Raspberry Pi 4 constantly crashes and is overheating

[KeithMcNeill]

In the hope that I might finally be able to use the Pi as a standard desktop OS (though nothing heavy duty), I bought the new Raspberry Pi 4 (with 4GB ram) this week. Unfortunately, I had great difficulty getting it to actually start. I tried it with Noobs, Ubuntu Mate and Ubuntu Core, all to no effect. The red light came on immediately but the green light briefly flickered then switched off each time and nothing appeared on screen.

I followed the instructions for fixing the bootloader (SPI EEPROM) issue, which made the green light switch constantly on and off as expected, then retried all the above distros, but to no avail.

I then found instructions to install Raspbian Buster, which finally allowed me to boot into the desktop and start the browser. However, as soon as I try to perform any tasks other heavier than viewing the Google homepage (e.g. viewing a video on YouTube), it now simply reboots every time. I'm also worried about the level of heat from the board, which I haven't experienced on the Pi2 and Pi3.

Frankly, I'm disappointed with the Pi4 and wonder if it's genuinely ready for release.

[jahboater]

I then found instructions to install Raspbian Buster, which finally allowed me to boot into the desktop and start the browser.

That's progress, well done.

However, as soon as I try to perform any tasks other heavier than viewing the Google homepage (e.g. viewing a video on YouTube), it now simply reboots every time. I'm also worried about the level of heat from the board, which I haven't experienced on the Pi2 and Pi3.

The Pi will throttle back (reduce its clock speed and supply voltage) if the temperature exceeds 80C. Much like your smartphone, it will continue running but slower. Anything else is a problem.

The Pi4 has had a die shrink down from 40nm to 28nm, and I find under heavy load it is less likely to throttle than the Pi3.
I just tried watching a youtube video and the temp rose by 2C (to 52C). Negligible. Hopefully yours is not in a tiny plastic case with no ventilation.

Frankly, I'm disappointed with the Pi4 and wonder if it's genuinely ready for release.

Of course it is, the sales of the pi4 is at least one million, probably more. 28 million in total? Few people have problems.

Please, carefully do the Raspbian install onto a new (and known to working/not fake) micro SD card, and then try Rasbpian with the absolute minimum of configuration, and see how you get on. It works fine for millions of users.

[pcmanbob]

Hi.

First off I don't know if Ubuntu core or Ubuntu mate actually support the pi 4 , to use noobs you would need to use the latest version and format the SD card as fat 32.

A common cause of rebooting like you are experiencing is a power supply that is not suitable for the pi, so what are you using as a power supply ?

[jahboater]

A common cause of rebooting like you are experiencing is a power supply that is not suitable for the pi, so what are you using as a power supply ?

+1

Sorry I didn't think of that.

Use the "official" Raspberry Pi PSU, they are well known to be problem free (and are cheap!)

[graphicw]

The Pi 4 will not actually overheat, it will simply throttle on you under load. You will take a performance hit while it is throttling, but the machine will continue to run. You are not likely to reach the point of throttling with video viewing or normal web browsing. If you are running demanding games and such or working with heavy duty image and video editing, you could experience throttling. It requires 3 amps at 5 volts for it to run correctly plus provide full current possible over USB. The official power supplies are very inexpensive and work very well. They are actually much nicer than most cell phone blocks and a quarter of the price to boot.

[pi-tastic]

i bought a Pi 4B 1gig version and it was doing what yours is doing.
i never had any issues with noobs though

i love noobs,
format as fat32 and copy contents of zip over and it works great.

Yeah that 4b 1gig was getting hot and crashing... i bought since then 2 4b 4gig versions and they do get hot stock, with out active cooling, they were stable! and would throttle with out rebooting .

i have them overclocked right now with active cooling, they are working great!

[LTolledo]

Keep your RPi4B cool.... and it will "cool away your RPi headaches" as well.

[fruitoftheloom]

In the hope that I might finally be able to use the Pi as a standard desktop OS (though nothing heavy duty), I bought the new Raspberry Pi 4 (with 4GB ram) this week. Unfortunately, I had great difficulty getting it to actually start. I tried it with Noobs, Ubuntu Mate and Ubuntu Core, all to no effect. The red light came on immediately but the green light briefly flickered then switched off each time and nothing appeared on screen.

I followed the instructions for fixing the bootloader (SPI EEPROM) issue, which made the green light switch constantly on and off as expected, then retried all the above distros, but to no avail.

I then found instructions to install Raspbian Buster, which finally allowed me to boot into the desktop and start the browser. However, as soon as I try to perform any tasks other heavier than viewing the Google homepage (e.g. viewing a video on YouTube), it now simply reboots every time. I'm also worried about the level of heat from the board, which I haven't experienced on the Pi2 and Pi3.

Frankly, I'm disappointed with the Pi4 and wonder if it's genuinely ready for release.

Raspbian Buster, LibreElec, Lakka and a few other Operating Systems are supported.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/

https://libreelec.tv/about/

https://www.lakka.tv/articles/2019/09/1 ... rch-1.7.8/


Though what you have failed to answer is what Power Supply you are using ? the official one is 5.1V 3A

https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/ty ... er-supply/

[clicky]

Yeah that 4b 1gig was getting hot and crashing... i bought since then 2 4b 4gig versions and they do get hot stock, with out active cooling, they were stable! and would throttle with out rebooting .

That's just not right. Pi should be 'crashing' at any case - no matter of cooling applied. Did yo say you had them overclocked when they were crashing? Is it possible that they were crashing because of being overclocked not because of running hot?

[Gavinmc42]

I'm using the old 2.5Amp official Power supply.
Not using a USB SSD, so don't need the 3amp one I got yet.
A small heat sink and the lid off the official case keeps the temp around 55C.
This is my third Pi4, each one, 1GB, 2GB and this 4GB have no problems with Chromium and YT's.

Good power supply
A1 uSD card
Heatsink
Ventilation

If doing all that still causes trouble, then start suspecting an issue with an edge case Pi4.
Start messing with under clocking it, I had to do that with an early 3B+.

Frankly, I'm disappointed with the Pi4 and wonder if it's genuinely ready for release.

Nope it's not ready, needs USB booting, Netbooting, 4K videos in Browsers etc etc .
But I and a few other manage to put up with all the defects and use them fine.
But we do see a lot of first timers flaming Pi's on their first post.
Some of them might be real and not Russian bots?

[jamesh]

Crashing means something is wrong, not that our product isn't ready for release (see questions later!)

If your device is actually crashing rather than simply slowing down if it reaches thermal limits, then it has a defect. That could be something wrong with the board itself, or as is very often the case, an inadequate power supply. Ensure your power supply is robust - our PS is known to work, but also ensure that the cable from the supply to the device is also of good quality, with preferably no plugs or switches that might reduce power available at the Pi.

I actually have an honest question for the OP. You have a problem with the PI4, but your immediate conclusion , rather than your particular device is defective or setup incorrectly, is to think that the product itself is defective (your comment asking whether it is ready for release). I'd be interested to know why you went for that conclusion, rather than, to me, the more obvious there "just something wrong with mine" conclusion. I'd like to think we have a fairly good reputation for engineering and that people would not expect us to release a major product such as this that had major faults (as constant crashes would be!), so any insight in to your thought processes on this will help us in the future.

[KeithMcNeill]

Hi,
thanks for the many replies.

Apologies for the rather negative viewpoint on the Pi4 not really being ready for release. That was borne out of two days of frustration at trying to get it to start. I can assure you that I'm definitely not a 'Russian bot', as one poster suspected

I'll follow the advice given by a few people to try a different power supply, as I'm currently using a an adapter left over from an old Nexus Galaxy. which may not be compatible.

I'll report back on the results.

As for the heat issue, I don't actually have this Pi inside a plastic case though my Pi2 and Pi3 are both in cases but aren't nearly so hot.

Thanks again.

[pcmanbob]

For a start I would recommend you get the official raspberry pi 4 PSU as has already been suggested by others in posts above.

As for the heat problem the pi4 runs hotter than other pi's , so it's probably not over heating.

What temperature does

Code: Select all

vcgencmd measure_temp 

report?

You could also run this script from a command line/terminal window and see what it reports

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash

# https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/2295/runcommand-warning-if-voltage-temperature-throttling

#Flag Bits
UNDERVOLTED=0x1
CAPPED=0x2
THROTTLED=0x4
HAS_UNDERVOLTED=0x10000
HAS_CAPPED=0x20000
HAS_THROTTLED=0x40000

#Text Colors
GREEN=`tput setaf 2`
RED=`tput setaf 1`
NC=`tput sgr0`

#Output Strings
GOOD="${GREEN}NO${NC}"
BAD="${RED}YES${NC}"

#Get Status, extract hex
STATUS=$(vcgencmd get_throttled)
STATUS=${STATUS#*=}
echo "------------------- "
echo -n "Status: "
(($STATUS!=0)) && echo "${RED}${STATUS}${NC}" || echo "${GREEN}${STATUS}${NC}"

echo "Undervolted:"
echo -n "   Now: "
((($STATUS&UNDERVOLTED)!=0)) && echo "${BAD}" || echo "${GOOD}"
echo -n "   Run: "
((($STATUS&HAS_UNDERVOLTED)!=0)) && echo "${BAD}" || echo "${GOOD}"

echo "Throttled:"
echo -n "   Now: "
((($STATUS&THROTTLED)!=0)) && echo "${BAD}" || echo "${GOOD}"
echo -n "   Run: "
((($STATUS&HAS_THROTTLED)!=0)) && echo "${BAD}" || echo "${GOOD}"

echo "Frequency Capped:"
echo -n "   Now: "
((($STATUS&CAPPED)!=0)) && echo "${BAD}" || echo "${GOOD}"
echo -n "   Run: "
((($STATUS&HAS_CAPPED)!=0)) && echo "${BAD}" || echo "${GOOD}"
echo "------------------- "

you need to make the script executable before you can call it.

it will give you results like this



any YES results are an indication of a problem

[jamesh]

I'll follow the advice given by a few people to try a different power supply, as I'm currently using a an adapter left over from an old Nexus Galaxy. which may not be compatible.

Almost certainly the problem.

[Gavinmc42]

Yep, Power supply.
You cannot just use any old power supply anymore.
Especially cheap battery chargers which are NOT Power supplies.

If you have a oscilloscope, monitor the 5V supply and watch it go all over the place.
Drops in voltage do weird stuff.
Buying the official power supply and you would have saved days of aggravation.
However it would not have taught you a lesson in Pi's.

The lesson - Chargers are not Power supplies.

[KeithMcNeill]

Hi,
just an update that I've now switched to the official power supply for the Pi 4 and it's no longer crashing.

The board still overheats quite a bit, and the mouse keeps freezing, but it's progress.

Incidentally, I wouldn't recommend the Pi Box with the Fan attached, as the fan is extremely noisy.