The Raspberry Pi series of economical single-board computers have many fans and not a lot of major faults, but people really enjoy using these machines for tasks far beyond their original design intentions, and that includes running AI processing on them. There’s just one problem: even for inference, trained AI models want lots of RAM, and the Raspberry Pi tops out a 8GB.
If you’re only tangentially aware of these things and wondering why someone would pay $120 for a tiny SBC, you may not be aware that the Raspberry Pi 5 is surprisingly capable. You get a machine that supports dual 4K HDR HDMI displays, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5, USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, and a remarkable amount of expansion considering the size. All this is driven by a Broadcom BCM2712 SoC that features four Arm Cortex-A76 64-bit CPUs running at 2.4 GHz stock, although many people overclock them using add-on coolers.
Indeed, aside from the memory change, all of the other specifications of the Raspberry Pi 5 are completely untouched, but if you’re keen on doing AI work, physical simulations, video editing, or other crazy things on a 25W system with four modest Cortex-A76 cores, you’ll definitely want the 16GB version. For a mostly-complete “personal computing” experience, it’s hard to complain about the price: $120 for the RasPi 5 16GB, while pricing on the Pi 500 kit will be up to the sellers. Of course, you’ll want to pony up another $30-40 for accessories like a case and power adapter. You can order the new RasPi 5 16GB from the official site.