Raspberry Pi 4 Firmware Update: Significantly Reduces Power Consumption and Improves Speed

Compared to the previous generation, the recently launched Raspberry Pi 4 has brought many improvements: a more powerful CPU and GPU, larger memory, and support for Gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.0, among others. However, stronger performance and processing capabilities mean higher power consumption, making the Raspberry Pi 4 the most power-hungry and heat-prone model in the series.

To address this issue, the official team has been continuously optimizing, and the recently released firmware update has finally made significant improvements in power consumption. This firmware update includes the USB controller, SDRAM, and VLI power management.

According to the official introduction, upgrading to the Raspberry Pi 4 Beta firmware has brought many improvements, including finer control of the SoC operating voltage and timing optimization for the HDMI video state machine. The upgrade method is as follows:

First, open the terminal and enter the following command:

sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade

Then use the following command to restart:

sudo shutdown -r now

The Beta firmware reduces overall power consumption by lowering the power consumption in idle states, while adjusting the SoC voltage under load to reduce power consumption without affecting performance. The final result is: idle power consumption reduced to 2.1W, and under load reduced to 6.41W, which is the best data so far. Reduced energy consumption also means reduced heat generation, improving heat dissipation, thus allowing the system to run at full capacity without Thermal Throttling.

Thermal imaging comparison

Power consumption comparison (the lower the value, the better)

It can be seen that upgrading to the latest firmware will effectively reduce power consumption and improve heat dissipation.

Finally, the official team also introduced a “trick” that can effectively dissipate heat – adjusting the orientation of the Raspberry Pi 4 as shown in the figure below:

The placement method in the image is to upright the Raspberry Pi 4 with the Beta firmware installed, with the GPIO module at the bottom and the power and HDMI ports at the top. Upright placement improves convection, allowing surrounding air to absorb heat more quickly, while lifting the back of the board off the insulating surface of the table significantly increases the available cooling surface area, thus improving heat dissipation compared to laying flat.

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