Hi everyone, I purchased a Fan Shim for a Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB model) just over 2 months ago. It’s been running continuously since, but yesterday afternoon I noticed the fan no longer spins at all, and I can’t get it to work again. Can anyone help or advise? I tried unmounting and remounting the sh…

If you do buy another Fan Shim, you could try plugging your current Fan into the new board. That will tell you if the fan died, or the board failed. I wouldn’t chuck the fan in the bin just yet. Another option is to cut the JST connector off, strip the end of the wires bare, and apply 5V to the red…

For anyone who finds this in the future; the replacement also failed after a few weeks, and it turns out the fans used are not designed to be in a vertically-mounted position for prolonged periods of time, as they will fail to self-lubricate correctly and die.

Thanks for the heads up. I’ll make sure it’s kept horizontal. I’ve been running mine on Libreelec with a spread threshold 40c-66c on constantly for 2 weeks but the fan only runs intermittently, all working fine, even vertically, but why take the chance? Will Pimoroni replace it under warranty? Runn…

Well if the fan is not designed for that orientation then yes is misuse of the fan. Pimoroni should add a warning to the product page though. Most fans have at least one orientation they don’t like, although they do normally work vertically.

They are vertically mounted in a PC, case and CPU fan. Horizontal in a laptop though. As far as I know I have never had a fan fail because of its installed orientation. I’m not disputing that it may happen, just hasn’t happened to me. Mine have failed because they just wore out over extended use. Us…

Have to disagree with you. (and I’m not saying that it is sure they’re failing due to vertical mounting) I disagree it would be considered misuse to mount a Rpi vertically and by virtue the fanshim. In the absence of clear instruction as to orientation, and the abundance of vesa mounts and cases for…

A normal fan will fail if you mount it with the rotor pointing down. It soon gets noisy and eventually the rotor can fall out. Some cheap Chinese 24V power supplies have that problem.

I agree there should be a warning but presumably the only way to fix it is use a different fan, which may or may not exist in that strange form factor.

I’ll bet that fan is not manufactured specifically for the fan shim but is a generic fan with 2 mounts that the PCB was built around. I have looked previously and couldn’t find a similar fan with the 2 mount points. Though my search was only limited to about 10 mins or so. I was pleased with the shi…

Search for graphics card fans and you may find similar fans with just the two mounting points. Those fans are a lot smaller than the CPU etc fans.

(Pi 4) Fan Shim suddenly stopped working

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Raspberrytart November 10, 2019, 12:00pm 21

The Fanshim fan has Known lubrication problems. if pimoroni won’t replace it it may be worth trying to oil it before buying another.

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(Pi 4) Fan Shim suddenly stopped working

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