The plucky Raspberry Pi 5 gets the full liquid treatment with this slightly absurd water cooling kit
A liquid-cooled Raspberry Pi—sounds like a tasty dessert but it's a real possibility thanks to this cooling kit from Seeed Studio and 52Pi.
Inclusive of radiator, reservoir, fan, and pump, this water cooling kit is intended to keep a Raspberry Pi 5 nice and cool (via Overclock3D.net). According to the product page, it'll get a RPi 5 to around 40°C, or perhaps even 37°C by a later remark, while at full load.
Everything needed to connect up the front and back of a RPi 5 is included with the kit, including flexible hoses, compact cooling plate, and dedicated power supply. This isn't a compact kit, either. It must be more than 10x the size of the Pi.
At least it comes with RGB lighting included on the fan and pump.
The whole kit costs around $120, $40/$60 more than the Raspberry Pi 5 itself, which is available in either 4GB or 8GB flavours.
I'm not sure what you have to be doing with a Raspberry Pi to require such a significant cooling solution. Overclocking the Arm A76 processor from its pedestrian 2.4GHz perhaps. Though I suppose you can't argue with the expansive upgrades on offer in the Pi ecosystem.
Best AIO cooler for CPUs: Keep your chip chill.
Best air cooler for CPUs: Classic, quiet cooling.
"With its powerful cooling performance, the water cooling kit for Raspberry Pi 5 effectively dissipates heat generated by the Raspberry Pi during intensive tasks or prolonged usage," the product page says. "This helps prevent overheating and ensures stable performance. Efficient water-cooled cooling will allow you to connect multiple Raspberry Pi boards to a set of cooling devices. When using Raspberry Pi in a cluster, you can use a set of water-cooled devices to effectively cool multiple Raspberry Pi boards."
A pretty niche product, this Pi-sized water cooler is a part of a wider trend to stick liquid coolers on otherwise passively or air-cooled components. We've seen air coolers largely give way to liquid coolers in recent years, as power demands have often surged upwards. Most notably liquid coolers have become the norm for CPUs, and even some high-end GPUs. In a more fringe case there are gaming laptops available with removeable liquid cooling loops.
Heck, I saw one MSI PCIe 5.0 SSD out at CES 2024 with a compact liquid cooling solution. Truly absurd, that one.