Having trouble with your Raspberry Pi Case Fan? We've added some common fixes below:
Always Update First
It's always recommended to update your Raspberry Pi to ensure you're running the latest software, as the fan software changes were only recently introduced. In a terminal window, run the following commands:
sudo apt-get up update
sudo apt full-upgrade
Have you checked the fan options?
A recent update to Raspberry Pi OS included changes to introduce new Case Fan options on the Raspberry Pi Configuration tool. These allow you to easily make setting changes to the case fan including the GPIO pin used, fan threshold temperature and enable/disable options
Update your Raspberry Pi (see instructions above) to make sure you have this installed:
Not using Raspberry Pi OS?
Please also ensure you're running Raspberry Pi OS - the official case is only officially supported by Raspberry Pi OS and may not function properly on other operating systems.
Fan always running at full speed (Incorrect config file)
This can be caused by an error in the Raspberry Pi config file (first spotted here) which is fixed in recent versions/updates on Raspberry Pi OS.
If you want to check this, open a terminal window and enter sudo nano /boot/config.txt to open the file.
In that file you will find a line like this:
dtoverlay=gpio-fan,gpio_pin=14,temp=80000
The line above is actually incorrect. The part with "gpio_pin" should be "gpiopin" without the underscore. Below is the correct version:
dtoverlay=gpio-fan,gpiopin=14,temp=80000