5 ms·

This seems like a product for commercial/embedded users who are happy to shave off the cost of resources they are not using. For consumers and hobbyists this 2G

This seems like a product for commercial/embedded users who are happy to shave off the cost of resources they are not using. For consumers and hobbyists this 2GB model seems like a bad value proposition.

magicalhippo 2y ago
Entire RPi5 seems like a bad value proposition. There several usages where 2GB is sufficient, but for most of those the extra capability of the RPi5 is entirely overkill. And as such it is overpriced. If you need the RAM then you're very quickly approaching N100 prices, and the N100 offerings give you way more expandability and performance. I just don't get who the RPi5 is for, except maybe companies using them in embedded applications.
- failbuffer 2y ago
  RPi has an ecosystem and great documentation. People use it for projects because every tutorial and YouTube video out there shows you how to get the job done with an RPi. There's a jillion expansion boards (HATs), hundreds of 3D prints, many ready to run OS images (selectable from an easy to use flashing tool), and even a first party camera module. The 40 pin GPIO header has stuck around unchanged thru all but the earliest hardware generations. Does the N100 offer that? There are more performant and efficient alternatives, but for many hobbyists, prototypers, startups, and students (or rather, their teachers) it's not worth the extra time/headaches/hassle to start adapting an rpi solution to non-rpi hardware.
  - magicalhippo 2y ago
    You completely missed my point. We already had the RPi4, and it was sold for $35 for the 2GB model. It was perfect at that. I had enough grunt, and 2GB was enough for a lot of use-cases. I still use mine for a lot of various tasks. One is my GPS-driven NTP server for example. Don't need lots of RAM for that, but do need the GPIOs. What I said was, I don't get the RPi5 value proposition. It's fairly expensive so not just something you throw at simple tasks like an NTP server without consideration. If you need grunt and RAM, well, why not just pay a bit more and get tons more of that? You get more PCIe, you get way more RAM, CPU and GPU, in a form factor that's not that much larger. And it's x86 so you're not facing the kernel support issues like OrangePi and friends. In my experience, there's very little overlap between "need hardware GPIO pins" and "need 8+GB of RAM and/or lots of compute".
    - alias_neo 2y ago
      There's also the point that Pi5 actually took a step back from a Pi4 in some specific applications; It doesn't have the hardware video encoders the Pi4 had so for things like 3D printers (I use a Pi4 in my Voron) where you want the CPU concentrating on printing while the hardware encoders take off the load for video streaming from a camera, the Pi4 is the end of the line. Totally in agreement with you though, even as a huge fan of Raspberry Pi, the Pi 5s are overkill for the tasks they're capable of, and overpriced and underperforming in the tasks a mini-PC can do for 2-4x the price (maybe less once you factor in a PSU, case, storage etc).
      - magicalhippo 2y ago
        > It doesn't have the hardware video encoders the Pi4 had Yea I included that under GPU, but spelling it out is a good point. A major step back. I use some of my Pi4s with a camera module for other uses, and rely on hardware encoding. The N100 can encode 4+ 1080p streams in hardware without breaking a sweat. > maybe less once you factor in a PSU, case, storage etc Most certainly. For a mini-pc application you'll need special USB power supplies, since the Pi5 doesn't fully support USB-PD (it won't accept >5V), so the USB-PD supplies you got for your phone, laptop etc probably won't cut it. And to use M.2 storage you need a separate HAT. And you want a case for it, and some cooling. Between those three, price for a 8GB RPi5 comes very close to a N100 box.
        alias_neo 2y ago
        > And to use M.2 storage you need a separate HAT. And you want a case for it, and some cooling. Between those three, price for a 8GB RPi5 comes very close to a N100 box. Now you mention it; I recently put together a Pi5 setup for low-power file-storage (portable), ~£80 for the Pi, ~£20 for the PSU, £5 for the cooler, £12 for a decent MicroSD, £16 for the NVMe HAT and £60 for an SSD, no case (total: £133), compared to the MinisForum Ryzen cube-PC I bought for a low-wattage server which cost ~£230, has 16 core Ryzen Laptop CPU, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, PSU, nice case, etc; It's almost as portable, and orders of magnitude more powerful. Ok there's almost 100% price difference, but you get way, way, way more than 100% more of a computer for the price.
- jeroenhd 2y ago
  How's power consumption on those N100 boards these days? The RPi has always been quite good for the "I need to run a daemon but don't want to pay more than a USB charger's worth of power" segment. The N100 itself has a reasonable TDP but the boards and storage always seem to draw more power, especially at idle.
  - bharath1097 2y ago
    N100 boards run significantly hotter. Here's Jeff Greerling's counter argument on why Radxa X4 (a cheap N100 board) isn't a good replacement for RPI5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2atAHDOaIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2atAHDOaIA
  - magicalhippo 2y ago
    Idle power of an N100 will likely be around 10W or so, about 5x the RPi5s. But sure, if that's a concern then the Pis or clones might be a better option.
    - Marsymars 2y ago
      > Idle power of an N100 will likely be around 10W or so, about 5x the RPi5s. A system that's appropriately designed for low power draw should be notably less than that. I've got an N305 laptop that I'm using as a home server that idles at 4-5W.
      - magicalhippo 2y ago
        Yeah I'm not discounting it. My vanilla N100 box measures about 7W at the wall idling on the KDE Neon desktop. No modifications done to reduce power draw, and it includes the wall-wart that came with it.
- throwme_123 2y ago
  It's perfect as a home music/video server.
- KeplerBoy 2y ago
  People buy Raspberry Pi's for the first class GPIO support and GPIO ecosystem.
- prmoustache 2y ago
  The only interesting boards from the raspberry foundation are the zero and pico series imho.
c6400sc 2y ago
it's probably a decent HD streamer. I have Kodi running on a pi2 (1GB) and it's OK at 720p but 1080 lags. The pi5 will do 1080, and might even pull off 4k depending on the source.
- Scramblejams 2y ago
  IIRC Pi 4 has a hardware encoder and 5 does not, so 4 might be your sweet spot.
- politelemon 2y ago
  But doesn't it lack hardware for that. Streaming software goes s far as to warn against it. https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/administration/hardware-acceleration/ https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/administration/hardware-ac...
  - alias_neo 2y ago
    Yep. For applications where video isn't your main function, the Pi5 is a step back. In 3D printing (such as the Voron), where we want CPU cycles spent on printing, The Pi4 has to be used over the Pi5 if you want that hardware encoding for your camera stream so it's not eating up your CPU time and potentially ruining your prints.
    - ffgjgf1 2y ago
      If you need video encoding why would you ever get a pi instead of the N100 though?
      - alias_neo 2y ago
        There's an example in the comment you're replying to. A Voron [0] printer is designed around the Raspberry Pi as the default SBC. It's an open-source 3D printer design, you want video encoding for your camera stream on the printer. For projects intended to be built by ordinary people, a Raspberry Pi is a very accessible, reliable and well supported device with a track record, it's a no-brainer. Your software might be targeting ARM, Pi boards are likely lower-power consumption than an N100 board, your application may not need the compute of an N100 (My Voron 2.4 is using about 20-30% CPU on a Pi4, while streaming (hardware encoding) a 720p camera feed, and printing at 400mm/s); the N100 launched last year; many projects built around Raspberry Pis are much, much older than that. There's _plenty_ of reasons to use a Pi over the N100. Also, N100 isn't an SBC it's a CPU, so who are you buying the finished board from, and what can you expect from them in terms of software and support? We know very well what to expect from RP at this point. I'm not saying RPi is the answer to everything, but the N100 isn't the answer either. [0] https://www.vorondesign.com/ https://www.vorondesign.com/ P.S. To whoever downvoted; use your words.
helsinkiandrew 2y ago
The power consumption/heat/fan eliminate it from a lot of commercial/embedded uses

magicalhippo 2y ago

Entire RPi5 seems like a bad value proposition. There several usages where 2GB is sufficient, but for most of those the extra capability of the RPi5 is entirely overkill. And as such it is overpriced. If you need the RAM then you're very quickly approaching N100 prices, and the N100 offerings give you way more expandability and performance. I just don't get who the RPi5 is for, except maybe companies using them in embedded applications.

failbuffer 2y ago
RPi has an ecosystem and great documentation. People use it for projects because every tutorial and YouTube video out there shows you how to get the job done with an RPi. There's a jillion expansion boards (HATs), hundreds of 3D prints, many ready to run OS images (selectable from an easy to use flashing tool), and even a first party camera module. The 40 pin GPIO header has stuck around unchanged thru all but the earliest hardware generations. Does the N100 offer that? There are more performant and efficient alternatives, but for many hobbyists, prototypers, startups, and students (or rather, their teachers) it's not worth the extra time/headaches/hassle to start adapting an rpi solution to non-rpi hardware.
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  You completely missed my point. We already had the RPi4, and it was sold for $35 for the 2GB model. It was perfect at that. I had enough grunt, and 2GB was enough for a lot of use-cases. I still use mine for a lot of various tasks. One is my GPS-driven NTP server for example. Don't need lots of RAM for that, but do need the GPIOs. What I said was, I don't get the RPi5 value proposition. It's fairly expensive so not just something you throw at simple tasks like an NTP server without consideration. If you need grunt and RAM, well, why not just pay a bit more and get tons more of that? You get more PCIe, you get way more RAM, CPU and GPU, in a form factor that's not that much larger. And it's x86 so you're not facing the kernel support issues like OrangePi and friends. In my experience, there's very little overlap between "need hardware GPIO pins" and "need 8+GB of RAM and/or lots of compute".
  - alias_neo 2y ago
    There's also the point that Pi5 actually took a step back from a Pi4 in some specific applications; It doesn't have the hardware video encoders the Pi4 had so for things like 3D printers (I use a Pi4 in my Voron) where you want the CPU concentrating on printing while the hardware encoders take off the load for video streaming from a camera, the Pi4 is the end of the line. Totally in agreement with you though, even as a huge fan of Raspberry Pi, the Pi 5s are overkill for the tasks they're capable of, and overpriced and underperforming in the tasks a mini-PC can do for 2-4x the price (maybe less once you factor in a PSU, case, storage etc).
    - magicalhippo 2y ago
      > It doesn't have the hardware video encoders the Pi4 had Yea I included that under GPU, but spelling it out is a good point. A major step back. I use some of my Pi4s with a camera module for other uses, and rely on hardware encoding. The N100 can encode 4+ 1080p streams in hardware without breaking a sweat. > maybe less once you factor in a PSU, case, storage etc Most certainly. For a mini-pc application you'll need special USB power supplies, since the Pi5 doesn't fully support USB-PD (it won't accept >5V), so the USB-PD supplies you got for your phone, laptop etc probably won't cut it. And to use M.2 storage you need a separate HAT. And you want a case for it, and some cooling. Between those three, price for a 8GB RPi5 comes very close to a N100 box.
      - alias_neo 2y ago
        > And to use M.2 storage you need a separate HAT. And you want a case for it, and some cooling. Between those three, price for a 8GB RPi5 comes very close to a N100 box. Now you mention it; I recently put together a Pi5 setup for low-power file-storage (portable), ~£80 for the Pi, ~£20 for the PSU, £5 for the cooler, £12 for a decent MicroSD, £16 for the NVMe HAT and £60 for an SSD, no case (total: £133), compared to the MinisForum Ryzen cube-PC I bought for a low-wattage server which cost ~£230, has 16 core Ryzen Laptop CPU, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, PSU, nice case, etc; It's almost as portable, and orders of magnitude more powerful. Ok there's almost 100% price difference, but you get way, way, way more than 100% more of a computer for the price.
jeroenhd 2y ago
How's power consumption on those N100 boards these days? The RPi has always been quite good for the "I need to run a daemon but don't want to pay more than a USB charger's worth of power" segment. The N100 itself has a reasonable TDP but the boards and storage always seem to draw more power, especially at idle.
- bharath1097 2y ago
  N100 boards run significantly hotter. Here's Jeff Greerling's counter argument on why Radxa X4 (a cheap N100 board) isn't a good replacement for RPI5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2atAHDOaIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2atAHDOaIA
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  Idle power of an N100 will likely be around 10W or so, about 5x the RPi5s. But sure, if that's a concern then the Pis or clones might be a better option.
  - Marsymars 2y ago
    > Idle power of an N100 will likely be around 10W or so, about 5x the RPi5s. A system that's appropriately designed for low power draw should be notably less than that. I've got an N305 laptop that I'm using as a home server that idles at 4-5W.
    - magicalhippo 2y ago
      Yeah I'm not discounting it. My vanilla N100 box measures about 7W at the wall idling on the KDE Neon desktop. No modifications done to reduce power draw, and it includes the wall-wart that came with it.
throwme_123 2y ago
It's perfect as a home music/video server.
KeplerBoy 2y ago
People buy Raspberry Pi's for the first class GPIO support and GPIO ecosystem.
prmoustache 2y ago
The only interesting boards from the raspberry foundation are the zero and pico series imho.

c6400sc 2y ago

it's probably a decent HD streamer. I have Kodi running on a pi2 (1GB) and it's OK at 720p but 1080 lags. The pi5 will do 1080, and might even pull off 4k depending on the source.

Scramblejams 2y ago
IIRC Pi 4 has a hardware encoder and 5 does not, so 4 might be your sweet spot.
politelemon 2y ago
But doesn't it lack hardware for that. Streaming software goes s far as to warn against it. https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/administration/hardware-acceleration/ https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/administration/hardware-ac...
- alias_neo 2y ago
  Yep. For applications where video isn't your main function, the Pi5 is a step back. In 3D printing (such as the Voron), where we want CPU cycles spent on printing, The Pi4 has to be used over the Pi5 if you want that hardware encoding for your camera stream so it's not eating up your CPU time and potentially ruining your prints.
  - ffgjgf1 2y ago
    If you need video encoding why would you ever get a pi instead of the N100 though?
    - alias_neo 2y ago
      There's an example in the comment you're replying to. A Voron [0] printer is designed around the Raspberry Pi as the default SBC. It's an open-source 3D printer design, you want video encoding for your camera stream on the printer. For projects intended to be built by ordinary people, a Raspberry Pi is a very accessible, reliable and well supported device with a track record, it's a no-brainer. Your software might be targeting ARM, Pi boards are likely lower-power consumption than an N100 board, your application may not need the compute of an N100 (My Voron 2.4 is using about 20-30% CPU on a Pi4, while streaming (hardware encoding) a 720p camera feed, and printing at 400mm/s); the N100 launched last year; many projects built around Raspberry Pis are much, much older than that. There's _plenty_ of reasons to use a Pi over the N100. Also, N100 isn't an SBC it's a CPU, so who are you buying the finished board from, and what can you expect from them in terms of software and support? We know very well what to expect from RP at this point. I'm not saying RPi is the answer to everything, but the N100 isn't the answer either. [0] https://www.vorondesign.com/ https://www.vorondesign.com/ P.S. To whoever downvoted; use your words.

helsinkiandrew 2y ago

The power consumption/heat/fan eliminate it from a lot of commercial/embedded uses