Image of the Raspberry Pi 5

Raspberry Pi 5 Desktop Mini PC: Power Consumption

Power Consumption with CPU Stressed

I’m using s-tui to stress the CPU, which in turn uses the stress tool.

RPI5 s-tui

I can stress the CPU by changing the mode from monitor to stress. Here are the results for each machine.

Raspberry Pi 5 power consumption under full CPU load

As the chart illustrates, the Pi 5 uses less than half the power compared to the N95 and N100 machines, while it’s almost as fast. Remember that the NUC (i7-1360P) is more than four times faster.

The Pi 5 power consumption includes the CPU fan (which only activates when the CPU temperature rises over 50 degrees C), but doesn’t include the 2 case fans, as the machine runs so cool they didn’t activate. If I set the GPIO fan mode to Performance or Always On, the case fans come on, and power usage goes up from 8w/h to slightly more than 9w/h (an increase of slightly more than 1w/h).

Power usage figures are higher if other system components (GPU, disk etc) are also stressed. The chart reflects power consumption stressing the CPU only.

Next page: Page 4 – Electricity Costs / Specifications

Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Power Consumption With System Idle
Page 2 – Power Consumption With Light Usage
Page 3 – Power Consumption With CPU Stressed
Page 4 – Electricity Costs / Specifications


All articles in this series:

Raspberry Pi 5 Series
Hardware
iRasptek Starter KitAll the kit you need to get started with the Pi 5
Pironman 5 Case ReviewTransform the Pi 5 into a beautiful desktop mini PC
Passive Cooling the Pi 5Passively cool your Pi 5 the right way. Silent yet cool
BenchmarkingBenchmarking the Pi 5 against an Intel N100 mini PC
OverclockingLet's increase the clock speed of the BCM2712 SoC
Power ConsumptionCompare the power consumption of the Pi 5 with Intel Mini PCs
2.5Gbps NetworkingImproving the wired performance of the Pi 5
WiFiImprove WiFi performance of the Pi 5
Desktop PCIs the Pi 5 good value compared to an Intel N100 Mini PC?
Configuration
raspi-configUseful text-based tool to configure the Pi 5
PiGroGUI tool that streamlines the process of managing the Pi 5
Increase Swap Memory SizeIncrease the swap size from 512MB to 2GB
ZRAM swapdriveSimple script to use a ZRAM swapdrive instead of a swapfile
Software
Installing SoftwareDifferent ways to install software on the Pi 5
df snap pollutionReplace df with dysk
Ollama GUIRunning Large Language Models on the Pi 5
Music PlayersGUI and TUI music players explored
Internet RadioExploring the best options for both GUI and TUI software
Many software articles are planned. Stay tuned!
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