Raspberry Pi 5
The main ticket item in the starter kit is, of course, the Raspberry Pi itself. The Pi 5 is available in 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and 16GB RAM models. The kit I’m evaluating provides the 8GB RAM version. If you’re planning on using the Pi as a desktop machine, 8GB of RAM is ample for most desktop users.
Let’s interrogate the Pi 5 with some Linux tools:
$ uname -a
OK, we’re running the 6.12 Linux kernel. Raspberry Pi OS (which is based on Debian) only uses longterm release kernels.
Let’s now interrogate the system using the inxi tool. It’s installed from a terminal with the command: $ sudo apt install inxi
Processor
The Raspberry Pi 5 features a 64-bit Broadcom BCM2712 quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 processor running at a maximum of 2.4GHz. The bogomips shown is very low but that’s not indicative of benchmarks I’ve run.
What’s performance like compared to other mini PCs? Rather than quoting artificial benchmarks, let’s use a real world example. I’ve recorded the time it takes to build the source code for a wonderful open source music player, fooyin. It’s mostly CPU bound.
The Pi 5’s performance is not far off an Intel N100 processor, a hugely popular processor in budget mini PCs.
Graphics
The Pi 5 has a VideoCore VII GPU, supporting OpenGL ES 3.1, Vulkan 1.2. Eagle-eyed readers will notice I’m using X.Org with 2 monitors. By default, Raspberry Pi OS runs Wayland. I reverted to X.Org for this article simply because my go to screenshot tool (ksnip) has limited support for Wayland.
The Pi 5 can drive dual 4K monitors at 60Hz refresh rate with HDR support.
Disk
The 128GB SanDisk microSD card is a good size and a respected brand. You’ll have plenty of storage space to install a huge number of apps. I’ve also connected a 1TB external NVMe SSD (this isn’t supplied with the starter kit).
Memory
The Pi offers DDR4 RAM.
Audio
Bluetooth
There’s Bluetooth 5.0.
Network
Ethernet is a fairly standard affair. it’s gigabit ethernet.
Temperature
By default, the fan in the active cooler starts spinning when the CPU reaches 50°C. As you can see, the fan is running at 2624 RPM but the temperature of the CPU is below 50°C. By default, the fan speed reduces when the temperature falls 5°C below a threshold. So the fan doesn’t turn off until the temperature falls to 45C (this can be changed).
At the time the system was under fairly light load and the room temperature is 21°C. I’ll talk more about the active cooler on the next page.
Next page: Page 3 – Metal case and Active Cooler
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction and Installation
Page 2 – Raspberry Pi 5 single board computer
Page 3 – Metal Case and Active Cooler
Page 4 – microSD card
Page 5 – Summary