Overclocking the Raspberry Pi 400 is very easy to achieve. In terms of heat dissipation, the Raspberry Pi 400 is designed with a large passive heatsink, which is very useful. There is no need for additional active cooling to meet the heat dissipation needs of overclocking.

Although some users have configured the Raspberry Pi 400 to overclock to 2.2GHz, I believe that 2GHz is more stable.

Overclocking Settings

Here are the steps to configure overclocking on the Raspberry Pi. (Disclaimer: Overclocking the Raspberry Pi carries certain risks, please do your own research before proceeding.)

1. Open the terminal and edit the config.txt file with the following command:

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

Find the line that says “arm_freq” and modify it to:

arm_freq=2000

If there is a # sign in front, please remove it.

Below the “arm_freq” line, add:

over_voltage=6

The final modification should look like the image below.

Press CTRL-X, then Y, and hit Enter to save the changes.

Overclocking is achieved by adjusting the CPU/GPU voltage. For complete setup instructions, please refer to the documentation: https://github.com/raspberrypi/documentation/blob/master/configuration/config-txt/overclocking.md

Restart the Raspberry Pi to apply the settings.

sudo reboot

Next, your Raspberry Pi 400 CPU will be able to run at 2GHz. However, please note that this frequency is dynamically adjusted. When the computational load increases, the frequency will also increase, up to a maximum of 2GHz.

Monitoring Frequency

Clearly, you might want to confirm the current running frequency, so you can check it with the following command.

vcgencmd measure_clock arm

You can also automatically check the running frequency every two seconds with the following command.

watch -n 2 vcgencmd measure_clock arm

Press CTRL-C to exit monitoring.

Temperature Monitoring

It is recommended to monitor the CPU temperature; if the temperature exceeds 80 degrees Celsius, the system will automatically throttle the frequency. Therefore, ensure that the CPU temperature does not exceed this level due to overclocking.

You can check the current CPU temperature with the following command.

vcgencmd measure_temp
# Check every 2 seconds
watch -n 2 vcgencmd measure_temp

Disabling Overclocking

Press the SHIFT key during Raspberry Pi boot to reset to default settings. To remove the overclocking settings, simply delete the “over_voltage” and “arm_freq” lines in the config.txt above.

Overclocking may void your Raspberry Pi warranty, so please think carefully before proceeding!

Finally, here is the temperature and performance data of the Raspberry Pi after overclocking to 2.2GHz, provided by jeffgeerling.com, for reference only.

Links in the text can be clicked to read the original article at the end

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