Key Takeaways
- Raspberry Pi 5 features in-house designed silicon, including a new I/O controller and a 16-nanometer AP, enabling faster speeds and lower power consumption.
- The new hardware includes the removal of the audio jack and addition of a power button and real-time clock, providing more convenience and functionality.
- Units of Raspberry Pi 5 sold until the end of the year will be exclusively for individuals, ensuring hobbyists have a better chance of obtaining the new kit. Pre-orders are available now.
There’s a new Raspberry Pi just around the corner. And if you’re refusing to get too excited because you were a victim of the supply chain issues with the Raspberry Pi 4, there’s some excellent news. The company is ringfencing all units that are sold up until the end of the year exclusively for individuals, ensuring that you have a much better chance of getting your hands on the new kit.
What can you expect from the Raspberry Pi 5? Here’s what you need to know.
Raspberry Pi
In-house silicon
For the first time, the Raspberry Pi 5 will feature silicon designed by the in-house team in Cambridge, UK. The RP1 is a brand-new I/O controller designed by the team that created the RP2040 microcontroller. It’s responsible for the two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports, the Gigabit Ethernet, the two four-lane MIPI transceivers for displays and cameras, as well as the GPIO.
Raspberry Pi
There’s also a new 16-nanometer AP with a quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 processor running at 2.4GHz, which allows the Raspberry Pi to run up to twice as fast as the Raspberry Pi 4, whilst also using less power for the equivalent workload. It means that there’s never been a better Raspberry Pi for your projects, from creating a retro gaming machine to building your own smart home hub.
Farewell audio jack, hello power button
The chipset isn’t the only change. There are some new additions to the hardware, and some departing friends. The composite video and audio jack is gone, but composite video can still be accessed from a pair of pads on the edge of the board. A welcome new addition is the arrival of a PC-style power button that supports hard and soft power-off. There’s also a much-requested real-time clock (RTC) which can be run from a rechargeable cell.
Ringfenced for makers
One of the most welcome announcements is about the availability of the Raspberry Pi 5. Hobbyists and tinkerers are having to fight for Raspberry Pi stock with companies that use the Raspberry Pi in their own products. It means that it can be harder to buy a single Pi for yourself, because an engineering company has already bought 1000.
Thankfully, Raspberry Pi understands that makers are at the heart of what is great about the Raspberry Pi, and to this end, all units that are sold until the end of the year will be single-sale units, ensuring that hobbyists get the chance to get their hands on the Raspberry Pi 5 first.
The Raspberry Pi 5 is available to pre-order now
The Raspberry Pi is available to pre-order right now from your favourite stockists and will be shipping from the end of October. It costs $60/£60 for the 4GB model, or $80/£80 for the 8GB model. The new Raspberry Pi 5 is likely to be popular, so it would be worth putting in a pre-order to take advantage of the ringfenced units before the end of the year.
There are also some new accessories available for the new Pi, including a Raspberry Pi case, power supply, and active cooler.
Raspberry Pi 5 specs
Here are some of the key features that can be found on the new Raspberry Pi 5:
|
CPU |
2.4GHz quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 CPU |
|
GPU |
VideoCore VII GPU, supporting OpenGL ES 3.1, Vulkan 1.2 |
|
Display |
Dual 4Kp60 HDMI display output, 4Kp60 HEVC decoder |
|
Connectivity |
Dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0 / Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) |
|
Ports |
2 × USB 3.0 ports, supporting simultaneous 5Gbps operation, 2 × USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, with PoE+ support (requires separate PoE+ HAT, coming soon) |
|
Camera/Display |
2 × 4-lane MIPI camera/display transceivers |
|
Peripherals |
PCIe 2.0 x1 interface for fast peripherals |
|
GPIO |
Raspberry Pi standard 40-pin GPIO header |
|
Additional features |
Real-time clock, Power button |
