I hope others haven’t had as many difficulties putting theirs together as I have.
The acrylic plate E that goes on the IO expander board rests hard against cpu cooler tower. I had to slide it into place at a slight angle. Then push it down and against the cpu cooler to seat it.
The screws for the fans were too short to securely hold them in place. Even without the filters in place I could only get one fan barely secured in place. I finally found some that were long enough out in my garage. I had to enlarge the holes in the case ever so slightly for them to fit. But at least I now have fans mounted securely. The supplied fan mounting screws need to be at least half again as long as they are now.
NVMe drive. I have one that works with the Pironman case for the Pi 4. But it will not work with the case for the Pi 5. Why not? Granted that it isn’t on the list of working drives. But it is also NOT on the list of drives that will not work with the case for the Pi 5. I have a second drive that is on the list, sort of. It is a Sabrent Rocket. The Sabrent Rocket 4 and the Sabrent Rocket Nano are on the list of working drives. I don’t understand why the Rocket (non-4, non-Nano) won’t work. The first one and the second will work if I have them in an external case that is connected via USB. I find that to be strange. Works externally but not internally. I do have a Kingston NV2 ordered and that is on the ‘approved’ list for internal drives. So we will see if this problem still exists later this week when it shows up. Was it the drives or is it something else with the unit.
To put the case together I had to pry, push, pull since things were just a little bit off alignment and finally got it together except for the front acrylic panel. On that, I had to use a file to remove a millimeter or so of width where it butts up against the plate for the power button so that the screw holes on the bottom would line up.
Why do you have filters on the exhaust fans? You will have to remove the fans to clean them when necessary. But even then, you will have been sucking in the dirty air that made you need to clean the filters. Dirty air that now has deposited that dirt/dust/etc. on everything inside the case. I reversed the fans so that they are blowing into the case and mounted the filters/screens on the outside of the case for ease of cleaning when necessary.
The supplied fan with the cpu cooler created a dead short that prevented the unit from starting. I accidentally found that it was the fan causing a problem when disassembling everything. I still had power plugged in when I unplugged the cpu cooler fan and the board came to life.
Why does sunfounder need a video about the exhaust fans mounting screws being too short? I’m not the only one that has reported that problem. I am also not going to put that cpu fan back in to do a video about it either. Purposely creating a dead short is inviting disaster.
Finally have the Sabrent Rocket (non-4, non-Nano) working with the Pironman 5.
Apparently the first 4 attempts to update the Raspberry Pi 5 bootloader were not successful but the 5th was.
Writing an OS to it now.
Point 3, isn’t the Pironman4 SSD a SATA drive and not NVmE? The Pironman5 is NVmE and the SATA drive won’t work in it. Maybe that’s the issue, I’m guessing.
Point 4, when I assembled mine I had the same issue, but I backed off all the case screws a tad and the last acrylic panel went on OK, then I tightened all the screws back up.
SteveM, Point 4 - the acrylic panel was butted up hard against the power button panel and the screw holes were off a tad more than half a hole.
If I had loosened all the other screws and then tried to put screws in, they would be straight. But when all the other screws tightened there would be quite a bit of tension on the acrylic plate and the screws. I chose to alleviate that with material removal.
Raspberry Pi 4B uses a SATA SSD, Pi 5 uses an NVMe SSD.
(Although it is possible to use an NVMe set-up with Pi 4B, the connection is made thru
a USB plug which bottlenecks the data transfer back down to SATA speeds, so it is futile to try to do this)
The Pironman 4 is designed for SATA SSD’s accordingly.
The Pironman 5 case uses the NVMe system because the Pi 5 has a Pcle connector on it’s PCB, allowing the use of NVMe SSD’s.
I am also having problems assembling the Pironman 5 case.
Regarding point #1, my CPU cooler fins are too far over towards the GPIO pins that the I/O expander board will not even plug in because it’s pushed at such a hard angle. I tried it without acrylic plate E and it installs but the fins are pressed against the header pins so that’s not going to work.
I had the same issue with the fan screws. Interestingly, the assembly .PDF shows 3.5x10 screws but mine came with 3.5x8. I’m not sure if 2mm would be enough but the 3.5x8 ones are too short and unfortunately, I don’t have anything in my spares that will work.
I’m disappointed to have waited two weeks for an $80 case that I can’t even assemble.
What has SunFounder done to correct the issues you’ve found?
That is for them to answer.
I don’t know how many have the same problem with expander board interference, but it is more than one obviously.
As for the fan screws, it seems that there are quite a few. The 3.5X10 screws would work as the replacements I found are just a little bit longer than the X8.
1.Is the CPU heatsink too far from the GPIO pins, such that the I/O expansion board cannot be inserted because it is being pushed too tightly?
Could you please provide us with a video of the problem area? This would help us analyze which part is causing the issue or if there is a problem with a particular module that is preventing the assembly.
Having the video would make it easier for us to help diagnose the problem. If it is a hardware issue preventing the assembly, we can send you replacement hardware.
(If the video file is too large to send directly, you can upload it to OneDrive and share the link with us, granting us access to view the video. This will allow us to analyze the issue and provide a solution.)
2.The 3.5x8 screws are unable to securely mount the fan.
For future Pironman5 products, we will be changing the screws to 3.5x10 to better mount the fan.
If the current 3.5x8 screws are unable to properly secure the fan, please contact us at service@sunfounder.com request replacement 3.5x10 screws.
So I finally received the replacement screws for the ones I said are too short.
Those replacement screws are the same size. Once again too short.
Don’t send the same size if they are TOO SHORT.
And don’t bother sending any more. I’ve already put in some that are long enough.
Very sorry for the trouble this has caused with your assembly work.
The original product used M3.58 screws, but they were too short, which made it impossible to properly secure the fan.
The replacement screws we’ve sent you are M3.510, which should be the correct length for properly assembling and securing the fan. The packaging may still say M3.58, but the length should be different.