HighPi RPi Case - RPi2/3 and HiFiBerry

1) Perfectly sized for a Raspberry Pi B 3 and HiFiBerry's DAC + Pro.2) Included Nylon standoffs, nuts, and bolts keep the 2 boards from mashing each other and there are even little feet included.3) Photos show size and what it looks like connected. Also note that this is an opaque black box. As such, your Pi's LEDs will not show except when you glimpse through the box's openings.4) It appears that the two knockouts on the side should accommodate the RCA outputs of most DAC cards.5) For my purposes (streaming music, I think the open plastic box design will be fine though if I was trying to stream video/run a Kodi instance, etc, I might prefer an aluminum box to help dissipate the heat.NOTE: This item is ONLY the box, nylon nuts, bolts, and standoffs, and the little rubber feet. No cables or boards are included.

I use these cases when building RasPi-based ham radio projects. The case makes it easy for me to pop in a Pi and get to work. I don't actually use it for the HiFiBerry as designed, though. I use the extra space and the pop-out panels to mount RJ45 jacks and a USB sound card to make packet gateways.The build quality and materials are stupendous, and I love the design. It has the single tab on the bottom holding the Pi in, and there's a button-like release on the back to pop off the lid. I've purchased a couple more of these for future projects.

This was a very cheap plastic case. If you have an add-on card for your Raspberry Pi that has nuts to hold the standoffs under the Pi board the nuts cause enough of a clearance issue that the Pi board won't fully snap into the case. I had to leave the nuts that secure my HiFiBerry board to the Rasberry Pi off to make this fit. It works however it's not ideal as any type of jolt could cause the board to fall out of the case. The case also makes it so the power cord doesn't fully insert into the board and it's very easy for it to fall out.

I got this to go with a third party DAC addon rather than the actual HiFiBerry. One annoyance that is mostly the third party's DAC's fault is that the DAC has a little part for an extra screw to go into on the top of the RCA connectors, however, it's surprisingly common for whatever reason. As such, the fact that they didn't do like many of the ones made for these and have a small hole on top for these to go through seems a little unreasonable given that this isn't a first party official case. In fact, the third party DAC didn't really fit at all and I had to trim a fair bit. It even needed a bit of trimming for the 3.5mm connector. I don't entirely blame them for this as they can't be expected to support absolutely everything, but overall the third party DAC isn't really that different and simply put it's just too specifically designed for only one thing in a market with many very very similar things where just a few millimeters difference here and there would make it work the same across the board more or less. I want to note here that "third party" isn't exactly accurate. The HiFiBerry isn't made by the official Raspberry Pi people. It's already third party. Thus it's really just choosing to support one third party that is more established over others that are less established where the only difference is whether or not a little bit sticks up.Another irritant is that it didn't come with any sort of spacers to go from the RPi itself to the DAC and hold the DAC steady. This much can't be blamed on the third party DAC. I presume they meant for the RCA connectors to fit so tightly that it wouldn't move around, but I'm not entirely convinced that even a first party official HiFiBerry would fit quite this tightly. I don't like that it would move around every time a RCA or 3.5mm TRS is connected or disconnected potentially wearing out the pins over time. Ironically this is something where having the third party DAC that didn't quite fit right came in handy. I trimmed only the minimum to get the screw part of the RCA connectors to fit in the top and then actually put a screw through it. Now when it starts to move up the screw presses against the case and the DAC barely shifts around at all when connecting or disconnecting anything. Still, the picture shows plastic spacers being used and it just seems silly that they aren't actually included.Also, another irritant is for some weird reason they did NOT line up the screw holes on the bottom with the RPi itself. Now, I presume the idea for these is really not to screw through the RPi itself but just to be able to screw it down into something if you wanted. There is definitely sufficient room under the board to fit screws through without shorting the board, so this would make sense. Still, why NOT line them up? Then if someone needed to run something all the way through the option would be there. I just don't see any reason not to simply have the option just in case anyone needs it when there's no real difference otherwise whether it lines up or not. I know this is somewhat nitpicking, but this could potentially be troublesome if someone really needed to do that such as if they had their own screws to act as spacers for the DAC and couldn't fit them without drilling holes just to do it.Of note, the third party DACs also tend to have a Pi Hat compatible IR receiver on them. This case absolutely does not accommodate this at all. Well, I went ahead and drilled a hole, but I haven't really tested how well this works as I'm not really using the receiver at this time. For now it's just an extra ventilation hole I guess. I do think they could easily enough have had a hole reasonably placed, but once again they don't really support anything but the official HiFiBerry clearly.Still, despite all this, it works pretty well. Just be warned that if you have a third party DAC you'll have to cut a hole in the top for that part sticking out on almost all of them.

Very simple to use - all clips together and the Raspberry Pi just clips into the case - no screws needed. There is just enough room to put a small expansion PCB inside the case as well.

Update: I decided not to return the case but decided to modify it to see if it would work better. I cut the bottom out around the for the bottom heat sync and on the side, where the release tab is, I removed it and put in a 24mm fan. I was able to use the dip connector on top of my audio had and connect the power and ground pin. The cover actually still fit with these two pin in use. Now the unit is running about 20F cooler.I order this for a KODI installation and while a digital hat does fit, there is not enough cooling to keep the system running. The system keeps rebooting in the case. The cooling vents on the bottom are offset from the bottom chip so if you have a heat sink on the bottom, you have to cut away the case, not just the vent opening, to fit the heat sink. With the top on the system works until you need the system to do work then it heats up so much that the system reboots. It would have been nice to have larger vents on the bottom and a vent on the top for a fan.

I have tried a few different Pi cases, and this one is the best I have found for purposes of quality, ease of assembly, and ease of operation. Unless you want something that lets you view the blinky lights, this is the one to use.