The wait is over: the Raspberry Pi 5 has been officially unveiled!
The new model of this super-successful single-board computer has been a long time cooking. The Raspberry Pi 4 was released (aptly) 4 years ago and has sold over 14 million units to day – impressive!
But a full-size successor is now coming — and what a successor it is!
The Raspberry Pi 5 is said to be 2-3x faster than the Raspberry Pi 4, delivers greatly improved graphics performance, and uses ‘silicon designed in‑house’ by the Raspberry Pi company — a first.
Raspberry Pi 5 Specs
| CPU: | Broadcom BCM2712 ARM Cortex A76 (Quad-core @ 2.4GHz) |
|---|---|
| GPU: |
VideoCore VII @ 800Mhz with 4K HEVC decoder |
| RAM: | 4GB / 8GB |
| Ports: |
2× Micro HDMI 2× USB 3.0 2× USB 2.0 microSD Gigabit Ethernet USB-C (Power) |
| Other: |
Wi-Fi Bluetooth 5.0 PCI-E 2.0 interface Power button |
| Price: | From £60/$60 |
Raspberry Pi 5 specs feature a 16-nanometer Broadcom BCM2712, a quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 chip running at 2.4GHz, with cryptography extensions, 512KB per-core L2 caches and a 2MB shared L3 cache.
There’s a VideoCore VII GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.1 & Vulkan 1.2 and a 4K 60fps HEVC decoder; 4GB or 8GB of LPDDR4X-4267 SDRAM (at 2x the bandwidth of the Pi 4’s memory).
Gigabit Ethernet is standard but there’s also support for PoE+ (via a separate HAT) – a great addition. Dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 also feature.
The Raspberry Pi 5 has 2x micro HDMI ports, each capable of driving a 4K display at up to 60 fps. There’s also support HDR where/if available, another first.
Other buffs include a revamped Raspberry Pi Image Signal Processor (to deliver “state of the art” camera support); faster USB bandwidth and SD card performance; and — at long last — a power button on the board itself.
And for those who long to use SSDs with their Pi natively, there’s a single-lane PCI Express 2.0 interface. Raspberry Pi will offer adapter boards to “convert between this connector and a subset of the M.2 standard, allowing users to attach NVMe SSDs and other M.2-format accessories.”
The new design the Raspberry Pi 5 does mean new cases will be required, and for best performance a new 25W USB-C power adapter is required. Using a 15W USB-C power adapter will “limit downstream USB current to 600mA”.
It’s also advised that you use a case with active cooling as the new model is more powerful and may run hotter (plus, cooler = better performance in general).
The Raspberry Pi 5 is available to pre-order from today from approved resellers, and begins shipping in late October. The 4GB model is priced from £60/$60 and the 8GB edition from £80/$80 – though keep in mind those are RRP/MSRP and 3rd-party resellers etc may vary in price.
See the Raspberry Pi website for more details on the new model.
Here’s hoping Ubuntu support for the new model isn’t too far behind!