Sorry you’re dumb. All you need for retropie is a RP4 and a SD card. The image burns directly to the SD card, insert, power on, play games.
But the problem is, I can’t get the fan to work. So the whole thing overheats until I fix that problem.
How are you unable to get a 5v fan to not work? just plug it into the 5v and ground on the GPIO ports.