Newer, Cheaper Raspberry Pi 5 Launched

Launched less than a year ago, the Raspberry Pi 5 has proven widely popular with single-board computing fans and Linux ARM enthusiasts thanks to its increased performance, memory, and PCIe bus for expansion.

But until now the Raspberry Pi 5 has only been available in two variants: a $60/£57 model with 4 GB RAM, and a $80/£77 model with 8 GB RAM.

Ample memory for resource-intensive workloads (like running a full Ubuntu desktop), but not everyone needs or wants that much memory, at the increased cost, for simpler projects.

Which is why the Raspberry Pi today announced a new $50/£47 base model with 2 GB RAM.

The 2 GB Raspberry Pi 5 also features a ‘cost-optimised’ Broadcom BCM2712D0 SoC. It’s ‘functionally identical’ to the BCM2712C1 used in the other Pi 5 models, but cheaper to make.

“[The C1 version] contains functionality intended to serve other markets, which we don’t need. This ‘dark silicon’ is permanently disabled in the chips we use, but takes up die space, and therefore adds cost,” says Eben Upton, Raspberry Pi Founder.

“The new D0 stepping strips away all that unneeded functionality, leaving only the bits we need. From the perspective of a Raspberry Pi user, it is functionally identical to its predecessor [and] is cheaper to make, and so is available to us at somewhat lower cost.”

Besides reduced RAM, an optimised SoC, and a cheaper price tag, there are no further differences to the marginally pricier Raspberry Pi 5 models. Same ports, same pins, same connectors, same speeds — and the same fun!

So is saving $10 for less RAM worth it?

That depends on what you want to use for Pi for.

Hobbyist, industrial, IoT, and edge computing use cases may find 2GB more than sufficient, and vintage and retro gaming (up to PS1) should be fine with 2 GB given most popular ARM-powered handhelds top out at 1 GB!

But anyone planning to put their Pi through its paces with media editing on an Ubuntu desktop, driving a 4K display, compiling code from source, and slovenly keeping a hundred browser tabs open, will find the $10-20 extra for more RAM is worth it.

The Raspberry Pi 5 with 2GB RAM is available to buy from approved Pi resellers (at MSRP/RRP) from today, such as Pishop.us in the United States, The Pi Hut in the UK, e2u in India, Welectron in Germany, and others – non-approved resellers may charge more.