5 ms·

I think the conclusion here is that Raspberry Pis are now too pricey (especially when factoring in the various required accessories) and rarely make sense for t

by drnick1 10mo ago

I think the conclusion here is that Raspberry Pis are now too pricey (especially when factoring in the various required accessories) and rarely make sense for typical desktop use vs. x86 mini-PCs. They make even less sense compared to various used thin clients that can generally be found on eBay.

KurSix 10mo ago
I think the Pi still makes sense when you actually want a Pi
hamdingers 10mo ago
You're paying a premium for physical compatibility with a ton of niche accessories. Whether or not they make sense depends on how important those accessories are to your use case. That and the prices never really came back down to earth after the chip shortage hikes.
- nomel 10mo ago
  > You're paying a premium for physical compatibility No. There are a bunch of alternatives with some to full pin compatibility. Some being many times faster [1]. No new projects should use a new Raspberry Pi. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OQ5ascBuCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OQ5ascBuCw
  - rcxdude 10mo ago
    Unless they want to keep going without needing to swap things out frequently and deal with the extremely poor support that most alternatives get.
  - samlinnfer 10mo ago
    Your video rates the PI as 10 for support, 10 for ease of use and 7 for performance. Just the support and ease of use is enough. You're paying for a mature ecosystem where you know things work and you don't have to waste time struggling.
  - arendtio 10mo ago
    Thanks for the video. I just bought a RPI5 and was curious if this was a mistake, but after watching the whole 'I love PI' video, I am still okay with my choice. It is good to know that there are other boards with better multi-thread performance and AI capabilities. However, there are also a few things I disagree with in the test setup, such as rating only multithread performance and giving the best single-thread performance the lowest overall rating. In addition, concluding the AI tests without the extension board for the RPI5 seems a bit weird. So thank you for the video, but I think it depends on what you are trying to achieve and it is not a simple there you get more bang for your buck.
- SecretDreams 10mo ago
  > You're paying a premium for physical compatibility with a ton of niche accessories. Maybe this is the new narrative, but it wasn't how the Pi was initially developed and marketed. It's just a touch too expensive for the use cases many hobbiest have.
alnwlsn 10mo ago
It would make a lousy desktop computer even if it was 10x as powerful. - high current 5V USB power supply you probably don't have - HDMI micro port you have like 1 cable for - PCIe through very fragile ribbon cable + hodgepodge of adapters - more adapters needed for SSD - no case, but needs ample airflow - power input is on the side and sticks out GPIO is the killer feature, but I'll be honest, 99% of the hardware hacking I do is with microcontrollers much cheaper than a Pi that provide a serial port over USB anyways (and the commonly-confused-for-a-full-pi Pi Pico is pretty great for this)
- milesvp 10mo ago
  > PCIe through very fragile ribbon cable We had a problem trying to bring up a couple of Pi 5, hoping they'd represent something reproducable we could deploy on multiple sites as an isolation stage for remote firmware programming. Everything looked great, until we brought one somewhere and untethered it from ethernet, and we started getting bizarre hangs. Turned out the wifi was close enough to the PCIe ribbon cable that bursts of wifi broadcasts were enough to disrupt the signal to the SSD, and essentially unmount it (taking root with it). Luckily we were able to find better shielded cables, but it's not something we were expecting to have to deal with.
- nomel 10mo ago
  I never really understood how GPIO is a killer feature with them. There are so many ways to get GPIO, from $5 USB dongles to any microcontroller/dev board that's ever exists. What's special about Raspberry Pi GPIO that I'm missing? The only case I can think of is very heavy compute that relies on low latency GPIO related to that compute?
  - robinsonb5 10mo ago
    The low latency is the reason why the PiStorm (Amiga CPU accelerator) project works so well on a Pi 2, 3 or 4. (Pi 5 is no longer suitable since the GPIO is now the other side of a PCI-E bus and thus suffers significantly higher latency than on previous models, despite being much faster in terms of throughput.)
  - 10mo ago
Aurornis 10mo ago
> I think the conclusion here is that Raspberry Pis are now too pricey This blog post shows a $2000 GPU attached to a slow SBC that costs less than 1/10th of the GPU. It’s interesting. It’s entertaining. It’s a fun read. But it’s not a serious setup that anyone considers optimal.
- pharrington 10mo ago
  You think an RTX 5090 only costs $2000??
  - 7402 10mo ago
    It does if you can get an RTX 5090 Founders Edition from Best Buy or Nvidia. (I've been trying for a year with no luck - a few times I've gotten on the wait list for a purchase, but never successfully.)
    - pharrington 10mo ago
      Have you heard any anecdotes about someone who isn't a reviewer obtaining a RTX 5090 Founders Edition? I haven't.
bityard 10mo ago
For desktop use cases, sure. But the Pi's target market is makers and educators who want small and efficient and can interface easily with peripherals like cameras and GPIO. Desktop users and low-end home labbers are a distant second.
- moffkalast 10mo ago
  Small yes, efficient no. It's more or less on par with comparable minipcs in power draw, needs an active cooler and idles at over 3W. That's more than a Pi 2 uses going flat out. They keep increasing power draw with marginal efficiency gains and don't bother to do much power management. It's absolutely atrocious compared to the average smartphone SoC. I really hope there's some kind of battery oriented low wattage high efficiency version planned someday, because we're up to requiring a 5A power supply and it's getting absurd.

by drnick1 10mo ago

KurSix 10mo ago

I think the Pi still makes sense when you actually want a Pi

hamdingers 10mo ago

You're paying a premium for physical compatibility with a ton of niche accessories. Whether or not they make sense depends on how important those accessories are to your use case. That and the prices never really came back down to earth after the chip shortage hikes.

nomel 10mo ago
> You're paying a premium for physical compatibility No. There are a bunch of alternatives with some to full pin compatibility. Some being many times faster [1]. No new projects should use a new Raspberry Pi. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OQ5ascBuCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OQ5ascBuCw
- rcxdude 10mo ago
  Unless they want to keep going without needing to swap things out frequently and deal with the extremely poor support that most alternatives get.
- samlinnfer 10mo ago
  Your video rates the PI as 10 for support, 10 for ease of use and 7 for performance. Just the support and ease of use is enough. You're paying for a mature ecosystem where you know things work and you don't have to waste time struggling.
- arendtio 10mo ago
  Thanks for the video. I just bought a RPI5 and was curious if this was a mistake, but after watching the whole 'I love PI' video, I am still okay with my choice. It is good to know that there are other boards with better multi-thread performance and AI capabilities. However, there are also a few things I disagree with in the test setup, such as rating only multithread performance and giving the best single-thread performance the lowest overall rating. In addition, concluding the AI tests without the extension board for the RPI5 seems a bit weird. So thank you for the video, but I think it depends on what you are trying to achieve and it is not a simple there you get more bang for your buck.
SecretDreams 10mo ago
> You're paying a premium for physical compatibility with a ton of niche accessories. Maybe this is the new narrative, but it wasn't how the Pi was initially developed and marketed. It's just a touch too expensive for the use cases many hobbiest have.

alnwlsn 10mo ago

It would make a lousy desktop computer even if it was 10x as powerful. - high current 5V USB power supply you probably don't have - HDMI micro port you have like 1 cable for - PCIe through very fragile ribbon cable + hodgepodge of adapters - more adapters needed for SSD - no case, but needs ample airflow - power input is on the side and sticks out GPIO is the killer feature, but I'll be honest, 99% of the hardware hacking I do is with microcontrollers much cheaper than a Pi that provide a serial port over USB anyways (and the commonly-confused-for-a-full-pi Pi Pico is pretty great for this)

milesvp 10mo ago
> PCIe through very fragile ribbon cable We had a problem trying to bring up a couple of Pi 5, hoping they'd represent something reproducable we could deploy on multiple sites as an isolation stage for remote firmware programming. Everything looked great, until we brought one somewhere and untethered it from ethernet, and we started getting bizarre hangs. Turned out the wifi was close enough to the PCIe ribbon cable that bursts of wifi broadcasts were enough to disrupt the signal to the SSD, and essentially unmount it (taking root with it). Luckily we were able to find better shielded cables, but it's not something we were expecting to have to deal with.
nomel 10mo ago
I never really understood how GPIO is a killer feature with them. There are so many ways to get GPIO, from $5 USB dongles to any microcontroller/dev board that's ever exists. What's special about Raspberry Pi GPIO that I'm missing? The only case I can think of is very heavy compute that relies on low latency GPIO related to that compute?
- robinsonb5 10mo ago
  The low latency is the reason why the PiStorm (Amiga CPU accelerator) project works so well on a Pi 2, 3 or 4. (Pi 5 is no longer suitable since the GPIO is now the other side of a PCI-E bus and thus suffers significantly higher latency than on previous models, despite being much faster in terms of throughput.)
- 10mo ago

Aurornis 10mo ago

> I think the conclusion here is that Raspberry Pis are now too pricey This blog post shows a $2000 GPU attached to a slow SBC that costs less than 1/10th of the GPU. It’s interesting. It’s entertaining. It’s a fun read. But it’s not a serious setup that anyone considers optimal.

pharrington 10mo ago
You think an RTX 5090 only costs $2000??
- 7402 10mo ago
  It does if you can get an RTX 5090 Founders Edition from Best Buy or Nvidia. (I've been trying for a year with no luck - a few times I've gotten on the wait list for a purchase, but never successfully.)
  - pharrington 10mo ago
    Have you heard any anecdotes about someone who isn't a reviewer obtaining a RTX 5090 Founders Edition? I haven't.

bityard 10mo ago

For desktop use cases, sure. But the Pi's target market is makers and educators who want small and efficient and can interface easily with peripherals like cameras and GPIO. Desktop users and low-end home labbers are a distant second.

moffkalast 10mo ago
Small yes, efficient no. It's more or less on par with comparable minipcs in power draw, needs an active cooler and idles at over 3W. That's more than a Pi 2 uses going flat out. They keep increasing power draw with marginal efficiency gains and don't bother to do much power management. It's absolutely atrocious compared to the average smartphone SoC. I really hope there's some kind of battery oriented low wattage high efficiency version planned someday, because we're up to requiring a 5A power supply and it's getting absurd.