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I covered a few potential use cases in my blog post [1], but I'll list them here for brevity: 1. LLMs / AI: you can run llama2:13b on the Pi 5 natively, though

I covered a few potential use cases in my blog post [1], but I'll list them here for brevity: 1. LLMs / AI: you can run llama2:13b on the Pi 5 natively, though at a pokey 1.4 t/s or so. Training small models for use with camera projects is easier too. 2. Web apps / consolidating containers: You could run a few 'beefy' websites off one Pi, as they're often memory constrained more than CPU-bound nowadays (my Drupal site requires 256 MB per PHP thread). (Though an N100 mini PC could be a better option if you care less about the energy efficiency). 3. Experimental gamers (probably like 1/10,000th the size of the other markets) who want to run modern AAA games with eGPUs on arm64... I'm one of like 10 people I've heard of who have attempted this lol 4. Clustering enthusiasts: usually we have more dollars than sense, and having arm64 nodes that cost $120 new with 16 GB of RAM per node means we can have more raw container or MPI capacity than with 8 GB nodes... [1] https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/who-would-buy-raspberry-pi-120 https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/who-would-buy-raspber...

_joel 2y ago
More RAM for ZFS perhaps, Jeff?
- geerlingguy 2y ago
  Heh, indeed—that's my plan for the 16 GB Pi 5, to swap it out for the 32 TB all-SSD Pi NAS setup I've been running for the past year! https://github.com/geerlingguy/arm-nas https://github.com/geerlingguy/arm-nas
magicalhippo 2y ago
However you can get an N100-based box for about $150 (including shipping) with 16GB RAM and 500GB NVMe storage[1]. The N100 has a more powerful CPU[2], and can use OpenVINO which llama.cpp supports, so better token performance than the Pi. The N100 has far better storage performance due to x4 M.2 slot, and if you need even more RAM you can upgrade[3] it to 32GB. The RPi 5 was a very niche board to begin with, the 16GB option at $120 even more so IMO. [1]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007511663921.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007511663921.html (semi-random example) [2]: https://bret.dk/raspberry-pi-5-review/#Raspberry-Pi-5-Benchmarks https://bret.dk/raspberry-pi-5-review/#Raspberry-Pi-5-Benchm... [3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/MiniPCs/comments/179c9m1/comment/k58n4wt/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MiniPCs/comments/179c9m1/comment/k5... (needs to be single module, not dual)
- PaulKeeble 2y ago
  It also uses a lot more power all of the time for something that will be on 24/7. There is a trade off between these devices, the pi is more expensive to kit equivalent to the N100 machines (which are a bit quicker) but it uses less power all the time especially under load.
  - magicalhippo 2y ago
    Of course if you're powering this off solar in some remote location then we're into the niches where an RPi 5 might make sense, but otherwise it's just down to electricity cost. How that works out in practice depends on workload though, while the N100 consumes more at idle, it can also finish workloads much faster so can potentially spend more time at idle. While the RPi 5 idles at around 4W (including a NVMe) and the N100 at around 15W, the RPi 5 uses 12W at full tilt[1], ie close to N100 idle power draw. Alternatively the N100 with 32GB of RAM can replace two or more RPi 5's in terms of performance, so in that regard might even come out ahead. [1]: https://github.com/geerlingguy/sbc-reviews/issues/21#issuecomment-2579400396 https://github.com/geerlingguy/sbc-reviews/issues/21#issueco...
  - fy20 2y ago
    The cost difference in power probably works out to much less than $50/year. Modern PCs are very power efficient when idle.
    - addicted 2y ago
      $50/yr means you make up the entire cost of the RPi in a little more than 2 years if you’re running it as a home server of some sort, for example.
    - PaulKeeble 2y ago
      Based on my current unit prices the difference in idle performance alone would come out to about £30 a year, so you would get the difference in price back within the life of the device. Europe has much higher KW/h prices for power especially in the past few years and is more advanced in transition to green power technologies and as such we tend to care more about the cost of power than those in the USA.
moffkalast 2y ago
I mean it's funny that people even have to ask, pretty much every piece of software treats RAM like it's free and unlimited nowadays. Even the most memory conscious cpp programs are so bloated at compile time that you need swap to even build them on <8GB boards. 16 GB is really a minimum for anything that's not embedded.
computer23 2y ago
Jeff, Price is precisely linear, not polynomial! $5/GiB (price= $40 + $5 * xGiB) The graph isn't spaced correctly on the x axis, which causes confusion.
denysvitali 2y ago
If you want cheaper (sort of) K8s nodes, with similar more compute power / RAM you can reuse old devices (smartphones, tablets) and run postmarketOS on them. Shameless plug: https://blog.denv.it/posts/pmos-k3s-cluster/ https://blog.denv.it/posts/pmos-k3s-cluster/

_joel 2y ago

More RAM for ZFS perhaps, Jeff?

geerlingguy 2y ago
Heh, indeed—that's my plan for the 16 GB Pi 5, to swap it out for the 32 TB all-SSD Pi NAS setup I've been running for the past year! https://github.com/geerlingguy/arm-nas https://github.com/geerlingguy/arm-nas

magicalhippo 2y ago

However you can get an N100-based box for about $150 (including shipping) with 16GB RAM and 500GB NVMe storage[1]. The N100 has a more powerful CPU[2], and can use OpenVINO which llama.cpp supports, so better token performance than the Pi. The N100 has far better storage performance due to x4 M.2 slot, and if you need even more RAM you can upgrade[3] it to 32GB. The RPi 5 was a very niche board to begin with, the 16GB option at $120 even more so IMO. [1]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007511663921.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007511663921.html (semi-random example) [2]: https://bret.dk/raspberry-pi-5-review/#Raspberry-Pi-5-Benchmarks https://bret.dk/raspberry-pi-5-review/#Raspberry-Pi-5-Benchm... [3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/MiniPCs/comments/179c9m1/comment/k58n4wt/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MiniPCs/comments/179c9m1/comment/k5... (needs to be single module, not dual)

PaulKeeble 2y ago
It also uses a lot more power all of the time for something that will be on 24/7. There is a trade off between these devices, the pi is more expensive to kit equivalent to the N100 machines (which are a bit quicker) but it uses less power all the time especially under load.
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  Of course if you're powering this off solar in some remote location then we're into the niches where an RPi 5 might make sense, but otherwise it's just down to electricity cost. How that works out in practice depends on workload though, while the N100 consumes more at idle, it can also finish workloads much faster so can potentially spend more time at idle. While the RPi 5 idles at around 4W (including a NVMe) and the N100 at around 15W, the RPi 5 uses 12W at full tilt[1], ie close to N100 idle power draw. Alternatively the N100 with 32GB of RAM can replace two or more RPi 5's in terms of performance, so in that regard might even come out ahead. [1]: https://github.com/geerlingguy/sbc-reviews/issues/21#issuecomment-2579400396 https://github.com/geerlingguy/sbc-reviews/issues/21#issueco...
- fy20 2y ago
  The cost difference in power probably works out to much less than $50/year. Modern PCs are very power efficient when idle.
  - addicted 2y ago
    $50/yr means you make up the entire cost of the RPi in a little more than 2 years if you’re running it as a home server of some sort, for example.
  - PaulKeeble 2y ago
    Based on my current unit prices the difference in idle performance alone would come out to about £30 a year, so you would get the difference in price back within the life of the device. Europe has much higher KW/h prices for power especially in the past few years and is more advanced in transition to green power technologies and as such we tend to care more about the cost of power than those in the USA.

moffkalast 2y ago

I mean it's funny that people even have to ask, pretty much every piece of software treats RAM like it's free and unlimited nowadays. Even the most memory conscious cpp programs are so bloated at compile time that you need swap to even build them on <8GB boards. 16 GB is really a minimum for anything that's not embedded.

computer23 2y ago

Jeff, Price is precisely linear, not polynomial! $5/GiB (price= $40 + $5 * xGiB) The graph isn't spaced correctly on the x axis, which causes confusion.

denysvitali 2y ago

If you want cheaper (sort of) K8s nodes, with similar more compute power / RAM you can reuse old devices (smartphones, tablets) and run postmarketOS on them. Shameless plug: https://blog.denv.it/posts/pmos-k3s-cluster/ https://blog.denv.it/posts/pmos-k3s-cluster/