DIY Raspberry Pi 4 Desktop Case With OLED Stats Display

Today I’m going to be showing you how to make your own desktop case for a Raspberry Pi 4, which looks like a mini desktop pc.

The body of the case is 3D printed and it has clear acrylic sides so that you’re able to see into it. I’ve used an Ice Tower to cool the CPU, but have mounted the fan onto the side of the case rather than on the heatsink.

I’ve also included an OLED display on the front of the case which displays the Pi’s IP address and some stats like the CPU, storage and memory usage, and the CPU temperature.

You can now buy a pre-made kit for this Raspberry Pi 4 Desktop Case – Buy Here.

Here’s a video of the build and the case and display in operation:

What You Need To Make Your Own Raspberry Pi 4 Desktop Case

• Raspberry Pi 4 – Buy Here
  • Any Raspberry Pi 4 model is fine
• Micro SD Card – Buy Here
• Raspberry Pi Power Supply – Buy Here
• Ice Tower – Buy Here
• I2C OLED Display – Buy Here
• Ribbon Cable – Buy Here
• Female Pin Headers – Buy Here
• Machine Screws – Buy Here
• 2mm Acrylic – Buy Here
• Black PLA Filament – Buy Here

In addition to the above, you’ll also need to have access to a 3D printer to print the plastic portion of the case.

I use the Creality Ender 3 Pro which I’ve found to produce great quality prints and is quite affordable.

3D Printer – Creality Ender 3 Pro – Buy Here

You don’t need a laser cutter for this build, although it does help significantly with making the sides. You can also use an online laser cutting service or simply cut your own sides using hand tools. I’ve used a Desktop K40 laser cutter/engraver.

Laser Cutter – K40 – Buy Here

Note: The above parts are affiliate links. By purchasing products through the above links, you’ll be supporting this channel, with no additional cost to you.

Making The Raspberry Pi 4 Desktop Case

3D Printing The Body

I started out by designing the 3D printed body of the case in Tinkercad.

Note: This design is copyrighted and is available for your personal, non-commercial use only. It may not be reproduced for commercial gain or republished in any form.

I’ve also put together a pack with some additional case variations which is available through this link – Additional 3D Print Files. This pack includes:

• Case With SD Card Cutout
• Case With OLED Display On The Other Side (USB & Ethernet Ports On Back)
• Case With No OLED Display Cutout
• Additional Side Panel Design With Larger HDMI Cutout

I drew a rough outline of the case and then positioned the Raspberry Pi within the case so that the USB and Ethernet ports are available through the front and the Power, HDMI, and audio ports are accessed through the side panel.

The OLED display is positioned on the front of the case above the ports. The OLED display will be held in place with two small clips on the top edge and a screw with a plastic clip at the bottom, a design which I’ve used before on my Arduino based reaction timer.

The Pi is going to be mounted onto the brass standoffs which came with the Ice Tower, so I added some holes to accommodate the M2.5 threads.

I don’t remove the SD card on the back of the Pi very often, so I didn’t add a cut-out for it. If you do, then just add a circular cut-out to the case at the back so that you can still access it. It is going to be a bit of a chore to swap the SD card if you don’t have this cut-out as you’ll need to remove the Pi from the case to access it, I’m happy with doing this if I ever need to change the card.

I 3D printed the Raspberry Pi 4 Desktop Case using Black PLA with a 0.2mm layer height and 15% infill. I also added print supports for the cutouts for the display and ports on the front. You’ll probably need to add these as well, which is easy to do in your slicing software. You’ll also need to print the small plastic display clamp.

Install The Raspberry Pi & Ice Tower

Now that the main body of the case is complete, let’s mount the Raspberry Pi into it. Start by screwing the brass standoffs into the holes in the base.

The holes for the brass standoffs are intentionally quite tight the first time you screw them in. You’ll likely need to use a small wrench or spanner to get them screwed in, you can also use some needle nose pliers if you don’t have a suitable size wrench.

I’ve just changed the orientation of the screws and standoff mounts supplied with the Ice Tower so that they screw straight into the bottom of the case and don’t require and through holes. If you follow the Ice Tower installation manual, you’ll notice that the standoffs and screws are installed the opposite way around.

Next, we need to remove the fan from the Ice Tower so that we can attach it to the acrylic side panel. By moving the fan onto the side panel, we make sure that cool air is being drawn in from the outside of the case and then has to leave from the exhaust air vents on the opposite side.

Add the support brackets to the bottom of the Ice Tower heatsink as per the instructions. Make sure that you follow the correct orientation of these.

Update – As a few people have pointed out, it’s easier to install the OLED display and the screw to hold it in place before putting the Ice Tower in.

Place the Raspberry Pi into position and then use the second set of brass standoffs, screwed into the bottom set, to secure it.

Stick the heat sink pad onto the Pi’s CPU and peel off the top layer of protective film. Position the Ice Tower heat sink onto the heat pad on the CPU and then secure it with the four screws into the brass standoffs.

Install The OLED Display

Now we need to install the OLED display onto the front panel. If your display came without the pins soldered into place, solder them onto the back of the display.

Slide the top edge of the display in under the plastic clips and then gently push it down into position in the cut-out.

Use the 3d printed clamp to hold it in place with a small screw. You might need a flexible shaft or 90-degree screwdriver to tighten the screw.

Update – I’ve put together a detailed guide to connect and program the OLED display.

Don’t over-tighten the screw, the clamp just needs to gently hold the display in place. If you clamp it too tightly you might crack the glass on the display.

Now we need to prepare the wiring to the OLED display. You’ll need to make 4 connections to your GPIO pins, two for power and two for communication. I made up this short connector cable using some DuPont connectors and some ribbon cable. You can also use some female pin header strips or female breadboard jumpers to connect the display to the Pi.

Once your cable is made up, connect it to the back side of the display and then plug the leads into the GPIO pins as follows:

• GND to Pin14 Ground
• VCC to Pin1 3.3V Power
• SCL to Pin5 SCL (GPIO 3)
• SDA to Pin3 SDA (GPIO 2)

I’ve noticed that there are two versions of these OLED displays available and they have the power pins the opposite way around, one version has VCC and then GND and one GND and then VCC, so just make sure that you’re connecting power the correct way around for your display.

Make The Acrylic Sides

The internal parts of the case are now mostly done, so let’s make up the acrylic sides to close it up.

I started in Tinkercad again and positioned a block in the case roughly where the Ice Tower heat sink is going to be so that the holes for the fan are in the correct place on the side panels. I then exported the side profile of the case and heat sink to open up in Inkscape to draw the laser cutting profile.

We need two sides, one with the fan for the inlet and one with some holes in it for the exhaust air.

We can remove the inside edge profile as we only need the outline of the case and the screw holes. We need to add a hole for the fan and the four surrounding holes for the fan screws. We’ll also need to add cut-outs for the ports along the side of the Raspberry Pi.

Next, I created a mirror of the fan side to the exhaust side and drew a hexagon pattern for the exhaust airflow.

If you’re not going to be laser cutting the sides and you’re cutting them out by hand, then replace these hexagon holes with circular drilled holes (Ø8mm) in the same area.

Now let’s get the sides cut out. I used 2mm clear acrylic for the side panels.

You can use a colour tinted or opaque acrylic as well if you’d like. A lot of the coloured sheets are only available in 3mm. This won’t really matter, you’ll just have thicker edges.

To mount the fan onto the side panel, you’ll need to press some M3 nuts into the pockets by the screw holes. It’s easiest to place the nut on a flat surface and then press the fan hole over the nut to push it into place. These are tight so that you don’t need to use a spanner to hold them when you tighten the screws.

If you want to re-use the fan screws, they’ll be too short to fit through the acrylic and fan and then into the nuts, you’ll need to press the nuts into the front (acrylic side) of the fan. You’re relying on the friction between the nut and the fan to hold it in place, but it works fine in this case as there isn’t much load on them.

Screw the fan side panel onto the 3D printed case using four M3 x 8mm hex head machine screws.

The screws should be a bit tight as the inside of the holes aren’t threaded, most 3D printers can’t print such a fine thread.

Now plug the fan into the 5V supply on the Pi and then install the other side panel. The red wire to Pin 4 (5V) and the black wire to Pin 6 (Ground).

That’s it for the assembly, the Raspberry Pi 4 Desktop Case is now complete. We just need to get the OLED display working.

Programming The OLED Display

Update – I’ve put together a detailed guide to connect and program the OLED display.

To get the display working, we need to run a Python script. You’ll need to boot your Pi up to do this.

The Raspberry Pi communicates with the display using I2C communication, so you’ll also need to make sure that this is enabled in your preferences or do it through the command line by running:

sudo raspi-config

Then select Interfacing Options, then I2C, then select Yes and then reboot the Pi with the following command:

sudo reboot

You’ll also need to ensure that the python-smbus and i2c-tools libraries are both installed. They should be by default, but it’s worth checking, by running the following commands:

sudo apt-get install python-smbus
sudo apt-get install i2c-tools
sudo pip3 install Adafruit_BBIO

While you’re at this stage, it’s also worth checking that your Pi is able to see your display. You can display a list of devices connected to the I2C bus by entering the following command:

sudo i2cdetect -y 1

This should display an output similar to the below:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f
00: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
10: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
20: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
30: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 3c -- -- --
40: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
50: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
60: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
70: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

This indicates that a device has been detected and it’s address is 0x3c. If you don’t get anything showing up here then check your connections to your display and make sure that you’ve got I2C communication enabled on your Pi.

Don’t proceed with trying to program the display if you aren’t getting an address in this step. This means that the Pi isn’t able to see the display, and it won’t be able to display anything until it is.

Next, let’s have a look at the script and how to install it. This script is mostly based on one of the example scripts in the Adafruit Python Library for OLED display modules, with a few changes by Shakhizat Nurgaliyev to add the CPU temperature and change the format of the display.

# Copyright (c) 2017 Adafruit Industries
# Author: Tony DiCola & James DeVito
#
# Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
# of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
# in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
# to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
# copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
# furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
#
# The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
# all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
#
# THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
# IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
# FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
# AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
# LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
# OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
# THE SOFTWARE.
import time

import Adafruit_GPIO.SPI as SPI
import Adafruit_SSD1306

from PIL import Image
from PIL import ImageDraw
from PIL import ImageFont

import subprocess

# Raspberry Pi pin configuration:
RST = None     # on the PiOLED this pin isnt used
# Note the following are only used with SPI:
DC = 23
SPI_PORT = 0
SPI_DEVICE = 0

# Beaglebone Black pin configuration:
# RST = 'P9_12'
# Note the following are only used with SPI:
# DC = 'P9_15'
# SPI_PORT = 1
# SPI_DEVICE = 0

# 128x32 display with hardware I2C:
disp = Adafruit_SSD1306.SSD1306_128_32(rst=RST)

# 128x64 display with hardware I2C:
# disp = Adafruit_SSD1306.SSD1306_128_64(rst=RST)

# Note you can change the I2C address by passing an i2c_address parameter like:
# disp = Adafruit_SSD1306.SSD1306_128_64(rst=RST, i2c_address=0x3C)

# Alternatively you can specify an explicit I2C bus number, for example
# with the 128x32 display you would use:
# disp = Adafruit_SSD1306.SSD1306_128_32(rst=RST, i2c_bus=2)

# 128x32 display with hardware SPI:
# disp = Adafruit_SSD1306.SSD1306_128_32(rst=RST, dc=DC, spi=SPI.SpiDev(SPI_PORT, SPI_DEVICE, max_speed_hz=8000000))

# 128x64 display with hardware SPI:
# disp = Adafruit_SSD1306.SSD1306_128_64(rst=RST, dc=DC, spi=SPI.SpiDev(SPI_PORT, SPI_DEVICE, max_speed_hz=8000000))

# Alternatively you can specify a software SPI implementation by providing
# digital GPIO pin numbers for all the required display pins.  For example
# on a Raspberry Pi with the 128x32 display you might use:
# disp = Adafruit_SSD1306.SSD1306_128_32(rst=RST, dc=DC, sclk=18, din=25, cs=22)

# Initialize library.
disp.begin()

# Clear display.
disp.clear()
disp.display()

# Create blank image for drawing.
# Make sure to create image with mode '1' for 1-bit color.
width = disp.width
height = disp.height
image = Image.new('1', (width, height))

# Get drawing object to draw on image.
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(image)

# Draw a black filled box to clear the image.
draw.rectangle((0,0,width,height), outline=0, fill=0)

# Draw some shapes.
# First define some constants to allow easy resizing of shapes.
padding = -2
top = padding
bottom = height-padding
# Move left to right keeping track of the current x position for drawing shapes.
x = 0


# Load default font.
font = ImageFont.load_default()

# Alternatively load a TTF font.  Make sure the .ttf font file is in the same directory as the python script!
# Some other nice fonts to try: http://www.dafont.com/bitmap.php
# font = ImageFont.truetype('Minecraftia.ttf', 8)

while True:

    # Draw a black filled box to clear the image.
    draw.rectangle((0,0,width,height), outline=0, fill=0)

    # Shell scripts for system monitoring from here : https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/119126/command-to-display-memory-usage-disk-usage-and-cpu-load
    cmd = "hostname -I |cut -f 2 -d ' '"
    IP = subprocess.check_output(cmd, shell = True )
    cmd = "top -bn1 | grep load | awk '{printf \"CPU Load: %.2f\", $(NF-2)}'"
    CPU = subprocess.check_output(cmd, shell = True )
    cmd = "free -m | awk 'NR==2{printf \"Mem: %s/%sMB %.2f%%\", $3,$2,$3*100/$2 }'"
    MemUsage = subprocess.check_output(cmd, shell = True )
    cmd = "df -h | awk '$NF==\"/\"{printf \"Disk: %d/%dGB %s\", $3,$2,$5}'"
    Disk = subprocess.check_output(cmd, shell = True )
    cmd = "vcgencmd measure_temp |cut -f 2 -d '='"
    temp = subprocess.check_output(cmd, shell = True )

    # Write two lines of text.

    draw.text((x, top), "IP: " + str(IP,'utf-8'), font=font, fill=255)
    draw.text((x, top+8), str(CPU,'utf-8') + " " + str(temp,'utf-8') , font=font, fill=255)
    draw.text((x, top+16), str(MemUsage,'utf-8'), font=font, fill=255)
    draw.text((x, top+25), str(Disk,'utf-8'), font=font, fill=255)

    # Display image.
    disp.image(image)
    disp.display()
    time.sleep(.1)

You’ll need to download the original Adafruit example library from Github to get the setup complete by using these commands in your terminal:

sudo python -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel
git clone https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_Python_SSD1306.git

Open a new terminal window, then navigate to the library’s directory:

cd Adafruit_Python_SSD1306

Install the library for Python 3:

sudo python3 setup.py install

You can then run the above stats.py file or the example stats.py file in the Adafruit directory, you’ll just get a slightly different display layout with the Adafruit example.

Change to the directory containing the stats.py script:

cd examples

Execute the script:

python3 stats.py

You can test run the script to check that your display is working correctly and you don’t get any errors before setting it to run automatically.

To set the script to run automatically, you’ll need to find the script’s directory, then open crontab and add a line to run the script:

@reboot python3 /home/pi/stats.py &

You’ll obviously need to change the directory /home/pi/ to reflect the directory where you have your script saved.

Don’t forget to add the & at the end, this tells the Pi to continue starting up and run the script in the background.

Reboot the Pi to automatically run the script and you should then see the stats shown on the OLED display when it starts up.

I’ve also made an Ice Edition of this case using white PLA for the case and a blue-tinted acrylic for the side panels. This Ice Edition Kit is available through my Etsy store.

Let me know if you like this Raspberry Pi 4 Desktop Case or what you’d do differently in the comments section.

Edit – Alternate Font Option for the OLED Display

Thanks for Richard Jelbert for finding an alternate font which looks much clearer than the default one.

To get this font to work, you’ll need to:

• Change the display size setting from 128 x 32 to 128 x 64. To do this you just need to comment out the 128 x 32 line and uncomment the 128 x 64 line a little below it:

# 128x32 display with hardware I2C:
disp = Adafruit_SSD1306.SSD1306_128_32(rst=RST)

# 128x64 display with hardware I2C:
# disp = Adafruit_SSD1306.SSD1306_128_64(rst=RST)

• Download the font PixelOperator.ttf from https://www.dafont.com/pixel-operator.font and then place it into the script directory. You’ll then need to edit the below code by commenting out the initial font = Image… line and uncommenting the last line, changing ‘Minecraftia.ttf’ to your font and selecting a suitable font size. Richard has used font size 16.

# Load default font.
font = ImageFont.load_default()

# Alternatively load a TTF font.  Make sure the .ttf font file is in the same directory as the python script!
# Some other nice fonts to try: http://www.dafont.com/bitmap.php
# font = ImageFont.truetype('Minecraftia.ttf', 8)

Re-load the script and you should then get a much clearer text readout on your display.

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