the thing? If so, what is the ideal temperature range? How do you know the current CPU temperature? If you have any doubts, you’re in the right place! I will answer all your questions in this article.

In short, the CPU temperature of a Raspberry Pi must stay below 85°C. Otherwise, it will start throttling (reducing performance) as it approaches this threshold to prevent overheating. Cooling is not required for normal usage, but it helps maintain peak performance at all times.

I’ll answer your questions in a Q&A format in this article, so feel free to jump directly to the one you are interested in, or read everything in the logical order to master this topic.

If you’re feeling lost in all the Raspberry Pi jargon, I’ve got something to help you out. I’ve created a free glossary that explains all the essential terms and abbreviations in a way that’s easy to understand. It’s a great resource to have by your side. Get your free copy here.

What Temperature Should the Raspberry Pi Run At?

The CPU temperature on a Raspberry Pi must stay below 85°C to keep it running with the best performance. The CPU will slow down (throttle) as it approaches this threshold, which can lead to a general slowness of the operating system.

In general, the Raspberry Pi temperature will be around 40-50°C when you power it on or keep it idle, and will slowly climb when you start to use the CPU. With short tasks and idle time in between (normal usage), the CPU will have enough time to cool down using fresh air in the room.

The CPU temperature can be an issue if you have tasks using the processor for an extended duration without downtime (e.g., heavy scripts, crypto mining, gaming, etc.). In this case, having a basic cooling system and keeping an eye on the CPU temperature are recommended.

In theory, a Raspberry Pi can’t overheat, as there’s a mechanism to slow down the CPU when it’s too hot. But over time, not cooling the CPU can lead to poor performance and reduced lifespan.

Related: Does Your Raspberry Pi Need Heatsinks? The Definitive Answer

How to Monitor the CPU Temperature on Raspberry Pi?

Let’s learn how to check the current temperature of your Raspberry Pi to see if you need to cool it or not. I will give you several ways to do this on Raspberry Pi OS; some of them should work on other systems too.

Raspberry Pi OS Desktop: How to Keep an Eye on Temperature?

On Raspberry Pi OS with Desktop, the easiest way to see the CPU temperature is to add the Temperature Monitor widget in the top panel.

• Right-click on a blank spot in the top taskbar.
• Choose Add / Remove Plugins from the drop-down menu.
• Under Available, select CPU Temp, and click Add to right:
  
• Close everything, and you should now see the current CPU temperature in the top bar:
  
  In my case, it was 42°C when I took the screenshot.

You can change the temperature thresholds by right-clicking on the widget and choosing Configure Plugin. The color will change when the CPU is too hot, so you’ll notice it easily.

By doing this, you’ll always have an eye on it and can see if a cooling system is necessary or not.

Check the Raspberry Pi Temperature From the Command Line

On Raspberry Pi, there’s a command that can be used to get the current temperature:
vcgencmd measure_temp

This essential command will return the temperature in degrees Celsius, something like:

This will be particularly useful if you are using Raspberry Pi OS Lite, or connect to your Raspberry Pi via SSH. You can also use these commands in Shell scripts. This can be particularly handy to add downtime in a long script when the CPU temperature is too high, for example.

Quick note: If you find it hard to remember all these commands, I’ve put them all on a one-page cheat sheet. You can download it for free here so you have it handy whenever you're working on a project.

If you’re using Python in your scripts, I have another option for you.

Monitor the Raspberry Pi Temperature with Python

There are several ways to get the CPU temperature in Python. On Raspberry Pi, the GPIO Zero library is installed by default and can give you the current temperature with the CPUTemperature() class.

A basic script can look like this:

from gpiozero import CPUTemperature

temp = CPUTemperature()
cpu_temp = round(temp.temperature,1)

print("CPU temperature is " + str(cpu_temp) + " degrees C")

It worked directly on Raspberry Pi OS, so you shouldn’t need to install anything. But if the GPIO Zero library is not installed on your system, you can install it with:
sudo apt install python3-gpiozero

Using GPIO Zero with Python is probably the best way to build a temperature logger on Raspberry Pi. You can store the value in a database and create graphics or tables with it after that.

I have an article on the best databases you can use on Raspberry Pi. I recommend reading it if you want to play a bit with this script. If you’re new to Python, read this article first, where I explain the basics you need to know before writing your first script.

You can also download my cheat sheet if you always forget the syntax. And if you are serious about it, I also have a complete e-book to learn Python the right way (without all the useless stuff).

Advanced Monitoring: Using Nagios or Grafana

And if you want to go even further, you can install Nagios or Grafana on your Raspberry Pi. It seems a bit overkill for me, but maybe there are some projects where it might be a good idea.

Nagios can keep an eye on the temperature for you, and send you an alert (email, notification, SMS, …) when it passes a certain threshold. Check out this article to install Nagios on Raspberry Pi.

Grafana is also a great tool to create graphs for almost anything. It will allow you to chart the history of the CPU temperature. More details on installing Grafana here.

Does Raspberry Pi Need Cooling?

In most cases, the Raspberry Pi doesn’t need a cooling system as the CPU throttles when approaching its limit temperature (85°C). However, it’s recommended to have a basic cooling system on Raspberry Pi 5 and Pi 4, and on any model used intensively.

Before the Pi 4, cooling a Raspberry Pi wasn’t really a thing. There were some problems with cooling a Pi 4 down when released, which brought this issue to light. But it was quickly fixed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Anyway, I explained in the previous part how to monitor your CPU temperature, whatever board you’re using. So, it should be pretty clear now if you need a cooling system or not.

How to Keep Raspberry Pi Cool?

There are several ways to keep a Raspberry Pi at the optimal temperature: heat sinks, passive case, fans, or even water cooling. Heat sinks or a passive case are generally enough for basic usage, but the other solutions can help for intensive use.

Let’s take a look at each solution, and discuss when you should use each.

Heat Sinks

Heat sinks are the easiest and most inexpensive way to keep a Raspberry Pi cooler. It’s a piece of metal you can put on the CPU to better dissipate heat. It looks like this:

The specific form and material will help keep the CPU at a lower temperature. It won’t be magical, and it won’t be enough for all use cases, but for a few bucks (check the price here), it can help a lot.

I used this on my first Raspberry Pi (3B+), and it was enough for me. You can read this article for more details on how to choose and install heat sinks.

In a stress test, the difference with no cooling system is minimal (a few degrees lower at best), but in normal usage, it could be enough:

Passive Case

Passive cases are similar to CPU heat sinks. They are generally built in aluminum to convey the heat from the CPU to outside the case.

This is currently my favorite solution. I have been using the Argon Neo case time with my Raspberry Pi all the time and I love it (read my review here). It’s inexpensive and does a great job in my case.

I also tested a bunch of other passive cases.
Check their reviews below if you think this solution is good for you:

• Flirc Case Review: Is it Really the Best? (6 Months Usage)
• Raspberry Pi 4 Passive Cooling – Is It Worth It?

Warning: I don’t necessarily use my Raspberry Pi like you do. A typical usage for me is installing something, testing it, writing an article about it, and restarting from scratch for another article. I won’t keep the Raspberry Pi on all the time or do intensive tasks on it.

So make sure you choose the best solution for you, not the one I use.

Basic Fan

When passive cooling is not enough, the next step to cool down a Raspberry Pi is using a fan. Some cases have one included, or you can plug one into the GPIO pins.

One case I tested that uses a fan in addition to passive cooling is the Argon M.2 (read the review). It’s a great case for other reasons, but the cooling system works pretty well too. It’s a bit expensive (check the price), but you can find cheaper alternatives easily (this one on Amazon, for example, that have heat sinks and a fan).

I don’t necessarily love this solution, because fans are generally noisy. But it’s often possible to configure them to only run when your CPU is already at a high temperature.

If your fan is plugged into a GPIO pin, you can control it via the Raspberry Pi configuration tool.
Enable fan control in the Performance tab and choose at which temperature it should kick in.

At 80°C (the default threshold), it should only run when your Pi is close to the maximum temperature, which is a good default.

If you don’t have a desktop GUI, you can do the same thing via raspi-config:
sudo raspi-config
And go to Performances Options > Fan to configure the same values.

As you can see from this graph, a fan is generally enough to keep the Raspberry Pi cool enough to avoid throttling. The maximum temperature it reaches is 10°C lower than what I got with heat sinks. It hovers around 60°C, which is excellent after 5 minutes with the CPU at 100% load.

But you can find more extreme options when you are keeping your CPU at 100% longer or just for fun. Let’s see these other solutions.

Full CPU Cooler

Taking active cooler to the next level, there are solutions that use a giant CPU cooler (heatsink + fan combination) that is normally found in performance desktop PCs.

First up is the Pironman case.
The Pironman is the ultimate case because not only does it have a CPU cooler for your Pi, it also has case fans to create air flow and cool down an NVMe drive. Read my Pironman 5 review here.

Another CPU cooler solution with a giant fan is the ICE Tower CPU cooling fan.
The ICE Tower is the ultimate solution to cool down a Raspberry Pi, to handle any stress you put on the CPU. It’s the combination of a giant fan and a big heat sink.

I tested this solution a few years ago (read my review here). Here’s what it looks like installed:

Yes, it won’t fit in a normal case, but you’re pretty certain to not overheat with this fan :-).
During a stress test, the temperature will almost stay at the idle level, as you can see on this graph:

Even when you boot the Raspberry Pi, you’ll already be way below the normal temperature (I think it’s basically my ambient room temperature, around 25°C). And during stress testing, it never goes above 40°C, which is the normal idle temperature with heat sinks.

So, it’s a pretty good product if you are running intensive tasks on your Raspberry Pi. It’s not expensive at all (check the current price on Amazon), but it’s maybe less convenient as you can’t really put it in a case or travel with it.

Water Cooling?

Want to go even further? I found a guy on YouTube that built a water cooling solution for his Raspberry Pi:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW3VeVe-FJg

A very efficient solution (with a good-looking design, by the way), keeping its Raspberry Pi 4 under 40 °C even with overclocking enabled. Not something I would do, but it’s fun to watch :-).

Still Not Sure?

If you are not yet convinced which case is the best option for you, you can read this other article I wrote on RaspberryTips: I tested all the most popular Raspberry Pi cases and compare them. You should have a better overview of the possibilities after that.

Anyway, I hope this article was useful to you, you now know the maximum temperature, how to keep an eye on it, and cool down your Raspberry Pi if needed. Don’t stress too much about this topic, but I think it’s important to know this if you regularly use a Raspberry Pi (especially with overclocking or for crypto-mining).

Whenever you’re ready, here are other ways I can help you:

Test Your Raspberry Pi Level (Free): Not sure why everything takes so long on your Raspberry Pi? Take this free 3-minute assessment and see what’s causing the problems.

The RaspberryTips Community: Need help or want to discuss your Raspberry Pi projects with others who actually get it? Join the RaspberryTips Community and get access to private forums, exclusive lessons, and direct help.

Master your Raspberry Pi in 30 days: If you are looking for the best tips to become an expert on Raspberry Pi, this book is for you. Learn useful Linux skills and practice multiple projects with step-by-step guides.

Master Python on Raspberry Pi: Create, understand, and improve any Python script for your Raspberry Pi. Learn the essentials step-by-step without losing time understanding useless concepts.

You can also find all my recommendations for tools and hardware on this page.