The Raspberry Pi 3 B+ is possible, however, the performance boost is slight.
If you read my earlier article on overclocking the Raspberry Pi 4, you saw how easy it was to crank the speed up to the max. Commander Pi made it super simple to change settings and get that clock speed up! Unfortunately, TwisterOS is not recommended for the Pi 3B+ and may not even work (I haven’t tried it on the 3B+ at all, but it probably won’t work correctly), so I just edited the settings in the config.txt file using nano. It’s a little bit more involved but not much more difficult. At first, I tried to do 1700 MHz with no success and dialed it back to 1600. That was also a no-go, so I dialed it back another 100 MHz. Success. The GPU was raised to 600 MHz and I also did a slight OC of the RAM. Here are the settings i used:
arm_freq=1500
gpu_freq=600
over_voltage=6
temp_limit=80
sdram_freq=600
sdram_schmoo=0x02000020
over_voltage_sdram_p=6
over_voltage_sdram_i=4
over_voltage_sdram_c=4
total_mem=1023
hdmi_drive=2
Overall, I would have to agree with Hayden James’s article Stop trying to overclock the Raspberry Pi 3 B+. The 3B+ is nearly at its upper limit so I could only get a 100MHz boost from it, which probably won’t give any significant performance gains. Also, the 3B+ gets fairly hot under load even at stock speeds so I recommend passive and active cooling in the form of heatsinks and a fan. A regular 3B might be a better candidate for an overclock, essentially turning the 3B into a stock 3B+. The 3B+ probably will benefit from a GPU/RAM overclock but the CPU might best be left alone. The 100MHz boost probably isn’t going to do much performance-wise and when I tried to go higher than that, Raspbian refused to boot. The 3B is going to be a better candidate if you can indeed boost it to 1500, which I still need to try.
If you have a 3B+ overclocking isn’t totally out of the picture. GPU and RAM can still be overclocked and might give a slight performance boost but overall the model 4 will give you the best overclocking bang for your buck.
The Raspberry Pi 4 survived a 2 hour long stress test at 2100 MHz.
Overclocking a computer is always something I’ve been interested in. Who doesn’t want to get more out of their hardware? The only hold back for me was the possibility of messing something up and ending up with a dead machine, not to mention the extra wear and tear from the added heat, which in turn shortens its life. That said, I just put the idea of overclocking to the side since my PC worked fine and the performance was decent. If I had a second computer that I didn’t need to worry about I could do it! Well, now I have a brand new Raspberry Pi 4 4 GB and an ArgonONE case with a fan to try it out without too much worry! I figured a Pi would be the perfect computer to try out an overclock project. Let’s crank it up!
I started out thinking about cooling: I would need a good case with a fan for this to work optimally. I did a bit of research and found a good article on the subject over at the MagPi and chose the ArgonONE case for my project. It gave great performance for the price and it had a sleek design so I bought one to try it out for this project. It even came with a power adapter so I didn’t need to buy one separately.
Next I actually needed the Raspberry Pi. I chose the Raspberry Pi 4 4 GB model for the project. I was considering using the 8 GB model, but that model was out of stock, so I opted for the 4 GB model instead. Along with the Pi, I needed the proper adapters to work with my old trusty VGA monitor. I already had the VGA to HDMI adapter but I needed something that would work with the Pi 4’s microHDMI ports. I did the silly thing and bought a bunch of cables. Was it miniHDMI or microHDMI? I wasn’t sure so I picked up a few. All I really needed was a microHDMI to HDMI dongle. Luckily cables are inexpensive and you never know when you might need one to connect a device, so the extras will get stashed away until I might need them.
Speaking of the monitor, I found a great deal on a refurbished HP 17” VGA monitor at my local MicroCenter. I figured it would make a good display for various Pi projects and so far it performs well. I might consider getting another one if I need another larger display for a project.
One more item I needed was a good SD card. I always get the best class 10 card I can afford. Luckily SD cards aren’t overly expensive and are pretty easy to find. I usually use SanDisk Extreme or Ultra cards, which have worked well in the past for me and haven’t caused any issues so far.
Finally, I needed something to log the temperature data. Fortunately, there is a great tutorial on how to write a temp logger script that will graph your data and save it into a .csv file so you can review the data in a spreadsheet. The tutorial can be found here. And before I forget, I used TwisterOS and the preinstalled Commander Pi for the OS and overclocking utility. You can get the latest TwisterOS image here. By the way, you might have to manually install the newest version of Commander Pi. The instructions can be found here.
After I had all of the necessary items together, it was finally time to put it all together and crank up that clock speed! First, I formatted the SD card and installed the Twister OS image on it. Next up was putting together the ArgonONE case.
The case was fairly easy to put together. Put the thermal pads onto the designated areas, attach the daughterboard to the Pi, put in a few screws and it’s all done. The daughterboard is a nice feature that puts all of the ports on one side and adds a power button. The aluminium chassis and overall design of the case makes it one big heatsink. Crank up your processor and put your hand on the ArgonONE to see what I mean. The case will be warm to the touch from the Pi heating up. Another nice feature of the Argon is the software you can use to control when the fan fires up.
After everything was all set up and ready to go, it was finally time to crank up the clock speed on the Pi. Before I found the stress test script I did some “normal use” tests where I opened several Chromium tabs, ran some YouTube videos, and fired up Minecraft Pi to see how everything worked.
When I was done with that I cranked the clock up to 2100 MHz and ran the same tests for about ten minutes. When I put my USB stick in to save the log data, the Pi started to act a little wonky, so I dialed it back to 2000MHz. That was before I found the stress test script.
Once I found the script, I put it to use right away. I ran it at 2000MHz and it passed fine. I was willing to let it be at this point, but I slept on it a few days and decided to bump it back up to 2100MHz. I ran it again and it passed. So far I’ve been using it often and haven’t had any issues with the USB stick when I last attached it to the overclocked Pi and the overall stability seems fine so far.
The ArgonONE case did a great job of keeping the case cool. My most recent stress test I did was just over two hours long (Not a few minutes like the article over at PiMyLifeUp claimed). Throughout that test, the Pi never got above 62 degrees C and the average temperature hovered around 57 degrees C. Pretty good performance from the ArgonONE case/fan, I would highly recommend getting one if you plan on overclocking your Pi, or if you just want a cool looking desktop case. They’re around $25 at most retailers online which is a great value for the performance it offers.
Overall, I had a great time overclocking my Pi and TwisterOS makes it so easy with CommanderPi. I’ve already turned up the clock on my Ubuntu Pi (CommanderPi doesn’t work on Ubuntu unfortunately) and plan on overclocking my Pi Model 3s as well! Grab a Pi and try it out!
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