doitpoorly

A build log for 3D printed projects done poorly, on purpose.

Draft — the prose on this page is AI-generated placeholder text. The headings, photos and specs are real; the write-up around them is not written yet.

Build log · 13 August 2026

Zynthian: Raspberry Pi 4 → Pi 5 upgrade

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. The Zynthian box has been running on a Pi 4 since it was built, and it shows: patch changes lag, the UI stutters under a full layer stack, and the fan spends more time audibly disagreeing with the CPU than actually cooling it. Sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua — none of that is a Pi 5 problem, allegedly.

Why the Pi 5

Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. The short version1: roughly double the single-core throughput, PCIe for a real NVMe HAT instead of limping along on a microSD card, and enough headroom to stop worrying about buffer underruns during a live set.

Everything that has to come apart is in fig. 1. The part that matters is the ribbon bus2: it carries the encoders and the display, and it is the only connection that has to be re-seated blind once the lid goes back on. The HiFiBerry soundcard5 stays; the old iQaudIO card6 does not.

Zynthian case opened on a workbench, Pi 4 board and two soundcards laid out beside it 1Zynthian v4 front panel 2GPIO ribbon 3Encoder board 4Pi 4, heatsink case 5HiFiBerry DAC+ADC 6iQaudIO Pi-DAC+
Fig. 1Teardown in progress — the Pi 4 comes out easier than it went in, four years ago.
  1. 1Front panel MIDI DIN, USB, headphone out
  2. 2GPIO ribbon encoders and display
  3. 3Encoder board screwed to the lid
  4. 4Pi 4 in its heatsink case, detail in fig. 3
  5. 5HiFiBerry DAC+ADC kept
  6. 6iQaudIO Pi-DAC+ retired

Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Parts list

Board
Raspberry Pi 5, 8 GB
Storage
NVMe HAT + 256 GB stick, replacing the microSD
Cooling
Active cooler, official
Case
Existing Zynthian acrylic stack — should still fit

Case compatibility is “probably fine,” per three different forum threads and zero people who actually measured it. — a note I left myself, ignored, then had to revisit at 23:40 on a Thursday.

Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium. The stack-up in fig. 2 is where the case-compatibility question actually gets answered: the 40-pin stacking headerB sets the height of everything above it, and the clearance over the USB stackR is what runs out first.

Pi with soundcard seated, next to the heatsink case lid, stacking header, screws and hex key AHeatsink lid CHex key + M2.5 screws ERetail box B40-pin header Dsoundcard R2 mm clearance
Fig. 2Back together. Boots in about a third of the time — most of that improvement is the NVMe HAT, not the CPU.
  1. AHeatsink lid four M2.5 screws, no pad
  2. BStacking header 11 mm, ordered wrong twice
  3. CHex key and screws supplied
  4. DSoundcard seated 3 mm higher than on the Pi 4
  5. ERetail box "for the Pi 4", optimistically
  6. RClearance zone 2 mm over the USB stack

Gotchas

Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. The GPIO header moved fractionally; nothing else did.

Full boot log excerpt (click to expand) 
[    0.512301] brcmfmac: F1 signature read @0x18000000=0x15264345
[    1.203981] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 2
[    2.884012] zynthian-ui: waiting for jackd...
[    3.010552] jackd: no message buffer overruns

Nothing alarming, but I stared at it for a while anyway, because that’s the ritual.

Press Ctrl+C if zynthian-ui hangs on first boot — it usually doesn’t, once the wiring’s actually right2.

Cooling is the other unknown: the fan sits proud of the board by more than the old passive block did. Fig. 3 is that corner at 2.5×: a crop of the same photograph, annotated in its own coordinates.

Close crop of the Pi 4 in its heatsink case: fan, fan lead and Ethernet jack heatsink fins 4same part as fig. 1 · 4
Fig. 3 · detail 2.5×Detail of fig. 1 · 4. The region marks the 40 mm fan; the fins clear the case lid by about 2 mm, which is the whole reason this photograph exists.

Pi 4 vs Pi 5, on paper

Spec Pi 4 Pi 5
CPU Cortex-A72 @ 1.8 GHz Cortex-A76 @ 2.4 GHz
Storage I/O microSD only PCIe 2.0 (NVMe HAT)
Idle temp ~48°C ~41°C, active cooler

Annotation vocabulary

Five marks, one contrast rule: a light face, a dark hairline, a white halo. Nothing relies on colour alone. Rouge is only ever the linked-to state.

At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti. Full write-up with actual measurements — boot time, patch-load latency, thermals under a real set — , once it’s been gigged a few times instead of just bench-tested.