Welcome the Raspberry Pi 5

Introduction

The new Raspberry Pi 5 started shipping back on Oct 23, 2023. I didn’t pre-order, but managed to get a 8Gig unit towards the end of November. This article covers what is new and a few impressions of running this fresh new Pi.

What’s New

There is a lot new in the Raspberry Pi 5, here is a list of the key improvements:

• Broadcom BCM2712 quad-core Arm Cortex A76 processor @ 2.4GHz, which is significantly faster than the Pi 4.
• RP1 I/O controller, adding functionality from the RP2040 and offloading I/O processing from the CPU.
• A PCI Express port that will eventually allow the connection of an M.2 SSD.
• A power button.
• Dual 4Kp60 displays.
• A real time clock.
• An UART debugging port.
• MicroSD cards can operate at twice the speed of a Pi 4
• The RAM is significantly faster than the Pi 4.
• The VideoCore GPU is a newer version and more powerful.
• The USB-3 ports are much faster.

Note that the official hat that is required to connect an M.2 SSD hasn’t been released yet; but,  the spec has been released and a couple of third parties are shipping boards.

Setting Up

If you already have a Raspberry Pi 4, you can move all the cables from the Pi 4 over to the Pi 5. Namely a USB mouse, USB keyboard, micro-HDMI and USB-C power connector.

A new version of the Raspberry Pi OS shipped about the same time as the Raspberry Pi 5. I decided to burn a new clean image to a new micro-SD card. I upgraded my Raspberry Pi Imager to the latest version and burned the new operating system to the micro-SD. I forgot how easy it is to set up a Raspberry Pi compared to other SBCs. The imager configures most of the common initial operating system parameters such as my timezone and Wifi password. Then when you first boot, you are connected to the  internet, lots of useful software is installed and the filesystem is correct for the SD-card. I’ve been working quite a bit with a Starfive Visionfive 2 RISC-V SBC and reburning and configuring the OS can be quite the ordeal. I hope other SBC makers start cloning the Raspberry Pi imager, it’s a great tool.

Initial Run & Accessories

When I first booted everything came up fine, however the operating system kept displaying the little warning dialog that it wasn’t getting enough power. In spite of this, things seemed to be working fine so I ignored this initially. The Raspberry Pi 4 required a 15 Watt USB-C power supply, whereas the Pi 5 requires a 25 Watt USB-C power supply.

Anyway, I decided to buy a genuine Raspberry Pi 27 Watt power adapter and with the additional power, there must be additional heat, so I also ordered a genuine Raspberry Pi active cooler. Installing the active cooler was easy and straightforward. The fans don’t kick on that often, mostly during booting and other heavy usage situations. With the beefier power supply I haven’t received a voltage warning yet.

I didn’t order one of the many available Raspberry Pi 5 cases, but instead chose to 3D print one of the many designs available on the internet.

Here is a picture of the Raspberry Pi in its case with the minimum connections.

Here is a version with the case’s top removed:

One thing I worry about is that when the M.2 hat ships, and I’ll definitely be getting one, that it fits over the active cooler. I’ve had previous hats where I had to remove fans and/or heatsinks to attach them. Hopefully it comes in a way that fits over the cooler.

Of course you can run the newer Raspberry Pi OS, called Bookworm, on any Raspberry Pi, and it seems to be a good upgrade. The main difference is the switch from the X11 window manager to the Wayland window manager. This is both a good performance and security upgrade since there is no network protocol involved. The new default background screen is the most striking difference, but this is just a background image. Everything else is pretty much the same, just running at the newest stable version.

Summary

This is a major upgrade to the Raspberry Pi, which is better in every way. It easily competes with lower end Intel/AMD PC systems. It feels far faster than previous Pi’s and is miles faster than a number of other SBCs I use. I look forward to the M.2 hat and will see if that improves performance even more. As it is I think the Raspberry Pi 5 makes a great little desktop computer. The Raspberry Pi OS is the easiest Linux to both install and use and combined with the Raspberry Pi Imager makes it both easy to setup and use.