hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4146.txt

Episode: 4146
Title: HPR4146: Pi 5 - Some initial thoughts
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4146/hpr4146.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 20:14:40

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4146 from Monday the 24th of June 2024.
Today's show is entitled, Pie Five Some Initial Thoughts.
It is the 10th show of Kevin and is about 15 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, after playing around with the pie for a couple of months,
Kevin shares his experiences.
Hello, hello, welcome to another episode of HPR.
This is Kevin from the Tuxjam Podcast.
And today I'm continuing on with my pie series with some thoughts on the Raspberry Pie Five.
Now, the actual version I'm testing is the Raspberry Pie Five with the 8GB RAM.
This is purchased with PyMaronis NVME connector and 512GB drive.
Also including the Pie Five PSU.
So the whole thing was purchased from PyMaroni for the grand total sum of £155.70.
Hence, that also included postage.
Now, let's just start off with the specs.
So the specs in the Pie Five are 2.4GHz quad core 64-bit ARM.
It has got a video core VII GPU.
It has got two HDMI display outputs.
The dual-band 802.11 AC Wi-Fi is a Wi-Fi 5.
Bluetooth 5, microSD card slot, standard 2x USB 3 ports, 2x USB 2 ports,
a gigabyte Ethernet, 2x 4-lane MIPI camera display transceiver.
It's got PCIe 2 interface, just one.
And again, that's what the NVME connector attaches through.
And it maintains the USB-C for power supply.
However, be warned, if you're using a PS4 or other similar power supply unit,
it will actually come up with an error message and will tell you that you don't have enough power to run the Pie.
And of course, a standard with the Raspberry Pi does have its 40-input output pin.
And it also has for the first time ever, it has a dedicated power button.
And for those of you who are kind of into the specs, you'll notice this is quite an improvement over the Pie 4.
And certainly for those of us who purchased a Pie 400,
we kind of generally found out that although it was a significant increase over its previous versions,
it really wasn't a viable desktop PC replacement.
So does the Pie 5 fare any better?
In short, yes, it fares considerably better in the previous models and it's attempt to run as a replacement desktop PC.
The first thing that I noticed was how quick it was from switching on to a graphical environment,
a working graphical environment.
Now I timed this in at 12 seconds.
Now you wouldn't get the same speed.
I don't believe with an SD card.
That was with the SSD drive attached, the NVME SSD drive.
So testing it out, I did a few kind of standard things that I do.
So I tested it running audacity, it actually performed very well.
One thing I did notice was when it came to exporting tracks,
I was reminded that I was running a Pie with a wee bit slower.
So general day-to-day things, I installed Libra Office, that performed very well,
typing up the one thing I will say about Libra Office was for some unknown reason.
When I installed it through the repos on I used a Raspberry Pi always.
And the icons were absolutely tiny and that was on my 32 inch monitor.
So I'd hate to think what it would be like on a much smaller monitor.
But the icons were tiny, I had to increase the size for Libra Office.
They were horribly small.
This didn't keep in the same theme in with the actual Raspberry Pi always.
The icons were appropriately sized for that.
So just a one word of note there.
When it came to browsing, the browsing experience was better.
There were some lag on the images.
It was loading up, it kind of reminded me of stepping back maybe a bit two or three years on my own computer.
However, just bearing my comparison is I currently,
as my main desktop PC, have an i9 gaming rig.
So it's maybe not fair to compare that.
It was slightly slower but certainly nothing that would ruin the browsing experience.
The one thing that did surprise me was when I installed Gimp and Inkscape,
how well they run without any issues.
Just for a simple basic thing, I was able to save an image and each the image of Web
and then open it up in Gimp and remove the background completely.
Placed it into Inkscape, I added a shadow stucker.
I actually created a, I got the Pi 5 itself.
Remove the background completely.
I added a shadow, put it on a worktop.
And I have to admit, it had absolutely no lag or anything whatsoever.
In fact, I was actually really impressed.
It actually handled as well as my PC at work,
which runs the tenth edition of a certain MS operating system.
So that actually did shock me.
I wouldn't expect this to be a gaming PC,
but I thought let's try.
I actually did try to get Stardew Valley running on this,
not because it's going to stretch it in any way,
it uses my favorite game.
I installed Box86, but I was unsuccessful at actually getting it to run,
so actually I didn't even get it properly installed.
I kept on throwing up better messages.
However, I wasn't the only one.
A lot of people seemed to get stuck on this issues I was looking at.
I'm good to page.
I was looking at various forums.
So I just kind of gave up after a couple of days trying.
But I did throw into it right.
What can I do?
That's not just a 2D game.
So then I thought back to, okay,
I haven't played this in years.
Extreme Tux Racer.
Still there.
I decided let's give this a try.
And to be honest, I expected this to be quite choppy.
And glitchy to be honest,
given at the end of the days a pie.
However, I was really impressed.
Everything ran nicely.
It didn't splutter.
It didn't go slow.
It rendered very well.
And I was able to complete every race that I tried.
It really was a nice surprise for me to get that.
What's the use case here?
Well, certainly,
this could be used as a desktop PC.
Or maybe as an alternative to desktop PC, should I say,
for kind of casual everyday users.
However, you know, if you're running your PC for work,
video editing, if you want to play AAA titles and gaming,
et cetera, this certainly is not going to cut the mustard.
It's one of the cases I've just actually thought of,
is if you have got maybe elderly parents or grandparents
that like to use computers,
but you know,
they're only just maybe running it for just browsing the web,
doing maybe doing a few basic things,
typing up a letter, something like that.
And you're the one that maintains it.
This could actually be ideal,
because it's such a small thing, the pie,
that you could literally take it away,
you know, produce an update,
or if anything happens,
where you actually have to reinstall something
then it's no major issue.
So that is certainly something to think about.
But the pie to be honest for the majority of people,
it's projects, it's single use things.
And you know, from the specs I read out earlier,
then it's certainly going to have more than enough
to do the vast majority of things.
In fact, if we've been entirely honest,
it might be overkill for actually a lot of things.
The pie-5 can certainly do everything and more
that the previous incarnations of the pie could do.
But one thing to bear in mind is,
it will also require more power.
And in turn, that can increase the running cost.
Now, nothing compared to a desktop PC.
But it's actually a bit more than the pie-4,
which I remember a lot of the pie enthusiasts
accused that of being power-hungry.
Now, if anybody really plugging this in,
connecting it to the mains,
you know, this is going to be negligible.
However, it is something that may be worth considering.
If you're going to use the pie for something
like an outdoor project,
so something like maybe a weather station,
or if you're going to use it for camera-to-view nature and wildlife,
you know, on a robot, for example,
where a battery is going to be necessary,
the extra performance is going to be a bit heavier on battery usage.
So it is maybe something that is worth considering.
Now, for significant performance,
we're only going to have a very slight increase in price.
So the 8-gig model, just purely the pie itself,
is currently 76.80 on Pymaroney.
But given the 8-gig pie-4 is currently retailing
at 72.00 on Pymaroney,
for an extra £4.80, you really are getting quite a considerable improvement.
Now, before I actually kind of finish off and sign off here,
I've got to do an honest review.
I really cannot review something that's designed
to almost be a low-end P desktop PC
without comparing it to a mini PC.
So maybe thinking about comparing it with the Intel N100
or something similar, you know, if you're looking for a small PC,
certainly the pie is a lot smaller, considerably smaller,
and running it will use significantly less power.
But it is worth considering that for a similar price,
at the time of recording, there's a mini PC on Amazon
with a power by the Intel N100 for 169 pound and 15 pence.
The device is 3.4 gigahertz, 4 cores and 4 threads.
So 16 gigabyte RAM, so that's going to double the pie's one.
And again, this comes with M.2 PCIe 500 gigabyte SSD,
which is the same as what I had.
It does have Wi-Fi 6, which is an improvement,
because the pie does come with a Wi-Fi 5.
And one last thing to consider,
especially if you want to use it as a desktop,
is that that is actually an XCD6 device,
where you may think you're so hot.
Well, that does mean you're going to have
an awful lot more applications
that run natively on that,
compared to the ARM-based architecture that the pie uses.
Now, I'm not saying that there's a clear winner either way,
but you really have to do consider,
is it worth thinking about that?
For when we're talking about, you know,
kind of roughly the same price,
but I've kind of 10 to 15 pound difference.
Certainly as far as the scores,
there's a significant improvement over the pie versions.
As I said earlier,
you need to ask yourself,
is it worth investing in this?
If you already have current projects using pie forge
and they're handling them fine,
you know, is it worth taking them off
and replacing them with pie fives at this stage
I personally would probably say no?
If you're looking at getting a new pie,
then yes, I'd absolutely highly recommend this,
especially given you're getting a significant improvement
for a tiny price increase.
Now, you may think, maybe asking,
is there anywhere this really stands out
and there's one place I'm going to say?
The pie five certainly has,
from my limited experience with it so far,
shows significant increase in performance
when you're running retro gaming.
Anything up to,
to be honest, to kind of,
GameCube ROMs, et cetera,
ending up to them, there's no difference.
What I've really noticed was running PlayStation games,
running PS1, PS2 games.
It definitely is a significant improvement
over the pie forward for that.
So definitely something to think about
if you are actually wanting to run it
as a retro gaming emulator.
If you don't want to go anything beyond the SNES
or the Mega Drive,
then no, this is probably not worth it, in my opinion.
But yeah, if you're looking at more and more
sort of up-to-date systems,
looking at building up a retro gaming emulator
with something a bit more advanced
than just the 16-bit systems,
then yeah, definitely have a look at this.
So overall, that's my review of the pie five.
Again, limited, very limited in what I have.
I've only been playing about with this for a couple of months,
and not like I said, every single day.
I did try running it as my daily driver
for just over a week,
and I have to confess,
this would be something outside a gaming
that I could probably live with quite easily,
and it's certainly something to think about.
If you want to take a computer away with your holiday,
take your HDMI cable,
who could up to a screen.
So there, that is my two-peneth on the pie five.
So if you have any comments, please put them below.
I'll put the links to the various items that I bought
in the show notes,
and yeah, that's pretty much me.
So until next time,
it's goodbye from me.
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