Great functionality - AWFUL cooling. Disappointing misstep for Waveshare - but can be fixed.

U.v.B. · 21 June 2025

The board is great - better specs than the original Raspberry Pi board and POE to boot. And I like Waveshare - I've given very positive reviews to several of their products.But while the board is good, the case is a mess. They've set it up so that there's no heatsink, just a fan blowing on the bare chips. That's a poor design - there's a reason that nobody does that in industry. The correct approach is passive heatsink, or heatsink plus fan.You don't have the option of fitting a heatsink, because the case is so low-profile that there's not enough space between the CM5 and the bottom of the fan for a heatsink to fit.I did quite a bit of research and found that the cooling effect with a CM5 is very nearly the SAME whether it's a fan only, or a passive heatsink only. So why would you use a fan - a moving part with noise and a high failure rate instead of just a plain old passive heatsink? It's nuts.It's actually worse than this, because there's an air OUTLET for the fan, but no air INLET! The poor old fan will have a hard time sucking air out of a case with no inlet ports. Also, the air outlet isn't a hole, it's a fancy design with nice swooping metal fins. Looks lovely but blocks about 40% of the air outlet! There's a reason that everyone uses those wire cage grills - they're ugly but they don't block the airflow.So now we've got an air exhaust that's 40% blocked, no heatsink, and no air inlet!Result? The fan spins LOUD because it's working its hardest to try and get some cooling within an insane thermal design.Also, the fans are cheap and nasty - the central hub is huge (a sign of cheap fans) and mine had a VERY prominent sqeaking sound whenever it was spinning (which was often because the poor thing can't do its job because of the poor airflow so it seldom gets down to below 60C where the fan can turn off).The final piece of poor design here is that they've placed two components SO CLOSE to the CM5 that you can't fit most aftermarket passive or passive / active coolers - there's not enough space.So... how I got around this and got a great result...For the less hard working units I threw away the GPIO extender board to create some airflow into the case, threw the fan away, and added the Raspberry Pi official CM5 cooler which fits (only just) between the components on the board. With this setup the CM5 reports a steady 38-48 degrees C at low CPU utilisation which is pretty good!For the box that needs to work hard from time to time I added active and passive cooling:1. Remove the GPIO extender board and throw it away - leaving a nice big inlet port for the fan.2. Drill three 15mm holes in the other side of the case (beside the RAM) - more inlet ports for the fan.3. Use a hole saw to remove the fancy design and make an actual hole for the fan.4. Use the official CM5 heatsink (it's small enough to fit beside the badly laid out components).5. Buy a Noctua proper high quality fan (and either a fan re-cabling kit from Bolo, the proper stripping and crimping tools and connectors, or if you're less of a perfectionist you could just cut the old cable and splice it to the new).6. Fit the Noctua fan OUTSIDE the case and route the cable inside (prettier) or outside (easier).This was altogether too much mucking about for such a simple problem as cooling a few chips. However, to be fair to Waveshare, this is a fairly new product category, there's not much on the market, and although it cost me money and time per unit to modify them, I am extremely happy with the end result - the great Waveshare board and capabilities with a cooling solution that's perfectly silent most of the time (the heatsink keeps everything cool on its own) and when I start taxing the CPU, the Noctua fan kicks in and because it has proper airflow and is a great fan, I never hear it.Got there in the end!

Really cool for little projects

⭐.H.V.⭐. · 2 May 2025

I liked how this item came all packed together, and everything felt strong and well-made. The case feels solid, and it looks neat on my desk. I haven’t added the computer part yet, but I’m excited to use it once it shows up.One thing I noticed is the metal edges can feel a little sharp if you’re not careful. It’s not a big deal, just something to watch for. Overall, it’s a fun piece to build around and seems great for small tech setups or messing around with projects at home.

Nice IO board for a Compute Module.

C. · 26 July 2025

I wanted to take my time reviewing this Compute Module 5 IO board as I have never used one before. This is an IO interface, designed to be used with a Compute Module 5 "Raspberry Pi" processing module (not included). Since I had not used one before, I had to look online to understand how I can use it. What I found is that this is the standard IO board design by Raspberry Pi. I simply read and following the instructions found on the Raspberry Pi "Compute Module hardware" documentation, and it worked perfectly to get a Compute Module 5 up and running. This is a solid and very well built IO board and case which follows the Raspberry Pi specification, so you won't run into anything unusual in getting it up and running.Some other reviews have noted that the cooling fan isn't working well, and/or it does not work in conjunction with a heat sink on your Compute Module. This is true, and I agree with that, but I didn't take off any stars because it actually is built just like the official Raspberry Pi documentation says it should be built (right or wrong). Also, I would point out that a heat sink alone is probably sufficient cooling for most people, so just remove the fan and use a heat sink. This will also be a silent way of running your Compute Module. Second, if you do want to use a fan AND a heat sink at the same time there is a pretty easy work around: move the fan up to the top of the case and drill some holes on the side of the case to let some air in. Sure, that is a little bit of work, but as I mention, you probably don't need to use both a heatsink and fan together. The reason for drilling holes on the side is there is no other ventilation to the case, and if you want to blow air "out" you will need to let air "in" somewhere. I actually tried this with my case and in my application, it proved to be unnecessary. If you don't want to drill holes, you can also remove the Tee Port bus access which just unplugs.The board also has a battery holder in case you want to take advantage of the Real Time Clock of the Compute Module 5. You will find plenty of information on the internet on how to get this working. With a Real Time Clock, I am able to do such fun things as schedule a wake-up time for my CM5, etc. I also tested the external antenna option on my CM5. If you want to do this yourself, note that there is some configuration you must do to switch over to an external antenna - the CM5 will not automatically switch over to it just because you plugged in an external antenna. The internet is your friend here, you can look up exactly how to change the configuration for an external antenna.

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P. · 2 February 2025

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it perfectly fits the compute module

M.Y.S. · 30 July 2025

It was as described