Argon One case doesn't power RaspberryPi

Question

So I have just unwrapped and installed my new Argon One case that I bought from a retailer over the internet. Everything went smooth... except it doesn't work. It just doesn't start up. When I press the power button, the red LED shortly blinks, but then everything is black again and the LED's don't light up anymore. I'm assuming that the case has trouble with the power supply as the fan also stays silent.

When I deconstruct it and power it via its own USB-C then it still works fine. My guess is that my GPIO pins must have been fried, because as I'm seeing it the case supplies power to the Pi via the 5V pin and prevents access to the Pi's own USB-C port. However, I never ever put anything even near the Pins, so i'm really confused.

Any guesses?

Answer 1

I've read the Argon One case is power hungry itself so an extra beefy psu is required. I run mine off either a repurposed computer psu or the one in my caravan runs via this 12v to 5v convertor Everpert Car Power Converter

Answer 2

I ran for pretty much five days straight with a CanaKit 3.5A PS. Not really overclocked or anything, but lots of streaming.

For the point of telling anyone who's looking for the answer, I was also running a HiFiBerry DAC+ (audio card) HAT with it, and the scripts for powering and the fan didn't conflict. I was worried about GPIO pin conflicts. I was really please about it.

Lastly, in my (brief) experience, unless you are really stressing the system the fan won't turn on. The case itself does a pretty good job of passively cooling.

Answer 3

I think we're running low on power. I recommend this. https://www.argon40.com/argon-one-power-supply-for-raspberry-pi-4.html It's also available on Amazon.