Holiday cheer is coming early for makers and single-board laptop lovers: The Raspberry Pi Foundation simply introduced the successor to the Raspberry Pi 4, and it seems to be completely badass.

Arriving on the finish of October, the brand new Raspberry Pi 5 has been unveiled with simply two variants named to date: a $60 4GB model, and a $80 8GB choice. It’s a departure from main with a $35 mannequin (at the moment the 1GB Raspberry Pi 4), however given the lengthy historical past of that entry worth, it’s not unlikely to see extra variants introduced down the highway.

Right now, the main focus is on energy, and it’s comprehensible why. Not solely does the Raspberry Pi 5 seem able to ship a large step up in efficiency in comparison with its 2019 predecessor, however its new silicon was designed in-house by the Raspberry Pi staff. The specs present tangible upgrades throughout the board:

• 2.4GHz Arm Cortex-A76 CPU (quad-core, 64-bit)
• VideoCore VII GPU (helps OpenGL ES 3.1, Vulkan 1.2)
• Dual 4K60 HDMI output
• 4K60 HEVC decoder
• Dual-band Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac)
• Bluetooth 5.0 / Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
• High-speed microSD card interface (with SDR104 mode assist)
• 2x USB 3.0 ports (helps simultaneous 5Gbps operation)
• 2x USB 2.0 ports
• Gigabit Ethernet (helps PoE+ with separate PoE+ HAT)
• 2x 4-lane MIPI digital camera/show transceivers
• PCIe 2.0 x1 interface
• Raspberry Pi customary 40-pin GPIO header
• Real-time clock
• Power button

Raspberry Pi Foundation

For {hardware} nerds there are many particulars to dig into, like the truth that the appliance processor (the chip powering the board) sees a die shrink from 28nm within the Raspberry Pi 4 to 16nm within the Raspberry Pi 5. The structure additionally strikes from a monolithic design to a chiplet design. But general, the efficiency boosts might be described by the quantity 2—for starters, you’ll be able to count on the Raspberry Pi 5 to be about two to a few occasions quicker. Memory bandwidth additionally doubles, operating at 4,267 MT/s versus the RPi 4’s efficient velocity of two,000 MT/s. And you’ll be able to drive as much as two 4K60 shows, in comparison with only one 4K60 or two 4K30 shows earlier than.

There are noteworthy sensible adjustments, too. Ex: The board now sports activities mounting holes for a heatsink, together with connectors for a coin battery to energy the real-time clock. And I don’t learn about different Raspberry Pi followers, however truthfully, that energy button is as thrilling to me because the {hardware} updates.

(Itching for more information? You can dive into the Raspberry Pi 5 announcement post, which has a full rundown of the board, together with a complete technical overview.)

Raspberry Pi Foundation

The Raspberry Pi 5’s equipment have gotten souped up, too. The official case now contains an built-in fan, and it’s additionally been tweaked to permit insertion of the board with out having to first take out the SD card. Oh, and you may extra simply stack different instances or add-on boards (formally generally known as HATs, or “hardware attached on top”) by eradicating the lid. It will run you extra—$10 versus the Raspberry Pi 4’s $5 case—however you positively get one thing for the cash.

You may also now purchase an energetic cooler for the RPi 5’s chip, which is each an cute and inexpensive addition to the board—at simply $5, it’s the identical worth as a set of passive heatsinks. And you’re probably going to wish it for those who push your board. Though it typically consumes much less energy and is extra environment friendly, the Raspberry Pi 5’s utility processor hits greater peaks when pushed to its limits (about 12 watts, in comparison with the RPi 4’s 8W).

Speaking of—if in case you have an older Raspberry Pi energy provide, you’ll probably need to improve to the brand new $12 27W (5V, 5A) energy provide. The earlier 15W (5V, 3A) mannequin gained’t lower it, as the present fed to the USB ports will drop right down to 600mA. The 27W model permits the USB present to achieve 1.6A, plus present a further 5W of energy to the board…which you should use for overclocking.

Yes, overclocking.

Raspberry Pi Foundation

Also, did you suppose we have been executed but? Not fairly. Because there are new HATs coming, too, and the most effective of the bunch (in my humble opinion) is the M.2 HAT that permits the usage of an NMVe SSD (or any M.2 module).

Truly, for those who didn’t catch the theme, the Raspberry Pi 5 is leaning arduous into high-octane mini-computing. And the excellent news is the Raspberry Pi Foundation goes to promote first to people by means of the top of the yr, as a thanks for being affected person with RPi 4 provide points. Print subscribers to The MagPi and HackSpace magazines will get precedence entry, too, by way of a single-use code.

Honestly, I can’t wait—and to whet our appetites, a brand new official first-party working system can be launching forward of the Raspberry Pi 5 in mid-October. Called Raspberry Pi OS, it’s primarily based on the Linux Debian distro, in addition to the Raspbian by-product that’s existed for years. The latest Raspberry Pi is heralding a glow-up of epic proportions.