Raspberry Pi 5 review: A huge upgrade for the tiny single-board computer

The Raspberry Pi dominated the maker scene for a decade. Supply chain issues then introduced the excessive flying to an finish. With the Raspberry Pi 5, the Raspberry Pi Foundation is now making an attempt to interrupt free.

The new Raspberry Pi 5 mannequin is 2 to a few instances sooner than its predecessors. This article summarizes how the mini pc has confirmed itself within the first two months and what its downsides are.

In the logic of earlier Raspberry Pi fashions, this text offers with the “5B” mannequin. As there are presently no different fashions of the Pi 5, I can’t use this actual mannequin designation beneath.

What’s new?

Externally, the Raspberry Pi 5 seems like its predecessors. The dimension of the board is unchanged, as is the 40-pin GPIO strip. The USB ports and the community socket have been swapped in comparison with mannequin 4B. However, the primary visible impression is misleading. In actuality, there are elementary improvements.

The most necessary is the brand new BCM 2712 SoC (System-on-a-Chip), whose 4 Cortex-A76 cores are clocked at 2.4GHz. Depending on the applying, the Broadcom chip is 2 to a few instances as quick as its predecessors. This is a gigantic improve in efficiency, but in addition comes at the price of increased energy consumption and a warmth drawback.

In distinction to earlier fashions, the 3.5mm socket for audio cables has been eliminated — as is now commonplace on most smartphones. This is especially regrettable when utilizing the Raspberry Pi as an audio participant or web radio.

There is a brand new PCIe connector for this objective. However, you can not merely join an SSD there: In the close to future, there can be plugin boards (HATs, {hardware} hooked up on prime) that can can help you join a PCIe SSD to the Raspberry Pi. The producers Pineberry and Pimoroni have already offered such HATs and are anticipated to ship them from the start of 2024.

Further studying: These 8 Raspberry Pi attachments radically expand its powers

The connections for the digital camera and mini shows have modified. Earlier fashions had two CSI (digital camera serial interface) connections for ribbon cables, with one connection for the digital camera and the second for an exterior show. The Raspberry Pi 5, however, has two smaller FPC (versatile printed circuit) connections that can be utilized universally: It is subsequently additionally potential to attach two cameras or two shows.

However, if you have already got a digital camera module, you have to a brand new connection cable (approx. $2). You ought to order it along with the Raspberry Pi 5.

A brand new characteristic is a Real Time Clock (RTC), which could be equipped with an exterior battery by way of a tiny connector. The RTC is especially necessary in case you are engaged on a venture the place the Raspberry has no web connection. In this case, the RTC and battery be sure that the set time just isn’t misplaced even within the occasion of reboots or an influence failure.

One of essentially the most inconspicuous new options is a tiny on/off button that you should use to change the machine on and off. To stop incorrect operation, it’s important to press the button for a number of seconds to change it off.

This button has confirmed to be extraordinarily sensible in my on a regular basis work. Previously, you needed to disconnect and reconnect the USB-C cable after a shutdown to restart the board. Now a fast press of the button is sufficient. This just isn’t solely extra handy, but in addition extends the service lifetime of the USB-C socket.

The Raspberry Pi 5 is presently obtainable with 4GB or 8GB of RAM. Markings on the circuit board counsel that cheaper variations with 1- and 2GB are additionally deliberate.

New I/O controller RP1

In addition to the SoC, there’s a second chip on the Raspberry Pi 5 board: The new RP1 I/O controller developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation takes care of controlling the SD card slot, the USB interfaces, exterior MIPI digital camera and shows, the Gigabit Ethernet connection, and the GPIOs (together with 6× UART, 7× I2C, 3× I2S, 2× PWM).

From the person’s standpoint, the RP1 chip is primarily noticeable via increased I/O speeds, for instance when utilizing a number of USB units in parallel. The switch velocity of recent SD playing cards (SDR104 commonplace) has doubled.

However, the RP1 chip additionally has an obstacle: Older libraries for low-level management of GPIOs not work. This impacts the RPi.GPIO module for Python programming, amongst others. Although numerous alternate options have been obtainable for years (gpiozero, lgpio, gpiod, rpi.lgpio), the RPi.GPIO module was utilized in many Python scripts. These scripts should now be tailored to a brand new module that’s suitable with the RP1 chip.

The energy provide

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As far as the ability provide is anxious, there may be excellent news and unhealthy information. On the one hand, it’s excellent news that the Raspberry Pi 5 can provide exterior units with a comparatively great amount of energy by way of USB. On the opposite hand, this perform and the considerably sooner SoC require way more energy than older fashions.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation recommends utilizing the official 27-watt energy provide unit. As lengthy as no USB units are linked, a weaker energy provide unit can be adequate. The decrease restrict is 15 watts. In reality, the Raspberry Pi wants far much less energy more often than not:

• Idle approx. 2-3W
• Full load approx. 7W

These figures apply with out exterior {hardware} (however with energetic WLAN) and are solely barely increased than for the predecessor Pi 4. Nevertheless, Model 5 is just happy with the unique energy provide in steady operation. With different energy provide items from my pool (12-watt cell phone energy provide unit, 20-watt energy provide unit for an exterior monitor), the desktop displayed a warning that exterior (USB) units couldn’t be equipped with adequate energy. Crashes even occurred when utilizing the 12-watt energy provide unit.

But that’s not all: issues may even happen with highly effective USB-C energy provide items! The USB commonplace permits completely different voltages for the ability provide. For low energy, 5 volts is widespread. (5V × 3A leads to 15 watts of energy.) However, many energy provide items additionally help different voltages corresponding to 9, 12, 15 and 20 volts (for instance, 12V × 3A leads to an influence of 36W.)

The USB commonplace specifies how the ability provide and the machine agree on a voltage. However, the issue is that the Raspberry Pi 5 solely accepts a voltage of 5V. In order for the mini pc to be equipped with 25 watts, the ability provide unit should ship 5V at 5A. Many energy provide items keep away from such excessive currents and solely present extra energy together with a better voltage. As a consequence, it’s possible you’ll obtain a warning for an influence provide unit that’s too weak, despite the fact that you might be utilizing a 30-watt energy provide unit.

As you may see: The Raspberry Pi 5 is kind of delicate on the subject of energy provide. The most secure factor to do is to at all times order the official energy provide when buying.

Benchmarks, cooling, overclocking

After beginning the Raspberry Pi 5, it solely takes round 20 seconds for the desktop to be absolutely arrange. By comparability, the earlier mannequin takes round 37 seconds.

The minicomputer additionally feels a lot sooner on the subject of interactive operation. You in all probability want onerous info. That’s why we ran the Geekbench benchmark on the Pi 5 and its predecessor, the Pi 400. The outcomes could be discovered within the mini desk “Geekbench benchmarks” and make sure the subjective impression.

Without cooling, the Pi 5 heats as much as 85 levels underneath load after which reduces the clock frequency to 1.5GHz. For this purpose, the heatsink and fan typically provided as a set is advisable. Under Raspberry Pi OS there’s a dynamic fan management. The fan then usually stays silent (even throughout updates). The fan solely begins up step by step if the CPU is underneath heavy load for an extended time period.

However, this fan management doesn’t but work in all distributions: Under Ubuntu 23.10, the fan runs repeatedly at most velocity after which makes fairly annoying noise.

Is a cooler completely obligatory? If you employ the Raspberry Pi in a housing, completely! Without a housing, the Raspberry Pi does get fairly sizzling, but it surely mechanically slows down earlier than the temperature turns into essential.

If you wish to get the utmost out of the Pi 5 regardless of its spectacular efficiency, you may experiment with overclocking. To do that, change just a few strains within the “/boot/config.txt” file after which restart the machine:

# Spannung erhöhen / Standard=0) 
over_voltage_delta=50000
# CPU-Frequenz / Standard=2400) 
arm_freq=2800
# GPU-Frequenz / Standard=800) 
gpu_freq=900

If all the pieces runs stably, you can also make the subsequent try. Naturally, overclocking solely is sensible together with a fan. According to weblog experiences, CPU clock frequencies of as much as 3.1GHz could be achieved. However, this additionally will increase energy consumption and warmth dissipation and reduces the service lifetime of the system. There are numerous websites on the web that deal extensively with benchmarks and overclocking:

For some server functions, I/O velocity is sort of extra necessary than CPU efficiency. A benchmark script from Github proves that the Pi 5 is superior to its predecessors right here too, however the variations should not dramatic. If you want considerably extra I/O efficiency, you have to to attach an SSD by way of USB or quickly by way of a PCIe HAT.

New Raspberry Pi OS

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With Model 5, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has additionally launched an up to date model of the Raspberry Pi OS distribution. Although the desktop seems unchanged visually and by way of operation, main adjustments have been made behind the scenes: Raspberry-Pi-OS now makes use of Debian 12 “Bookworm” as its base.

The 64-bit model is formally advisable for the primary time. Even the kernel is kind of up-to-date with model 6.1. Wayland is used as the usual graphics system. The Pixel desktop continues to be primarily based on LXDE elements, however makes use of the brand new Wayland-compatible Wayfire compositor.

The audio system makes use of Pipewire and the community configuration is dealt with by the Network Manager. This implies that the software program elements are virtually as trendy as these of Ubuntu or Fedora.

Wayland is disadvantageous should you function the Raspberry Pi by way of distant upkeep. The Real VNC software, which was standard prior to now, just isn’t but Wayland-compatible.

There are two options: You can set the “VNC” possibility within the “Interfaces” dialogue within the “Raspberry Pi configuration” program. This prompts wayvnc, a brand new and Wayland-compatible VNC server. It is finest to make use of the free Tiger VNC as a consumer underneath Linux, Windows, or Mac OS. Alternatively, you may reactivate the traditional X11 with raspiconfig underneath “Advanced Options.” Real VNC will then work once more.

The set up of Raspberry Pi OS has not modified: You load the Raspberry Pi Imager from www.raspberrypi.com/software/ and use it to pick the specified working system and SD card. In the second step, you may perform a preliminary configuration. After beginning Raspberry Pi OS for the primary time, you can also make additional settings within the “Raspberry Pi Configuration” program and perform an preliminary replace. All in all, organising a Raspberry Pi is now actually little one’s play.

The Raspberry Pi 5 truly gives preferrred circumstances for a self-built NAS information server. However, software program issues nonetheless stood in the best way on the finish of 2023: The present model 6 of the favored open supply NAS program Open Media Vault (OMV) is incompatible with Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm.

Only the brand new model 7, which is presently in beta testing, will present a treatment. However, it’s unclear when OMV 7 can be prepared. Unfortunately, it’s unattainable to change to OMV 6 together with Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye within the meantime. This Pi OS is incompatible with the {hardware} of the Raspberry Pi 5.

Media middle with Libre Elec: The BCM 2712 system chip comprises a HEVC decoder that may deal with 4K60. Films that use different codecs should be decoded utilizing software program. The computing energy of the Pi 5 is adequate for the sleek show of 1080p movies in H264, VC1, and VP9 codecs. According to the Libre-Elec builders, some movies may even be performed in 4K decision (for instance VP9 information with 4K30).

All in all, Model 5 is completely fitted to use as a media middle. The hottest distribution for this objective can be Libre Elec (with Kodi). However, the scenario is just like OMV: The present model 11 just isn’t Pi-5 suitable and the brand new model 12 just isn’t but prepared. I carried out my assessments with a nightly construct, which already proved to be fairly secure.

Fortunately, dynamic fan management is already carried out on this early model and the fan remained silent throughout my assessments. As anticipated, the Libre Elec interface runs completely easily. The playback of movies from native sources (SD card, SSD, NAS machine) additionally works effortlessly as quickly because the preliminary configuration work has been accomplished.

The use of add-ons for on-line companies corresponding to YouTube or media libraries corresponding to Arte+7 is much less pleasing, as these virtually at all times stream video materials to the Raspberry Pi in (very) low resolutions. Even the quickest CPU is powerless towards this.

Prices and availability

Along with the technical specs, the costs have additionally risen. The present primary mannequin with 4GB RAM prices round $75 from Amazon, with the 8GB model costing around $115. The additional value is just worthwhile in distinctive circumstances, for instance if the board is for use intensively as a desktop pc. The following prices are added to the pure board value:

But, are you able to even purchase the Raspberry Pi 5? Since its launch in October 2023, availability has assorted drastically. The first deliveries have been rapidly offered out at many retailers.

The web site https://rpilocator.com will help you discover the Raspberry Pi. It lists the costs and inventory ranges of necessary Pi sellers. However, you can even search exterior of the outcomes offered there!

Our conclusion

With Model 5 and the brand new Raspberry Pi OS, the Raspberry Pi Foundation does virtually all the pieces proper: even demanding program corresponding to Firefox, Chromium, and VS Code run completely easily on the desktop. Working is solely enjoyable. In regular use, the mini pc continues to be silent. If a fan is put in, it solely begins throughout longer CPU-intensive work. The Pi 5 is good for server use (NAS), as a media middle, for dwelling automation, or as a desktop.

The greatest drawback is its value. While an impulse buy for experimentation was nonetheless conceivable with earlier fashions, a transparent objective is now required to justify the associated fee. The predecessor fashions are higher suited to hobbyists and makers. They are sufficiently quick, much less fussy in regards to the energy provide, don’t run as sizzling, are cheaper, and are presently extra available.

The connections of the Raspberry Pi 5

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• USB-C socket for energy provide
• 2× micro HDMI outputs (max. 4k@60Hz)
• Micro SD card slot on the underside
• PCIe strip for connecting PCI discs/units
• 2× USB-A socket for exterior units (USB 3)
• 2× USB-A socket (USB 2)
• RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet port
• 40-pin GPIO strip, pin-compatible with earlier fashions
• Connector for connecting a fan
• 2× FPC connection for exterior shows or cameras
• Tiny on/off button above the SD card slot

This article was translated from German to English and initially appeared on pcwelt.de.