The Raspberry Pi 4 and the latest Raspberry Pi 400 share the same Broadcom BCM2711 processor with four Cortex-A72 cores. However, the Pi 4 is clocked at 1.5 GHz and the Pi 400 can go up to 1.8 GHz. Therefore, it is clear that the onboard processor here can run at a higher clock speed. But due to heat management on the smaller board, the Pi Foundation limited the clock speed. So if you have a heatsink and cooler, you can overclock the Raspberry Pi 4 to 2GHz and improve performance significantly. In this note, let’s learn how to overclock Raspberry Pi 4.
Raspberry Pi 4 (2022) Overclocking Guide
In this guide, we showed you the steps to overclock Raspberry Pi 4 from 1.5GHz to 2GHz on both Raspberry Pi OS and Windows 11/10. We’ve also included a few things to keep in mind before overclocking the CPU on your Raspberry. Pi 4 board. You can expand the table below and switch to the section you want.
Important Points to Remember Before Overclocking Raspberry Pi 4
Before moving on to the steps to overclock the Raspberry Pi 4, it is recommended to install a heatsink and a heatsink on your Raspberry Pi. As I overclock the CPU it gets hot and I mean, it gets really hot. In some cases, it can touch temperatures of up to 70 degrees Celsius, which is not good for the computer board.
On top of that, using an overclocked motherboard without a heatsink is counterproductive. As the temperature rises, CPU throttles and you experience freezing issues. Performance, in fact, will be worse than the motherboard with a base clock of 1.5 GHz. So yes, if you want to use an overclocked Raspberry Pi 4 for longer and a performance boost, be sure to get a heatsink and a heatsink.
Be careful, the two methods described below are safe and will work as intended if you have a cooler and a cooler. We will not be responsible for any damage to your Raspberry Pi due to overclocking.
How to Overclock Raspberry Pi 4 to 2GHz Using Raspberry Pi OS
I assume you have set up your Raspberry Pi 4 with Raspberry Pi OS. If you haven’t already, check out our tutorial on how to set up the Raspberry Pi without a monitor or Ethernet cable. After that, follow the steps below:
1. First open Terminal and run the following command. update all packages and dependencies.
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
2. Next, run the following command upgrade distribution to the latest version. This process will take quite some time, so be patient.
sudo apt dist-upgrade
3. After doing this, we need to update Raspberry Pi firmware To the latest version so that we can overclock the Raspberry Pi 4. “rpi update is already the newest version”, it is good that you go. In case it updates the firmware, you need to reboot your Raspberry Pi by typing the command – sudo reboot.
sudo apt install rpi-update
4. Once you reboot your Raspberry Pi 4, it’s time to overclock it from 1.5GHz to 2GHz. Open terminal and run the following command. It will allow us to change. config file Via the GUI Geany editor.
sudo geany /boot/config.txt
5. A Geany window will now open. Here, scroll down and search #arm_freq=800. We need to change this line. First, remove # from the line to activate the command. Later on, change arm-freq 800 with 2000.
This is the step that will increase the clock speed of your Raspberry Pi 4 motherboard to 2GHz. You also need to add a line to increase the voltage I have shown below. Basically, the config file should look like this.
over_voltage=6 arm_freq=2000
6. If you want overclock the GPU also add the following line to the config file. Now save the file and close the Geany editor.
over_voltage=6 arm_freq=2000 gpu_freq=750
7. Restart your Raspberry Pi and it should start this time with the overclocked CPU and GPU. To test the numbers, open two instances of Terminal and run the commands below. Each of the terminal windows. One will let you monitor the CPU clock speed in real time and the other will show the current temperature.
note: If your Raspberry Pi won’t turn on after overclocking, follow our fix in the next section below.
- Monitor CPU Clock Speed
watch -n1 vcgencmd measure_clock arm
- Measure the temperature
watch -n1 vcgencmd measure_temp
8. Now that we have our monitoring system set up, let’s run sysbench To see if the Raspberry Pi 4 can reach the 2GHz clock speed. For this, you need to install sysbench on your Raspberry Pi by following the command below. Press “y” to allow installation.
sudo apt install sysbench
9. Next, execute the following command to run the sysbench test. When you run this command, you will notice that the CPU clock speed has increased. Touched 2GHz. In my case, I did not install a heatsink and heatsink for demo purposes. And well, you can see temperature hovers around 68 degrees Celsius, which is not normal in this case. However, if you want to use the overclocked card for longer, we strongly recommend you to install a heatsink and heatsink on your Raspberry Pi 4.
sysbench --num-threads=8 --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run
10. To give you some numbers, the base clocked Raspberry Pi 4 (1.5GHz) took about 15 seconds to complete the sysbench test. The overclocked 2GHz Raspberry Pi 4 took just 10 seconds. You will also find a huge difference in performance when exporting videos and playing videos in the browser thanks to the overclocked GPU.
11. If you want disable overclocked CPU and GPU on Raspberry Pi, run the below command again to open the Config file.
sudo geany /boot/config.txt
12. Go to the section where you changed the values earlier. Here, Add # to all newlines and save the file. This will disable the commands and your Raspberry Pi will load with the default clock speed after reboot.
Raspberry Pi 4 Won’t Turn On After Overclocking? Here’s the Fix!
If Raspberry Pi 4 won’t boot after overclocking CPU and GPU, i need pc to undo the changes in the config file. Here’s how you can do that.
1. First remove the SD card from the card and insert it into your Mac or Windows PC. Open the SD card on your PC (called “boot” in File Explorer) and config.txt file. It will be in the root directory itself.
2. Open the file using Notepad and Add # to all modified commands and save the file. Now, insert the SD card into the board and your Raspberry Pi 4 will boot with the default clock speed (1.5GHz) this time. You can then follow the steps in the section above to try to overclock the card again. Or you can use your Windows computer as detailed in the next section.
Raspberry Pi 4 Running Windows 11/10 – 2.1GHz Overclock
1. We assume you have already followed our detailed guide on how to install Windows 11/10 on Raspberry Pi. If not, you can use the linked guide to install Windows on ARM on Raspberry Pi.
2. Next, Boot partition mount utility from the link here. It will allow you to access the configuration file. You can do this on Windows on Raspberry itself or on a separate PC. You will need to insert the SD card to make the changes.
3. Now open the file and open the folder. here, open WoR-Boot-Mounter.
4. Then select the SD card where you installed Windows on Raspberry and click “Assembly“.
5. Then, “view content“.
6. Here, “config.txt” file. Open it using Notepad.
7. Now, add the following lines according to your cooling system. I recommend stable overclocking if you have a good cooling system. If you don’t have a cooling system, none of these changes will even allow the Raspberry Pi to boot.
- Stable Overclocking
over_voltage=6
arm_freq=2147
gpu_freq=700
- Medium Overclocking
arm_freq=2300
gpu_freq=750
gpu_mem=32
over_voltage=14
force_turbo=1
- Extreme Overclocking (Freezing issues and can be dangerous)
initial_turbo=60
over_voltage=15
arm_freq_min=100
arm_freq=2350
gpu_freq=800
gpu_mem=512
8. After adding the commands, the configuration file will look like below. Now, save config file and restart your Raspberry Pi.
9. You will now see that your Raspberry Pi is overclocked. 2.1GHz if you chose stable overclocking.
Overclock Raspberry Pi 4 and Boost Performance
So you can increase the performance of your Raspberry Pi 4 by overclocking the CPU and GPU. As we mentioned above, the Raspberry Pi 4 handles overclocking pretty well as the ARM Cortex-A72 is a pretty capable core. However, if you intend to use the card for longer periods of time without any thermal throttling issues, you need a heatsink and a heatsink. Anyway, that’s it for us. If you want to create an audio streaming device with Raspberry Pi, follow our linked guide. And if you have any questions, let us know in the comment section below.
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