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Official Raspberry Pi NVMe SSD Review
- teruakohatu 2y ago> At this price point, it’s easy enough to throw one in your basket when you’re already spending a decent chunk of change and be done with it, safe in the knowledge that you have a well-performing boot device. I do still think it’s a bit naff that the M.2 HAT+ doesn’t fit in the official case but I won’t re-open that can of worms. An rpi5 plus M.2 hat plus a branded ssd and you are well into the realm of Intel N100 SBC that don’t need a hat, have a good GPU with encoding/decoding and a lot of CPU power. I really don’t understand rpi anymore beyond the Zero, 2040 and CM range for commercial use.
- shadowpho 2y agoYep rpi5 does not make sense anymore. N100 goes for $110 on sale with 512gb nvme/16gb of ram/psu/case all included. It completely roasts rpi5 while staying with x64 Linux.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cosmotic 2y agoPower consumption is a good contender for reasons to stick with rpis. The rough, quick search numbers I'm seeing for idle power are ~6w for the N100 SCB and ~1 to 2w for the pi. Max performance is like ~15w to ~4w.
- gjsman-1000 2y agoDepends on where you live then. My home state of Minnesota has electricity for 11 cents per kWh, with only 19% coal. Very different than, say, Germany. Power efficiency becomes a much lower priority.
- FirmwareBurner 2y agoHow often is that the case? Are you really saving so much more money with a 10W board vs a 15W system to offset the purchasing price?
- nine_k 2y agoIt's like 1.5x longer run time on battery power :shrug:
- brokenmachine 2y agoMost things I see rpi being used for would be better done at 1/10 of the power with an ESP32, STM32 or arduino. The things that need an rpi and therefore must use power from the wall anyway, I always find myself thinking would be better done by a minipc, eg one using a laptop cpu like a 7730U. Costs more, but you get like 3-4x the speed at a similar power use, and have much more flexibility on what OS you can use because it's a "proper" PC. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of rPi. I have a Pi Zero that I've used exactly once because I wanted to do something and I came across a project that did exactly what I needed that used rPi. I just find there's always a better option than rPi for every project I find myself doing.
- FirmwareBurner 2y agoHow many PIs did you see in battery powered applications?
- chronogram 2y agoIs it really 1.5× longer in practice? The N100s are efficient, and you can simply choose a lower power profile by sending a different energy/performance preference to the CPU, and it finishes tasks quicker.
- throwaway19972 2y agoWhile there is some commercial/industrial use of RPi, that seems like an odd consideration when generally considering how they've positioned the brand. Meanwhile you can write and run very similar code across everything from the zero all the way up to the 5—which is enormous flexibility that x86 simply doesn't offer. Plus, my understanding is that the N100 still tends to have poor driver support issues that the Pi likely doesn't with such a large community.
- robotnikman 2y ago>While there is some commercial/industrial use of RPi I thought the whole reason for the shortages the last few years was due to commercial applications buying out most of the Pi's available?
- throwaway19972 2y ago> I thought the whole reason for the shortages the last few years was due to commercial applications buying out most of the Pi's available? Sure, but that's not why people find raspberry pis interesting or valuable.
- MisterTea 2y ago> Meanwhile you can write and run very similar code across everything from the zero all the way up to the 5—which is enormous flexibility that x86 simply doesn't offer. This doesn't make sense, can you elaborate?
- mrguyorama 2y agoEvery raspberry pi, from Zero, Zero W, Zero 2 (great name guys), Pi 1, Pi 2, Pi 3, Pi 4, Pi 5 and every variation are all general purpose linux computers that can run pretty much any code you can run on a normal linux computer. They are all the same compilation target IIRC. If you wrote a program for the original Pi, you could have run it on every other Pi without modification or recompilation, depending on peripheral specifics I guess. Are you getting confused by the 2040?
- m463 2y agoI suspect you are describing a large part of consumer behavior. Someone gets a sporty-car, then starts working on the engine, the suspension, the exhaust, gets new rims and tire, new seats... and in the end they could have bought a porsche Thing is, it all depends on your use case. For the pi, it is lots better for hardware projects than a nuc style machine, via the gpios/csi/dsi. and specialized hats. There is also a huge community of forums/documentation/people to help you do new things, solve problems, get unstuck. But if you are doing linux PC kinds of things, like a nas or a media server, you need to do the math.
- erinnh 2y agoMost hardware projects I tend to look at dont need the power of a Pi5 and are fine with a 2040 or zero. The niche of the Pi5 just has gotten so much smaller, imo.
- NovemberWhiskey 2y agoI started down this thought path and ended up with a pair of reconditioned DL369 G9s.
- wkat4242 2y agoTotally true. If you want a small server just get a N100. The pi makes sense for something where you need power (eg more than esp32 or 2040) and gpio. Not as a small server. Those days are gone.
- teamonkey 2y agoI’d argue they were never a particularly good option as a server, especially a file server, because of their poor IO. You’d often get better performance by installing Linux on a NAS. Ironically the Pi5 is the only one that is actually ok at being a file server. Pis are very good at being lots of other things though.
- ThatPlayer 2y agoThe Pi 4 still makes sense for 35$ if your use case doesn't require power but still requires something more featured than a esp32 or rp2040. Most of my Pis are either video displays or 3d printer controllers, so I'll keep getting Pi 4s for these. Maybe the 3A+, I like the form factor of that one.
- wkat4242 2y agoOh yeah if you like the 3A+ you might even be able to get away with the Zero 2W, it has the same chip. And it's even cheaper.
- ThatPlayer 2y agoI don't mind spending a bit more for the 3A+ to not have to deal with the adapters like microUSB to USB-A host ports for my 3D printers. Or for video displays having Ethernet and full-sized HDMI. I do have a Zero 2W just in case, but for my current use cases I just like the 3A+ more.
- wkat4242 2y agoAh I see that makes sense! The adapters are indeed a big annoyance with the zeros. The 3A+ doesn't have ethernet either though (like none of the A models).
- Koshkin 2y agoOne example: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/07/radxa-x4-cheap-intel-n100-raspberry-pi-alternative https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/07/radxa-x4-cheap-intel-n10...
- jamesu 2y agoOne issue I have with a lot of the N100 systems is there seems to be a lot of variants from different manufacturers, slightly different form factors, etc. The PI may be worse but at least you have a pretty good idea what you are actually getting most of the time.
- skrtskrt 2y agoit's a known quantity with known good support for various things and a large community. People and particularly businesses want to buy something they know works, rather than trying to change and figure out new configuration nuances every time something with a slightly better looking spec sheet comes out.
- icelancer 2y agoWe've replaced most of our RPi units with the Beelink SER MAX 5 or whatever at $300ish price point; just too good of a deal (and all of its hardware works with Linux, unlike some other MiniPCs). But we still use RPi4/5s when we want the ecosystem of the RPi, particularly around the GPIO stuff. Typical things include environment monitoring such as lighting and air quality - super simple plug-in devices that easily interface with Raspbian and the GPIO system. Power draw is much lower on the RPis which I think is relevant for some people; not really us. But that's a pretty valuable use case for those who are shipping battery-backed devices.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- amanzi 2y agoI agree - I've got a couple of N100 micro PCs that have replaced Raspberry Pi devices at home. One of them is running Home Assistant and a bunch of addons, and the other is my Plex server. Both of them have more than enough power and super easy to add more RAM or storage.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- starik36 2y agoIt would be cool to have a nex gen RPi (perhaps even the Zero edition) that does away with the micro SD slot and replaces it with a built in NMVe one. In addition, replace most of the other ports (microUSB, etc...) with a number of USB-C ports.
- Koshkin 2y agoWell, not an NVMe maybe (yet), but at least a built-in eMMC slot.
- bitwize 2y agoeMMC is not a slot. It's a form of built-in storage. It conforms to the old MultiMediaCard interface... which was obsoleted by SD cards a LONG time ago. The eMMC variant is still used to cheaply bung in some usable flash storage into rinky-dink devices like thin clients, cellphones, and such. But for something like the Pi, if you want performance and reliability over SD cards you need a grown-up solution: NVMe or SATA SSD.
- Koshkin 2y agoOK, "socket". (ODROID-N2+, for example, uses eMMC as a faster, better alternative to an SD card.) https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-n2-with-4gbyte-ram-2/ https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-n2-with-4gbyte-ram-2/
- starik36 2y agoWhy not. Looking at the prices 128GB NVME is $15 on amazon. That's also the price of various micro SD cards.
- jmholla 2y agoDoes anyone know if these will work with the PoE HATs?
- jsheard 2y agoThe official NVMe hat blocks access to the PoE header, but there are third party options that combine NVMe and PoE into one hat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9ceI0_r_Kg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9ceI0_r_Kg Alternatively you could get one of the NVMe boards that sits under the Pi, and put a standard PoE hat on top.
- robjwells 2y agoAs an example of the latter, Pimoroni offer an NVMe “base” that would avoid this problem and leave the PoE header free: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/nvme-base?variant=41219587178579 https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/nvme-base?variant=4121958...
- sthlmb 2y agoThe Pineboards PoE + NVMe HAT will be released next week and will allow you to have both, and some other 3rd party ones do the same. The official Pi M.2 HAT does block the PoE headers though sadly!
- Neywiny 2y agoBack in college we used a Pi (not the latest gen because their code was out of date but whatever) and being a local with a car, I volunteered to get them for classmates who couldn't. This was back when you could really only buy them in person or pay a 3-4x markup. Anyway, the prof let us know we'd need a pi, card, maybe a case, and maybe a power supply. A lot of people just wanted everything so they didn't have to worry about it. I think most beginners don't want to deal with this stuff and don't care if it's a marked up Samsung drive or marked up whoever uSD card. And now that I'm in industry, I agree. I wouldn't use a Pi but first party accessories are usually worth it vs the debugging hours to find out you bought garbage.
- swijck 2y agoIs supply chain still an issue or is it finally possible to buy a pi without making it like buying tickets to Taylor Swift?
- moffkalast 2y agoLong solved, though some of the new stuff tends to be out of stock at launch for a bit at least. But it's still all produced in the UK and shipping + customs fees easily rack up another 30% so it's at least as expensive as tickets for Taylor Swift.
- thoughtpalette 2y agoLooks pretty good per: https://rpilocator.com/?cat=PI5 https://rpilocator.com/?cat=PI5
- zamadatix 2y agoExtremely available. E.g. pishop.us alone has 947 in stock to buy instantly.
- rixrax 2y agoBut what about the heat sinks / fan when you mount the m2 on top? Especially /w Pi 5, to get more perf out of it, it presumably should have a sizeable heat sink complete with the fan?
- distances 2y agoThe Active Cooler part (that contains a heatsink too) fits well under the HAT.
- jsheard 2y agoThe fan won't do much if there a second PCB stacked right on top of it though, unless there's cutouts for it.
- distances 2y agoIt does quite enough. Some test results are here: https://bret.dk/official-raspberry-pi-m-2-hat-review/#Temperatures-in-Official-Case https://bret.dk/official-raspberry-pi-m-2-hat-review/#Temper... And for any moderate use cases the need for any cooler at all could be disputed. I bet most RPi use cases don't include heavy computing.
- zamadatix 2y agoIn what way is thermally throttling at 86.5 C quite enough cooling? "Active Cooler in Case with HAT" idles near the same temperature "Active Cooler" reaches under max, unthrottled, load.
- distances 2y agoI think you misread the graph. "Active Cooler in Case with HAT" is pretty much the same temperature (74.8) as "Active Cooler" (no case, no hat, 70.6). None of the configurations with the cooler throttled.
- andrewmcwatters 2y agoUsing my Raspberry Pi 4, I find that interestingly enough, even just using the SD card slot on 1 GB of RAM, device usability is perfectly good. As soon as I need to use a web browser, performance goes out the window, and you're nearly stranded in terms of usability. I think that easily qualifies as "desktop usage," and it leaves this desire for a low resource consumption web browser.
- bitwize 2y agoThis is why I install netsurf on all my Pis. "But bitwize," you say, "netsurf doesn't support JavaScript!" To which I reply, "Oh no! Anyway..."
- JohnBooty 2y agodesire for a low resource consumption web browser. What we really want is low resource consumption web content, right? When you pull up the browser's debugger and look at what a "modern" mainstream web page/app needs to deal with... you can see there's little hope for a low power device. Megabytes upon megabytes of obfuscated javascript, from multiple sources, nearly all of it needing decompression and decryption. Using my Raspberry Pi 4 The Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB) I recently got is actually very close to tolerable for web browsing and running VSCode. (I realize VSCode is kind of a pig. I'm just kind of experimenting to see what might be viable) I run Firefox with uBlock, which seems to help somewhat. Total RAM usage with FF and VSCode according to htop is close to 4GB so I suspect that your 1GB Pi is running into swap once you start tooling around the interwebs with a web browser. Upgrading from an A1 SD card to a A2 SD seems to make something of a palpable difference in "desktop usability." Certainly the benchmark scores for the A2 card blow the A1 away. I've only had the Pi for a few weeks so I haven't experimented with more aggressive web optimization stuff, like switching my user-agent to request mobile versions or running a Pi-hole, etc. I'm also running at 4K native, so.... changing that certainly might help too....
- necovek 2y agoWeb browsers are merely platforms to run web apps in. Does the same happen if you visit a couple of "plain HTML" web sites?
- postpawl 2y agoThe official Pi 5 NVME hat doesn’t work with the active cooler and doesn’t fit full sized SSDs. I think the Pimoroni NVMe Base is a better choice since it doesn’t have those issues.
- sunshine-o 2y agoThe problem of Raspberry Pi today is they need to be relevant as a cheap innovation platform in the AI space. They would need to do with AI what they did 10 years ago in the IoT and self-hosting space. I have no idea if their recently AI Camera or Hailo based AI HAT is. But my guess is they would need to offer something good enough for a fraction of the price of a Nvidia Jetson.
- nsteel 2y ago> it’s a bit naff that the M.2 HAT+ doesn’t fit in the official case Pineboard have a hat that fits in the official case. Only £9. https://thepihut.com/products/hatdrive-nano-for-raspberry-pi https://thepihut.com/products/hatdrive-nano-for-raspberry-pi...
- genpfault 2y agoDid you mean this[1]? [1]: https://thepihut.com/products/hatdrive-nano-for-raspberry-pi-5 https://thepihut.com/products/hatdrive-nano-for-raspberry-pi...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Aaron2222 2y agoJust to clarify, the M.2 HAT+ does fit in the official case, you just can't put the lid on.
- nsteel 2y agoDoesn't it also block any fan you've got? Probably a good thing you can't close it.
- DidYaWipe 2y ago"Are we seeing the beginning of the Cambridge Cartel? Where they corner the market of each of the accessories needed for your Pi?!" What is this hysteria?
- sthlmb 2y agoIt’s a joke about how many new products they’re releasing releasing recently