When I put the Pis into their cases I failed to take into account the heat the bottom mounted NVMe drives would generate or that the case would trap that heat to the point the Pi would go into thermal shutdown.
There are lots of vents on the sides of the case so I thought if I tipped it a bit natural convection would let the heat escape. That worked , but I wasn’t comfortable with the NVMe temps, they were still a bit high. I found some 40mm USB fans that came in pairs per USB. I ordered 2 pair and glued them to my Pi plate to add additional cooling.
Unfortunately one of the fans did not take kindly to being glued down and would occasionally start to squeal. Ungluing it helped but did not eliminate the squeal. I also found that sharing a fan between Pis made for lots of cable clutter.
My solution was to go with a pair of fans per Pi. Using a few zip ties I was able to make a neater cable bundle. With a fan as a backstop and the USB plug tailored to length it is now easy to have each Pi plug and play on the Pi plate.
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