For Raspberry Pi4 continuous selfhosted server operations: with and without case fan. This graph show a 20°C decrease, with a slow rpm fan.
The metal case has thermal stickers to reach for main components on both sides, and the fan is what I have in scrap parts, totally not for that case but pushes a lot of air with low noise compared to screaming mini cpu fans.
@Creat When I said I had one Pi lifetime that was shortened it was a way of saying yes, it died from 24/7 high load no fan overheating. Now it just boot and freezes after a couple of minutes.
Then, yes, back in the days when overclocking and over powering was a thing, CPU actually died from all that, I changed a few for customers that didn’t know better. How ironic I did that to myself years later with little arm boards, isn’t it?
That’s what I said with “much hotter for longer”. If it’s constantly thermal throttling, that’s gonna be an issue. Of course OC’ing also will. 50°C just isn’t an issue. Also older models have CPUs that either don’t throttle at all, or do it less well/effectively.