The ultimate Pi 5 arrives carrying 16GB ... and a price to match

How much RAM does an enthusiast really need?

The Raspberry Pi has come a long way from its early days, as demonstrated by the single-board computer maker's latest iteration of the Pi 5 in 16GB guise.

Is this the ultimate Pi 5?

The company gave us one to review ahead of today's launch; and frankly, it's a bit of a headscratcher. The extra memory is always welcome, however, the souped up board is strides apart from the computer's humble origins as something that buyers could pick up for around $30. The first iterations shipped with a mere 256MB, and now users can buy a considerably speedier version that includes 16GB, though it is reflected in a higher price.

The specifications and prices have gradually increased as the years passed after that 2012 launch. Customers can buy a 8GB Raspberry Pi 5 for around $80 yet the 16GB version pushes that list price past the $100 barrier to $120.

There's no getting around it - relatively speaking, $120 is a lot of money, and we'd advise potential buyers to think long and hard about what they need that extra memory for. Perhaps spinning up a lot of containers, or running some seriously RAM-hungry applications?

Pi supremo Eben Upton told The Register, "We've had people interested in building cost-effective clusters for applications like computation fluid dynamics, and the feeling there is that 4GB/core is a good balance.

He noted that LLM models with large working sets could also see a performance drop when having to resort to swap files on lower memory models. Also, "while Raspberry Pi OS is very polished from a memory footprint perspective, more generic distros tend to use a bit more space: you could imagine someone who wanted to run Ubuntu selecting the 16GB variant to offset this."

However, if your needs don't extend to having that much data in RAM, then there is little else in the Pi 5 package. There is a new 16GB jumper on the board (if you know where to look - the writing to indicate the RAM options has gone and been replaced by text proclaiming this is the 16GB version), but ultimately, it is the same CPU and, in our testing, runs at the same temperatures (a little on the warm side when loaded up with tasks.)

Upton told us this was "probably" the final evolution of the Pi 5.

"The chipset has an SDRAM aperture for 64GB of memory, but to provision this we would need either larger individual die (24Gbit or 32Gbit vs 16Gbit at present), or to move to quad-rank (various technical challenges there)."

The updates have turned the Pi 5 into quite a speedy little thing, enough to offset the inevitable price rises for versions with less RAM but perhaps not so for the 16GB incarnation - that $40 jump stings.

In terms of the price list, there's an increase of around $10 from 2GB to 4GB, and $20 to go from 4GB to 8GB, so while the 1, 2, 4 sequence might be pleasing to engineers, it might not be for your wallet, particularly since the basic Pi itself doesn't change and, of course, there is no way to upgrade the RAM after purchase.

We put the value question to Upton, and he attributed the rise to more expensive silicon and pointed out certain other manufacturers charge considerably more than $40 for another 8GB.

Ultimately, is the 16GB Pi 5 any good? The answer is yes – with more provisos than previously. A lot depends on if you need that extra RAM, and most users probably don't. If you're in that crowd of customers, then stick with the 8GB or even 4GB versions and spend the money you'll save on some of the exciting externals that can be plugged into a Pi.

Or, if you have a workload that would benefit from the extra RAM and have given the faster Pi 5 a swerve for that reason, then the 16GB Pi 5 is worth checking out. But remember that the price has elevated the diminutive computer to a level where there are plenty of alternative options. ®