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 appears completely badass.

Arriving on the finish of October, the brand new Raspberry Pi 5 has been unveiled with simply two variants named up to now: a $60 4GB model, and a $80 8GB choice. It’s a departure from main with a $35 mannequin (presently the 1GB Raspberry Pi 4), however given the lengthy historical past of that entry value, 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 help)
• 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 digicam/show transceivers
• PCIe 2.0 x1 interface
• Raspberry Pi commonplace 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 applying 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 total, the efficiency boosts may be described by the quantity 2—for starters, you possibly can count on the Raspberry Pi 5 to be about two to a few occasions sooner. Memory bandwidth additionally doubles, working at 4,267 MT/s versus the RPi 4’s efficient velocity of two,000 MT/s. And you possibly can drive as much as two 4K60 shows, in comparison with only one 4K60 or two 4K30 shows earlier than.

There are noteworthy sensible modifications, 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 actually, 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 undoubtedly get one thing for the cash.

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

Speaking of—when you’ve got an older Raspberry Pi energy provide, you’ll possible wish to improve to the brand new $12 27W (5V, 5A) energy provide. The earlier 15W (5V, 3A) mannequin gained’t reduce it, as the present fed to the USB ports will drop right down to 600mA. The 27W model permits the USB present to succeed in 1.6A, plus present an extra 5W of energy to the board…which you should utilize for overclocking.

Yes, overclocking.

Raspberry Pi Foundation

Also, did you assume we have been completed but? Not fairly. Because there are new HATs coming, too, and the perfect of the bunch (in my humble opinion) is the M.2 HAT that allows using an NMVe SSD (or any M.2 module).

Truly, in case you didn’t catch the theme, the Raspberry Pi 5 is leaning exhausting into high-octane mini-computing. And the excellent news is the Raspberry Pi Foundation goes to promote first to people by way of the tip of the yr, as a thanks for being affected person with RPi 4 provide points. (Update: Some retailers have already begun providing pre-orders for the Raspberry Pi 5. If you’re within the US, head over to Sparkfun or PiShop.us; UK lovers can hit up The Pi Hut and Pimoroni.) Print subscribers to The MagPi and HackSpace magazines 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.