9 ms·

Double Standards

119 points by _Microft 3y ago

phkahler 3y ago
This is strange. The Pi5 seems to want a cooling fan pretty badly, and any HAT is going to completely block the airflow if it even leaves room for the fan. Are people using HATs finding problems with cooling?
- nmaludy 3y ago
  I asked about that and never got a response. My thought would be some sort of side/end fed cooling fan instead of one that exhausts out the top.
halJordan 3y ago
I thought this was going to be about the double standard of how they treat business vs non-business end users, but they are releasing two new standards A new hat and the new hat specification it follows
- wolpoli 3y ago
  > I thought this was going to be about the double standard of how they treat business vs non-business end users While Raspberry Pi were marketed to hobbyists, other parts of the organization are geared towards businesses. After all, what hobbyists would look for 7-year production guarantee?
  - johnny22 3y ago
    They are geared towards education, in which they do want to not have to switch out products so quickly.
  - ano-ther 3y ago
    Which is also good for hobbyists. I like a stable toolbox for my hobby projects. They usually take far longer than expected and it’s quite annoying to find out that the only way to replace a broken part is with a new version that requires a new tool chain and produces lots of mysterious error messages.
lawlessone 3y ago
Can I stick a 4090 to it? I know it's a terrible idea, and I can't afford the mortgage, but can I?
- rahkiin 3y ago
  No: The RPi5 has 4x lanes, the 4090 requires 16x lanes of PCI3.0
  - ssl-3 3y ago
    Does it require 16x? Previous-gen video cards were often connected to risers that only provided 1x, and lots of "normal" systems (with a bit of expansion) don't have enough PCI Express lanes to give 16 lanes to any one device.
  - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
    > the 4090 requires 16x lanes of PCI3.0 Does it require 16x PCI-E 3 just to run? Or is that just a minimum to get the most performance?
  - 0x457 3y ago
    No, it doesn't require it. It's desired to fully utilized it, but not required. PCIe is fully backward and forward compatible between versions. Many eGPUs run at PCIE 3.0 4x.
  - taspeotis 3y ago
    No: it does not
  - HankB99 3y ago
    RPi5 exposes 1 lane on the PCIe connector. It routes 4 lanes to the 2040 chip that provides much of the board's I/O. IMO 1 lane is better than none. I love the CM4 because it exposes 1 PCIe lane and that can support a NVME SSD making it the first Pi that supports what I consider to be a decent storage interface.
- mikepavone 3y ago
  The current answer is maybe: https://github.com/geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-pcie-devices/issues/504 https://github.com/geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-pcie-devices/iss... The PCIe implementation on the 5 is supposedly more complete/less broken than on the CM4, but so far the only person crazy/inspired enough to test hasn't gotten back to this card with their Pi 5 setup.
baz00 3y ago
I get the feeling that by the time I've paid for that and the hat I could probably have bagged a Lenovo mini PC...
- ssl-3 3y ago
  You can get a new Lenovo mini PC with these features for the price of a new Raspberry Pi 5 and its accoutrements?
  - baz00 3y ago
    ebay...
  - maicro 3y ago
    As others have said, ebay. One thing that helps is looking for "thin clients" - I know the Dell Wyse (not Lenovo obviously, but an example) can be "unlocked" to install normal Linux fairly easily. First page of results has options for under $30USD with free shipping (probably US only, but still).
    - bongodongobob 3y ago
      I would not recommend a thin client. They are very underpowered as they are designed to essentially boot to RDP and nothing else. Much better off with a mini as they are "real" desktops computers.
    - ssl-3 3y ago
      Don't get me wrong: I've got a cheap (~$50 USD, delivered) Lenovo M600 here that I like just fine. It's a dandy little PC that does all kinds of normal PC stuff without any hacks required at all. (It runs Home Assistant rather well in a virtualized environment, and that's exactly what I bought it for.) But there's a lot of things I can do with a Raspberry Pi [5] that I can't do with the M600. Some examples off the top of my head: I can't do hardware tinkering with it, like plug in a DS18B20 temperature sensor or blink an LED (or a video wall worth of WS2812s), due to lack of accessible GPIO. There's huge swaths of interesting projects that this lack of GPIO cuts out completely. (I'm thus also not particularly interested in using an M600 as a Klipper host for my custom 3D printing rig.) I can't attach random PCIe devices to the M600 (as far as I know) to do things like run Stable Diffusion or run a small storage array (homebrew NAS!) due to the lack of an accessible PCIe interface. The package is small by x86 PC standards, but it enormous by Raspberry Pi standards. Consequently, I'm not taking an M600 with me in my backpack to a hotel to tinker with when I'm out of town for work (whereas I barely notice a Pi in my backpack). And the M600 is frankly pretty boring. Raspberry Pi devices are fun to goof around with, whereas dealing with the M600 feels exactly like dealing with my desktop PC feels (only slower). Having fun with computers is very important to me, and learning-oriented SBCs are a lot more fun than stodgy corpo off-lease "thin client" PCs are. And speaking of off-lease: The M600 was already well-used when I got it. It showed up in good condition and I think it represented a good value at the time that I bought it, but newness matters. It -especially- matters in a price comparison.
shadowpho 3y ago
I lost interest in raspberry pi once I saw that it's $80 + $20 case + $30 SD card + $10 PSU = $140.... which is more expensive than a new n100 alder lake mini-pc.
- geerlingguy 3y ago
  Note that the Pi 5 is $60 (4GB), the case is $10, a good microSD card is $10, and the PSU is $12. So total to get into the Pi 5 game is $92, not $140. All of those things besides the Pi 5 itself right now are in stock at my local computer store, so no shipping either ;) And Pi 4 is a perfectly reasonable computer for many, many use cases still, and is available practically everywhere again.
- Minor49er 3y ago
  I've been excited about the possibility of having computational power around my home. A Pi would enable this, but so would a central computer connected to several thin clients, or even just NAS access, both of which being cheaper options. The Pi is pretty cool, but I'm finding less uses for it personally. It's still a nice device for embedded applications
- tedunangst 3y ago
  Even better, if one n100 is out of stock, you can buy one from a different vendor and it will work fine. Good luck running your raspberry image on an orange pi.
- m463 3y ago
  I thought the same thing but you are not comparing apples and apples. If you say just price I would say pi ~$120, vs alder lake ~$190 But the most important thing the pi has is mindshare. It is not better hardware-wise (beaglebone, banana pi, etc) It is not better at general purpose computing or a nas or a desktop (any intel or amd machine is better) But it is good education. You don't have to "install" linux, just put the sd card in and go. You can learn hardware things. You can learn linux things. You have lots of company. Many people are using it at the hobby level (several million). Someone has done it and made a web page or youtube video.
Havoc 3y ago
Think I’m giving this gen a miss entirely. Orange pi 5plus is more expensive but - better cpu, 32gb vs 8, 2.5 lan and built in m.2 Especially on men that’s one hell of a difference.
theodric 3y ago
I mean, that's nice. Great they finally got around to it. Meanwhile, Pineberry Pi has actually shipped the 'HatDrive! Bottom' M.2 NVMe board for the Pi5 that I ordered a few weeks ago. So while the folks in England are still faffing around with releasing spec sheets, I'll be using my system, and using a board that doesn't block the active cooling setup since it mounts underneath. https://pineberrypi.com/products/hatdrive-bottom-2230-2242-2280-for-rpi5 https://pineberrypi.com/products/hatdrive-bottom-2230-2242-2... (Unaffiliated: just a paying customer)

119 points by _Microft 3y ago

This is strange. The Pi5 seems to want a cooling fan pretty badly, and any HAT is going to completely block the airflow if it even leaves room for the fan. Are people using HATs finding problems with cooling?

nmaludy 3y ago
I asked about that and never got a response. My thought would be some sort of side/end fed cooling fan instead of one that exhausts out the top.

halJordan 3y ago

I thought this was going to be about the double standard of how they treat business vs non-business end users, but they are releasing two new standards A new hat and the new hat specification it follows

wolpoli 3y ago
> I thought this was going to be about the double standard of how they treat business vs non-business end users While Raspberry Pi were marketed to hobbyists, other parts of the organization are geared towards businesses. After all, what hobbyists would look for 7-year production guarantee?
- johnny22 3y ago
  They are geared towards education, in which they do want to not have to switch out products so quickly.
- ano-ther 3y ago
  Which is also good for hobbyists. I like a stable toolbox for my hobby projects. They usually take far longer than expected and it’s quite annoying to find out that the only way to replace a broken part is with a new version that requires a new tool chain and produces lots of mysterious error messages.

lawlessone 3y ago

Can I stick a 4090 to it? I know it's a terrible idea, and I can't afford the mortgage, but can I?

rahkiin 3y ago
No: The RPi5 has 4x lanes, the 4090 requires 16x lanes of PCI3.0
- ssl-3 3y ago
  Does it require 16x? Previous-gen video cards were often connected to risers that only provided 1x, and lots of "normal" systems (with a bit of expansion) don't have enough PCI Express lanes to give 16 lanes to any one device.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  > the 4090 requires 16x lanes of PCI3.0 Does it require 16x PCI-E 3 just to run? Or is that just a minimum to get the most performance?
- 0x457 3y ago
  No, it doesn't require it. It's desired to fully utilized it, but not required. PCIe is fully backward and forward compatible between versions. Many eGPUs run at PCIE 3.0 4x.
- taspeotis 3y ago
  No: it does not
- HankB99 3y ago
  RPi5 exposes 1 lane on the PCIe connector. It routes 4 lanes to the 2040 chip that provides much of the board's I/O. IMO 1 lane is better than none. I love the CM4 because it exposes 1 PCIe lane and that can support a NVME SSD making it the first Pi that supports what I consider to be a decent storage interface.
mikepavone 3y ago
The current answer is maybe: https://github.com/geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-pcie-devices/issues/504 https://github.com/geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-pcie-devices/iss... The PCIe implementation on the 5 is supposedly more complete/less broken than on the CM4, but so far the only person crazy/inspired enough to test hasn't gotten back to this card with their Pi 5 setup.

baz00 3y ago

I get the feeling that by the time I've paid for that and the hat I could probably have bagged a Lenovo mini PC...

ssl-3 3y ago
You can get a new Lenovo mini PC with these features for the price of a new Raspberry Pi 5 and its accoutrements?
- baz00 3y ago
  ebay...
- maicro 3y ago
  As others have said, ebay. One thing that helps is looking for "thin clients" - I know the Dell Wyse (not Lenovo obviously, but an example) can be "unlocked" to install normal Linux fairly easily. First page of results has options for under $30USD with free shipping (probably US only, but still).
  - bongodongobob 3y ago
    I would not recommend a thin client. They are very underpowered as they are designed to essentially boot to RDP and nothing else. Much better off with a mini as they are "real" desktops computers.
  - ssl-3 3y ago
    Don't get me wrong: I've got a cheap (~$50 USD, delivered) Lenovo M600 here that I like just fine. It's a dandy little PC that does all kinds of normal PC stuff without any hacks required at all. (It runs Home Assistant rather well in a virtualized environment, and that's exactly what I bought it for.) But there's a lot of things I can do with a Raspberry Pi [5] that I can't do with the M600. Some examples off the top of my head: I can't do hardware tinkering with it, like plug in a DS18B20 temperature sensor or blink an LED (or a video wall worth of WS2812s), due to lack of accessible GPIO. There's huge swaths of interesting projects that this lack of GPIO cuts out completely. (I'm thus also not particularly interested in using an M600 as a Klipper host for my custom 3D printing rig.) I can't attach random PCIe devices to the M600 (as far as I know) to do things like run Stable Diffusion or run a small storage array (homebrew NAS!) due to the lack of an accessible PCIe interface. The package is small by x86 PC standards, but it enormous by Raspberry Pi standards. Consequently, I'm not taking an M600 with me in my backpack to a hotel to tinker with when I'm out of town for work (whereas I barely notice a Pi in my backpack). And the M600 is frankly pretty boring. Raspberry Pi devices are fun to goof around with, whereas dealing with the M600 feels exactly like dealing with my desktop PC feels (only slower). Having fun with computers is very important to me, and learning-oriented SBCs are a lot more fun than stodgy corpo off-lease "thin client" PCs are. And speaking of off-lease: The M600 was already well-used when I got it. It showed up in good condition and I think it represented a good value at the time that I bought it, but newness matters. It -especially- matters in a price comparison.

shadowpho 3y ago

I lost interest in raspberry pi once I saw that it's $80 + $20 case + $30 SD card + $10 PSU = $140.... which is more expensive than a new n100 alder lake mini-pc.

geerlingguy 3y ago
Note that the Pi 5 is $60 (4GB), the case is $10, a good microSD card is $10, and the PSU is $12. So total to get into the Pi 5 game is $92, not $140. All of those things besides the Pi 5 itself right now are in stock at my local computer store, so no shipping either ;) And Pi 4 is a perfectly reasonable computer for many, many use cases still, and is available practically everywhere again.
Minor49er 3y ago
I've been excited about the possibility of having computational power around my home. A Pi would enable this, but so would a central computer connected to several thin clients, or even just NAS access, both of which being cheaper options. The Pi is pretty cool, but I'm finding less uses for it personally. It's still a nice device for embedded applications
tedunangst 3y ago
Even better, if one n100 is out of stock, you can buy one from a different vendor and it will work fine. Good luck running your raspberry image on an orange pi.
m463 3y ago
I thought the same thing but you are not comparing apples and apples. If you say just price I would say pi ~$120, vs alder lake ~$190 But the most important thing the pi has is mindshare. It is not better hardware-wise (beaglebone, banana pi, etc) It is not better at general purpose computing or a nas or a desktop (any intel or amd machine is better) But it is good education. You don't have to "install" linux, just put the sd card in and go. You can learn hardware things. You can learn linux things. You have lots of company. Many people are using it at the hobby level (several million). Someone has done it and made a web page or youtube video.

Havoc 3y ago

Think I’m giving this gen a miss entirely. Orange pi 5plus is more expensive but - better cpu, 32gb vs 8, 2.5 lan and built in m.2 Especially on men that’s one hell of a difference.

theodric 3y ago

I mean, that's nice. Great they finally got around to it. Meanwhile, Pineberry Pi has actually shipped the 'HatDrive! Bottom' M.2 NVMe board for the Pi5 that I ordered a few weeks ago. So while the folks in England are still faffing around with releasing spec sheets, I'll be using my system, and using a board that doesn't block the active cooling setup since it mounts underneath. https://pineberrypi.com/products/hatdrive-bottom-2230-2242-2280-for-rpi5 https://pineberrypi.com/products/hatdrive-bottom-2230-2242-2... (Unaffiliated: just a paying customer)