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I have the following:

I've had this running for over a year now and right from the start, I had noted that playing some Retro Pie games or watching content via Kodi causes the Pi to heat up a bit too much, even with the heat sinks installed and the lid off. And when this happens, the processor gets throttled and things slow down. Usually, this only happens over the summer. The ambient temperature seems to make the difference. The Pi is open to the air. I had tried putting it in a cabinet where I had installed a cabinet fan, but it was worse in there (too many electronics).

I bought this fan, in the hopes of addressing overheating:

But when I went to install it, I discovered there's nowhere to mount it, nor does there appear to be a place to connect it to the gpio, given the breakout breadboard kit.

I emailed CanaKit to ask about a compatible fan and/or case that has a fan mount and their only response was that the rPi 3 doesn't need a cooling fan... (despite the fact that I have a temp log showing that's not true).

Do I just need to get a newer Pi model or is there a fan (optionally with a supported case) that can be installed given this setup?

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    how much approximately it is the high temperature? The processor. I have a Raspberry Pi 3B that after turning on, it reaches the highest temperature (I can't even touch the processor chip!).
    – Mohi Rostami
    Commented Jan 23, 2020 at 23:56
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    Well, I’ve been sampling the temp and saving it in a log once a minute since June and there have been 1887 instances where the temp was over 70F. Max was 83.3F. I don’t think it’s overheating when I’m not either running Retro Pie or Kodi. It’s only after I’ve been running either of those for a little while when the temp warning icon shows up in the top right corner of the screen. And it will get noticeably slower when that goes on for a little while.
    – hepcat72
    Commented Jan 24, 2020 at 0:21

2 Answers 2

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There is a lot of Raspberry Pi 3 B cases but you want a case in which you mount Pi-Fan to that. In this case, open up this link:
TOPmountain Raspberry Pi Case Abs Protective Shell Case for Raspberry Pi 3 with Fan Hole(Black)

This case has a fan hole. To configure the Raspberry Pi for automatically turning on the Fan, follow this link:
Automatically Control Your Raspberry Pi Fan (and Temperature) with Python
It shows you how you can mount the Fan on GPIO pinout and configure the pi by some python scripts.

But when I went to install it, I discovered there's nowhere to mount it, nor does there appear to be a place to connect it to the gpio, given the breakout breadboard kit.

Watch these videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6s_7UaOSKA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJn44OjGJ_w

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    Excellent! Any rips on how to connect the fan when I have the breakout connector on top of all the GPIO pins?
    – hepcat72
    Commented Jan 29, 2020 at 12:46
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    @hepcat72 The answer just updated.
    – Mohi Rostami
    Commented Jan 29, 2020 at 13:06
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    OK, so I would have the fan wires coming out of the enclosure and connected to the breadboard. I of course can do that. I guess I was wondering if there was a way to keep it all contained in the enclosure. I didn’t think it was possible, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask. Thanks for your answer. I don’t know how you found that case. I searched and searched.
    – hepcat72
    Commented Jan 29, 2020 at 13:17
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    @hepcat72 Alright. My pleasure. I just open the amazon website and searched raspberry pi 3 case with fan hole. You can see more cases there. Link this one: amazon.com/TOPmountain-Raspberry-Protective-Shell-Transparent/…
    – Mohi Rostami
    Commented Jan 29, 2020 at 13:21
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    I just re-performed your search. The first instance of a case is way down in the results. I guess I just didn’t go through enough pages before. I figured if it wasn’t in the first few pages, they didn’t have one.
    – hepcat72
    Commented Jan 29, 2020 at 13:35
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I should point out that while M. Rostami's answer will likely work if you haven't installed the heat sinks on your Raspberry Pi 3 B, with the heat sinks, I suspect it will not work. The second layer of plastic case in the case does not have a cutout to let the heat sink grill go through. And while you can likely cut the necessary holes, you may have trouble doing so given the slots in that plastic.

Also, the mount for the fan is on the lid and with a breakout connector, the wires to control the fan would have to come out of the case and be connected to the breadboard in any case. So I decided to simply drill holes for the screws for the fan in the lid of the case that came with my Pi, since there is not case that could be found that prevents the need for modification and for the wires to be connected to the breadboard.

I'm leaving M. Rostami's answer as selected, but I just wanted to make these things clear in a supplementary answer.

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