Raspberry Pi 5 is officially announced, and here's my personal thought on it

[TimedPing]

As the title suggest, Pi 5 is officially announced, both by it's official website and few Tech YouTuber such as Jeff Geerling and NetworkChuck, and here's the specs outline and official images, taken from the official website:

• Broadcom BCM2712 2.4GHz quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 CPU, with cryptography extensions, 512KB per-core L2 caches and a 2MB shared L3 cache.
• VideoCore VII GPU, supporting OpenGL ES 3.1, Vulkan 1.2.
• Dual 4Kp60 HDMI® display output with HDR support.
• 4Kp60 HEVC decoder.
• LPDDR4X-4267 SDRAM (4GB and 8GB SKUs available at launch).
• Dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi®.
• Bluetooth 5.0 / Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)..=
• microSD card slot, with support for high-speed SDR104 mode.
• 2 × USB 3.0 ports, supporting simultaneous 5Gbps operation.
• 2 × USB 2.0 ports.
• Gigabit Ethernet, with PoE+ support (requires separate PoE+ HAT).
• 2 × 4-lane MIPI camera/display transceivers.
• PCIe 2.0 x1 interface for fast peripherals (requires separate M.2 HAT or other adapter).
• 5V/5A DC power via USB-C, with Power Delivery support.
• Raspberry Pi standard 40-pin header.
• Real-time clock (RTC), powered from external battery.
• Power button.
• $60 Launch prices.
• Changing the I/O layout back to Pi 3 era.

My thought on the specs:

1. The BCM2712 CPU config definitely remind me of Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 and 821 SoC, I don't know if didn't using Big.LITTLE arch help ARM software dev on this device or not.
2. Supporting AV1 Decode is should be nice, altrhough I believe broadcom develop the GPU arch back when AV1 specs is not even fully drafted yet.
3. AC WiFi in 2023? I think it's ok if the dev is trying to save little bit money for the module, not a problem for me.
4. Some YouTuber also mention the hardware will have custom "southbridge" Chip (or PCH), integrating Gigabit GMAC and USB controller as well for the GPIO controller, this is nice to see, rather than using 3rd party stuff like Via Labs USB 3.0 controller in the past (I still pretty sure that this southbridge chips is sourced from 3rd party design too, probably either broadcom, TI, VLI, or ASMedia).
5. 5GBps USB3.0 and 1Gbe Ethernet in 2023? seriously? especially the Dev know many people will be using this as "cheap" and low power NAS or Poor man HPE cluster.
6. the Inclusion of PCIe 2.0 x1 breakout channel via FPC connector: Having dedicated PCIe line on Standard Raspberry Pi form factor is nice (means no need to resort to buying Compute Module no more for PCIe ), but guys, seriously? PCIe 2.0 x1? I know this is the limitation of the SoC, but again, bruh.
7. And in the end, the one million dollar question:  "$60 MSRP" yeah buddy sure, just make sure you can supply ample amount of Pi's

 

Honestly, if Pi 5 can live to it's promise, especially the price and availability, then sure, this is a definitely an improvement from Pi4, even trough I think this is should be called Pi 4+ not Pi 5 since it's only offer lackluster amount of improvement from it's predecessor. The flood of more powerful RockChip RK3588 and Intel N100 based SBC with much more features to offer is a tough spot for Pi 5, even though this product is supposed to be cheaper to the competition. I know about the vastly superior software support on Raspberry Pi community, but many other SBC maker is catching up, especially those with either RK3588 or RK3588S SoC onboard, and we definitely doesn't have the same problem with x86-64 based SBC. Just hope the best for the Pi Dev, and please live to the promised words.  Let me know what you think about the new Pi down below!

[SignatureSigner]

Me personally I have been looking at getting a Raspberry Pi 4 for a long time but I think I'm just going to get a lenovo or dell mini PC as by the time you get a pi 5 with 8gb of ram storage and a cooler (plus whatever else I would need) I may as well get an x86 mobile chip mini PC as a server.

 

Raspberry pi's and single board computers are cool but the pi doesn't make sense for me and I feel there is a good amount of people who are in this boat.

especially in light of the scalping and inflated prices/shortages

[Obioban]

Pre ordered one.

 

My house has been needing a 8th pi

 

... One of my pi's only job is to run sonarr and radarr torrents (and any other torrents it is sent) to an external SSD, and be connected to a VPN (does all the torrenting). With the encryption from the torrent client and the encryption from the VPN, it was only able to make use of ~1/3 of my ISP's provided speed. This thing should allow that pi to max out my internet connection-- both because the processor is 2-3x faster, but also because it supports hardware encryption.

 

Faster USB port and not shared bus should mean the final copy to NAS after it's done downloading is faster, too-- USB to 2.5gbe on the one USB3 port and a USB SSD as the layover spot for the torrent on the other.

[cmndr]

Fine for an appliance that's left on 24/7. I want to say it's around 2W idle but I want better information before being confident. 

If you're tying to make a mini-PC or care about performance even a little, compare:

miniPC for $150 with AlderLake-N n100 (AV1) + 16GB RAM + 512GB SSD vs
RPi5 with GB RAM for $80 with no case, no storage, no power supply

storage + case + power is $20 on the low end. So you're left asking if "much better everything else but 6W idle draw" is worth  a 50% price premium (60% if you get windows preinstalled).

[NavyCobra1417]

Overall it looks promising.

 

I have a personal gripe with those tiny HDMI ports and would have preferred Type C for video, but that's not a deal breaker.

[Total Epicnessᴭᴺ]

9 hours ago, SignatureSigner said:

Me personally I have been looking at getting a Raspberry Pi 4 for a long time but I think I'm just going to get a lenovo or dell mini PC as by the time you get a pi 5 with 8gb of ram storage and a cooler (plus whatever else I would need) I may as well get an x86 mobile chip mini PC as a server.

 

Raspberry pi's and single board computers are cool but the pi doesn't make sense for me and I feel there is a good amount of people who are in this boat.

especially in light of the scalping and inflated prices/shortages

Yeah the impossibility of finding a Pi at MSRP led me to the RockPro64 which was actually a far superior option for me since it was quite powerful and the PCI-E 4x slot meant I could make a NAS without having to mess around with dongles or GPIO. I ended up buying another for a proxmox system running various servers including an openwrt router. It's a bit more pricier and the PCI-E is a little finicky but it's about as best you can get with an SBC before you get to NUCs and thin clients. Just wish they released an updated version with more modern hardware, IO and a non finicky PCI-E solution.

 

There are a lot of Pi alternatives out there with their positives and downsides that people need to know before buying a scalped raspberry pi 3 for 4x MSRP.