Posted at 18-02-2025

My first look on the Raspberry Pi 5

The Raspberry Pi 5 is the newest device in the Raspberry Pi series and the new Pi 5 packs new power, more connectivity, an on and off button and way more. In this post I will go over the specs, things the Pi 5 can (and can not) do at the moment of writing and what things I use it for and people may be interested in. So let's get started!

The specefications

The Raspberry Pi 5 currently has 4 different RAM configurations being 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and 16GB of LPDDR4x running at 4267MHz. The RAM is more efficient and faster than in the predecessors. I have the 8GB model. Also, there is a new SOC on the Pi 5: The BCM2712. This is a quad-core ARM SOC with ARM Cortex A76 cores all running at 2.4GHz. This new SOC should perform 2 to 3 times faster than the Pi 4. The GPU saw an upgrade as well, the new VideoCore VII GPU allows for things like better video transcoding (if you get it working) and there is Widevine L3 compatibility so you can watch DRM protected media content. Another welcome Upgrade is the new PCI-E connector. The PCI-E has a PCI-E 3.0 x1 interface and can deliver up to 5 Watts of power. The Raspberry Pi foundation also finally added a power button which was really needed in my opinion For the I/O there is a new chip: the RP1. This is a built-in I/O controller which allows the USB 3 ports to have a higher total bandwidth (They now both run at 5Gbit instead of share the 5Gbit) So the USB ports are faster now. There also are the two USB 2.0 ports, dual Micro-HDMI ports, a new 27 Watt USB-C port for power, the usual GPIO pins and Wi-Fi 5 with Bluetooth 5.0 on this board.

Benchmarks and Desktop usage

I tested the Pi 5 by watching YouTube, doing a Geekbench 6 benchmark and I also tested writing documents on the Pi 5. For watching YouTube, the Pi 5 still struggles playing video's that are 60FPS on something like YouTube. I had better luck watching 720p60 and even 1080p60 video's locally though. But as long as you limit YouTube to only play 30FPS content, you can watch things like YouTube perfectly fine. For the Geekbench 6 results I was kind of surprised as the Pi 5 scored a Single-core score of 886 and Multi-core score of 2098. Comparing this with my i3 7100 system (Single-core: 1387, Multi-Core: 2733) this was great. Especially when you start looking at power draw. The Pi 5 draws about 3 to 4 Watts on idle and my i3 system 18 to 20 Watts on idle. So the performance of the Pi 5 is close to an older Intel Core i3 7100 but power usage is way lower. This brings me partially to using it as a homeserver. I use the Pi for multiple things, under which as a homeserver. And on my homeserver I like to have an instance of VSCode and any office suite running and that worked seamlessly without drawing a ton of power. Also when using it as a desktop document editting, coding and typing E-Mails the Pi works really smooth. So I think the Pi 5 could even work as a Desktop replacement for some people.

What I use the Pi 5 for and can('t) be used for

The Pi 5 can be used for many things, I use it as a desktop, Android TV box, video game emulator, homeserver and tested it as router with OpenWRT, and it all worked like it should. If you want to thinker with Windows 11 for example you also can do that, but I am most interested in running Arch, but that is not possible right now as the Linux kernel by default mostly has no support for the Pi 5. Though I did read support and drivers for the Pi 5 were added recently, which could mean that we will see more Operating System's for the Pi 5 soon. But as long as Arch is not there I will stick with Pi OS for a desktop experience as that has all I need. I think the Raspberry Pi 5 can be used for so many things that everybody can find a use for it as the things I listed above are just a fraction of the things you can use a Pi (5) for. Think about learning to code and hosting your own Discord bot, or coding an website and hosting it on the Pi so that changes are directly being put trough for your website. Also there are use cases for businesses like digital signage things or like a Thin Client.

The Pi 5 as a homeserver

I run my Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB) as my homeserver with Pi OS Lite and CasaOS installed. currently I have some containers running. I mainly use a Code server, Libre Office, Memos, Jellyfin and IT Tools. All those containers run without any issues and I could even add more containers if I want to. If you use it as a media server it does fine in 1080p with h.264 but keep in mind that if it needs to transcode media the Pi will have a hard time. But that has always been an flaw on SBC's

Conclusion

To wrap this post up, I want to say that the Raspberry Pi 5 is a great small device capable of doing a lot of things and it being easy to switch Operating System's by just switching the Micro SD Card out for another one. The Pi 5 packs serious power while sipping energy. The idle power usage of just 4 Watts and when under load drawing about 10–15 Watts makes this device the perfect homeserver to me. And using it as other things like an Android TV box or desktop adds a lot of value to it for me. Also, the fact that the Raspberry Pi 5 is as small as a bank card makes it so I can put it anywhere in my room. And not to forget the PCI-E connector allows for expandability which is great. The only thing I found out that it misses for me lately is Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, but that is just a small thing. All with all I think I would recommend this device to a wide range of people. If someone wants a simple and efficient desktop with Debian, Ubuntu or even something else like ChromeOS (OpenFyde/FydeOS) this little device can do it, emulating a wide range of older game systems (Upto PS1 era I believe) it does it really well and can even act like a media player. It just can do anything. I know it does not run PC games and such but installing Android it can play many games that are on the PlayStore. I would also recommend this to someone who wants to start a Linux journey, though that is also possible on an older PC. I like this device and would recommend you take a look if this is something for you. For now, I want to say have a great day/night, and I hope to see you later.