The wait is over: the Raspberry Pi 5 has been officially unveiled!
The latest update to the popular single-board computer has been a long time cooking. The Raspberry Pi 4 was released (fittingly) 4 years prior and to-date as sold over 14 million units.
Pressure is on for the Raspberry Pi 5 – will this successor be as successful?
The Raspberry Pi 5 is said to be 2-3x faster than the Raspberry Pi 4, offers significantly faster graphics performance, and packs in ‘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 quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 chip running at 2.4GHz, with cryptography extensions, 512KB per-core L2 caches and 2MB shared L3 cache.
A VideoCore VII GPU offers support for OpenGL ES 3.1 & Vulkan 1.2 and a 4K 60fps HEVC decoder.
The model is offered with either 4GB or 8GB of LPDDR4X-4267 SDRAM that performs at 2x the bandwidth of the Pi 4’s onboard memory.
Already, rumours of a 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 are circulating.
Gigabit Ethernet comes as standard but there’s PoE+ (via a separate HAT), which is 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 new Image Signal Processor for “state of the art” camera support; faster USB bandwidth and SD card performance; and — at 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.”
Something you won’t find: the Raspberry Pi 5 does not include a 3.5mm audio jack.
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.