Introducing: Raspberry Pi 5!

[MK14]

My solution has been to use full size 2.5 inch SATA SSDs, and I have had no problems with the Crucial BX and MX 500 units that I have, but M.2 SSDs could be good also.  I tested a SATA Samsung 870 EVO for a while which did have data corruption issues but it was not clear what caused it.

In the past I had good results with industrial Compact Flash cards, but had problems with limited endurance.

I've had good results (in their day), with Compact Flash card(s).  Essentially a fully solid state, IDE interfaced hard disk equivalent, before people even used terms such as SSDs etc.
I don't know if it was just the mini-PC (probably a thin-client class of device) causing it, but I think it was on the slow side.  But totally reliable.

Some people seem to recommend, making the microSD card, effectively read only (after installing the OS, and setting it up).  Which then makes it very reliable.
Which would work, if you only use it for booting, then have some extra/external HDD/SSD connected up for bulk storage (or a network NAS etc).

Thin-clients, seem to have tiny SSD (like) devices, on small PCBs, which are a bit like miniature, PC RAM DDR4 like things.  They would seem somewhat idea for Raspberry Pi's.  I.e. Compact dimensions, with the reliability of full sized SSDs (hopefully).
Different versions / types, only one pictured here as an example:

[David Hess]

Thin-clients, seem to have tiny SSD (like) devices, on small PCBs, which are a bit like miniature, PC RAM DDR4 like things.  They would seem somewhat idea for Raspberry Pi's.  I.e. Compact dimensions, with the reliability of full sized SSDs (hopefully).

My Alix has some variation of an M.2 form factor SSD, but one of the shorter ones so it is quite small.

Crucial says that their current generation M.2 form factor NVMe SSDs have power loss protection, like their BX and MX 500 SATA SSDs, but without a capacitor bank I am not sure how that works.  Years ago Sandforce made similar claims for their SSD controllers but they regularly corrupted data during power loss.

I trust Crucial because of their connection to Micron, and so far that has worked out.

[MK14]

have power loss protection, like their BX and MX 500 SATA SSDs, but without a capacitor bank I am not sure how that works.

I don't know, specifically, for those manufacturer's.  But, one method (possibly the one they use), is to treat a section of the SSD's flash memory, as if it was only a SLC (single level cell, so it takes up perhaps, what would have given a useable 80 GB of space (in e.g. QLC, 4 bits stored per cell), as 20 GB of SLC.
My understanding is, the more data bits stored in a single cell, the longer and longer it takes, to reliably read or write, that data.

So it is using SLC, to make it fast enough to keep up with even very, very fast data-streams.  Potentially unlike, schemes such as QLC.

That then means, it can be used as a super fast, scratch pad.  Filling up with any data, BEFORE any possible power loss.
AFTER the power loss event, it can then leisurely convert the SLC scratch pad copy, into the proper QLC format, taking its time.

Hence those supercapacitors are no longer needed.

Also, if the space runs out, the SLC scratch pad, can be repurposed, back to high density QLC, to allow them to claim the SSD, still has the specified maximum capacity, of e.g. 2 TB.

[Karel]

Raspberry Pi 5: Hot takes and cooler mistakes

How does the device fare as a daily driver, and is cooling really optional?

https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/17/life_with_pi_5/

[ataradov]

This is the most pointless article I've seen in a while. They mention "daily driver" a ton without ever mentioning what they actually do. I also used it as a daily driver and thermals were fine, I did not even have to power it up because I'm a gardener and don't use technology on a daily basis.

And there is no need to use for a week if you just want to stress the thermals, artificial tests do that just fine. It is not like it will get worse a week from now.

[IanB]

This is the most pointless article I've seen in a while. They mention "daily driver" a ton without ever mentioning what they actually do.

I guess some people might try to use an RPi as a desktop computer for everyday use? Not that it seems sensible to do so, but someone could try?

[ataradov]

It is fine, but when writing an article, describe what you actually do. If all you do is type up a couple articles in the browser, then Pi5 will do fine. If you edit videos, then may be not.

The article here is a world salad of obvious facts, which boils down to "If you do any real work, you may need an active coiling". This was obvious from day one, there is no need to "test drive" it for a week.

[IanB]

That's cool 

To be honest, I didn't have time to click through the link and see what the article was saying.

Many of the things I have seen people doing with Pi's involve monitoring and logging. In which case, for most of the time it is just sitting there waiting for something to happen.

[thermistor-guy]

...I guess some people might try to use an RPi as a desktop computer for everyday use? Not that it seems sensible to do so, but someone could try?

I tried the rpi4 for that - a lightweight desktop for web browsing - but it choked running Firefox. That's when I got a Udoo Bolt Gear, which worked fine.

The rpi5 might work as lightweight desktop. Worth testing if you also have another use for it, if it doesn't work out.
Personally, I'll wait until Akasa makes a silent case for it and Debian supports it.

[SiliconWizard]

Properly set up, no reason you can't web browse on a RPi4... two things to consider though: the amount of RAM, and how RAM-hungry Firefox is. Forget about any version below 4GB. And even with that... when you see how much RAM Firefowx can gobble up with a few tabs open, you'll quickly run out of RAM. That's more a RAM problem than raw performance, although of course disk access is also a bottleneck and the RPi4 has a limited microSD card speed, so you'd need to at least set up Firefox (or any other web browser) to write its cache to an external drive, forget about using a microSD card for that.

The RPi5 should have twice the bandwidth for microSD cards so that should be definitely better, it also has PCIe although that will require an external adapter just to be able to use a SSD.
A RPi5 with 8GB RAM and an external drive should be plenty fine for that, but anything below that bar and you'll be in for disappointment.

I'm using Firefox and it's currently using 10GB of RAM. So, yeah. If you are using that on a SBC with limited RAM that will start swapping to a microSD card very quickly, that of course becomes completely unusable.

[themadhippy]

Properly set up, no reason you can't web browse on a RPi4.

If your very  patient   even the original b model can browse the web

[Karel]

Raspberry Pi 5: available now!

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-5-available-now/

[SiliconWizard]

Me personally, I would be more excited to see the RP1 chip being available for purchase along with good documentation, than the RPi5 itself.

[Karel]

Raspberry Pi 5: available now!

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-5-available-now/

[YurkshireLad]

Raspberry Pi 5: available now!

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-5-available-now/

Still only available a pre-order at my local store.

[radiolistener]

Properly set up, no reason you can't web browse on a RPi4... two things to consider though: the amount of RAM, and how RAM-hungry Firefox is. Forget about any version below 4GB. And even with that... when you see how much RAM Firefowx can gobble up with a few tabs open, you'll quickly run out of RAM. That's more a RAM problem than raw performance

Yes, with 4GB and more RPI4 and RPI5 allows you to read text web sites with no issue. But there is a lack of HD video playback in browser. It is pretty usable for youtube with 480p, but 720p has lags, frame drops and artifacts, 1080p is even worse. 1080p is playable on youtube, but you will notice a lot of frame drops, blurred and crumbling picture for dynamic scenes.  And there is a big problem with video playback even with low resolution on some modern web sites, like telegram. It starts to lagging even if you don't playing video, just mouse cursor starts jerky moving and text scrolling is jittery.

It can play offline video files with 1080p resolution up to 60 fps with VLC or MPV player with hw acceleration, but video file needs to be encoded with H265 HEVC codec. H264 AVC1 also supported, but max playable resolution is 1080p up to 30 fps. With 60 fps it starts to lagging.

There are also some issues with apps. On raspios Bullseye there is a big issue with screen tearing and low graphics performance. On raspios Bookworm screen tearing and graphics performance is fixed but there are a new issues with window positioning and sizing due to switching on Waylaynd/wayfire, it works with great speed and with smooth graphics, but Xwayland don't implement some functions like XMoveWindow, so it leads to window layout issues for apps which using dynamic window collapse/expanding/repositioning, like context menu, video players, messengers, etc.

Ubuntu works good, but has 3x times lower graphics performance than raspios Bookworm and 2x times lower performance than raspios Bullseye. Firefox on Ubuntu works a little bit laggy even for text web sites.

So, RPI4 and RPI5 is nice machine for a text browsing, but if you're planning some home media center there is a lack of HD video playback support, so if you want to use it with large HD or UHD display there is a sense to looking for something more powerful.

Regarding to RPI5, I don't have it to test, but I read many review and resposnes about it and I'm not sure if it worth to replace RPI4 with RPI5, because RPI5 has higher power requirements, and despite the fact that it has twice faster CPU with hw cryptoextensions but it still not enough to support UHD displays and play UHD videos. So, my impressions are contradictory about it. I think it will be nice as a low power home server, but as a desktop it depends on what you're planning to run...

I'm interesting to test Orange Pi 5 for comparison, according to some videos it can better play HD and UHD videos and has better OpenGL performance, but I'm not sure... At least it shows twice higher glmark2 performance, if this is true, then I think it may be a better choice as desktop or media center replacement.

If your very  patient   even the original b model can browse the web

it depends on what site you're want to browse. It lags like hell when scrolling telegram page with videos, also google maps is slow, graphics games in browser are unplayable due to very low speed.

I know this is not high power station with powerful GPU, but modern smartphones allows to play it very well and smooth. So unable to play it on a new modern SBC looks a little bit strange...

But there is needs to say that for many text web sites it works well, I'm using it every day and I wrote this message on rpi4 

[djacobow]

I think I'm pretty much finished with the Pi foundation. I'll miss raspbian, because the os just works and the community is huge, but I'm finding their devices increasingly just weird.

Like if I want a little PC, I'll get an n100 device, and if I want a low power sbc with gpio, the are other devices that are just better.

I like the Le Potato for simple stuff that needs gpio, but still needs a proper os. Super cheap.

For compute power, the rock-5b is a monster by sbc standards and has m.2, pcie 3, emmc, and it still has gpio. It's too expensive, though. It's being up into PC territory when you trick it out. I put an nvme ssd in mine and it is a rocket by comparison to any other sbc I've used.

I'm also tired of the pi's killing sdcards. As others have pointed out, this is not just filesystem corruption, the cards themselves are typically murdered. I've switched to emmc on the rock devices and it is more reliable and faster.

Anyway, Upton has made it clear that he wants to make little desktop computers. That direction doesn't interest me very much. That plus the whole supply chain thing getting me off my duff to try other boards, and I'm finished with Pi Foundation.

[Simon]

We’re incredibly grateful to the community of makers and hackers who make Raspberry Pi what it is; you’ve been extraordinarily patient throughout the supply chain issues that have made our work so challenging over the last couple of years. We’d like to thank you: we’re going to ringfence all of the Raspberry Pi 5s we sell until at least the end of the year for single-unit sales to individuals, so you get the first bite of the cherry.

Don't get too exited, they still have supply chain issues. I suspect that they are feeling the pain of previous issues. At work we swapped a product design to the Rock 4 and have not sold any yet so while RPi3/4 may be available now they have screwed their sales there to us. The RPi5 clearly is not worth considering until there is certainty of supply. To be honest, I'd not even bother personally, after my firs-t cool project will I be able to get another?

[onsokumaru]

I am looking forward to the release of a CM5 module, and wondering if they'll continue to use the same connectors and pinout. I think the new IO chip is a great move to maintain future IO compatibility despite the SoC choice.

[Karel]

Don't get too exited, they still have supply chain issues.

Any reliable sources for that? Because from what I understood, they are baking Raspberry Pi's like crazy but the problem now is that the demand is higher than wat they can produce.
Once most (pre)orders have been serviced, situation will go back to normal. The RPI is simply too successful... 

[YurkshireLad]

Can you plug a small/cheap GPU card into the RasPi5 to offload video decoding?

[beanflying]

Can you plug a small/cheap GPU card into the RasPi5 to offload video decoding?

PCIe 2.0 x1 so very unlikely. There are SBC's out there based on the RK3588 with PCIe 3.0 x4 that will run 'some' supported Nvidia GPU's, I have been playing with an old Quadro on one.

[Simon]

Don't get too exited, they still have supply chain issues.

Any reliable sources for that? Because from what I understood, they are baking Raspberry Pi's like crazy but the problem now is that the demand is higher than wat they can produce.
Once most (pre)orders have been serviced, situation will go back to normal. The RPI is simply too successful... 

Yea, further down the article you quoted is the quote I posted. So they can't keep up with demand as things are but have gone with preorders further burdening their supply, sounds more like a desperate move to sure up finances.

[Karel]

Don't get too exited, they still have supply chain issues.

Any reliable sources for that? Because from what I understood, they are baking Raspberry Pi's like crazy but the problem now is that the demand is higher than wat they can produce.
Once most (pre)orders have been serviced, situation will go back to normal. The RPI is simply too successful... 

Yea, further down the article you quoted is the quote I posted. So they can't keep up with demand as things are but have gone with preorders further burdening their supply, sounds more like a desperate move to sure up finances.

That's not what I read. Are you talking about the Raspberry Pi organization or resellers like Sparkfun?
From what I understand is that a lot of Pi's are sent to resellers every day but those resellers have too many preorders.
What isn't nice is that somebody seemed to preorder an RPI5 from Sparkfun and got immediately charged but is still waiting.
But that's hardly the fault of the Raspberry Pi organization.

[Simon]

It's in Raspberry pi's own article: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/introducing-raspberry-pi-5/