Raspberry Pi4 announced

Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.
Wow, they kept that under wraps pretty well. Had not heard of an imminent release of the Pi 4, but am definitely excited about it.

The increase in processing power, available RAM (1, 2,and 4 GB options now exist!) splitting of USB and ethernet, etc. will all make this very competitive with other ARM based SBCs and even with some low end (e.g. Kaby Lake, Gemini Lake) Intel based mini-PCs.

Allowing some time for things to shake out and the Debian Buster based OS to become available is not a bad idea, but why wait? Start having fun now!
 
Last edited:
looks like you can't throw on a little heatsink and put in a small case anymore

You can still do that. The SOC will simply throttle (reduce clock speed) when it reaches some high temperature. You can also set the CPU clock to be always slow, although this and the Pi's own throttling will reduce processing power.

I would have been nice if they took the route of e.g. the Odroid N2, where the SOC is on the bottom where not much else is found, and the whole SBC comes premounted on a large heat sink:
ODROID-N2 — ameriDroid
N2_1_480x480.jpg
 
Last edited:
The GPIO benchmark shows a nice increase.
I'm wondering if the new soc would allow for higher I2S frequencies.

With the great USB and ethernet performance it's gonna be a nice (LMS) server.
Especially if booted from USB-SSD and data also put on SSD. All that looks really promising.

The more you look at the device the more you're tempted to push the "order-now" button. ;)
 
Another review
Raspberry Pi 4 Review: The New Gold Standard for Single-Board Computing - Tom's Hardware

Looks like if you run off a usb3 stick you'll get a nice bump in performance.

I did see that it throttles if temps get too high, but I don't want it to throttle if I'm getting this for the better performance.

But in real life, for the kind of stuff I'd use if for, may not have a heat problem, my pi3's don't get very warm even in a case.
I really don't want to have to use a fan, but I also know that just moving a little air makes a big difference in getting heat out.
 
One of the best Pi cases that I know, and that helps with thermal management, is made by FLIRC:
https://flirc.tv/more/raspberry-pi-case

The top of the case has a large block that sticks down and contacts the top of the SOC via a thermal pad. Heat is then dissipated via the case. WiFi performance seems unaffected.

If they offer a Pi4 version of the case I would buy it.

I think unless you are maxxing out the Pi on computer-intensive tasks you will not have a problem. If you need something with more CPU power, get a mini PC instead of an ARM board and be prepared to spend much more. YGWYPF
 
One of the best Pi cases that I know, and that helps with thermal management, is made by FLIRC:
https://flirc.tv/more/raspberry-pi-case

The top of the case has a large block that sticks down and contacts the top of the SOC via a thermal pad. Heat is then dissipated via the case. WiFi performance seems unaffected.

If they offer a Pi4 version of the case I would buy it.

I think unless you are maxxing out the Pi on computer-intensive tasks you will not have a problem. If you need something with more CPU power, get a mini PC instead of an ARM board and be prepared to spend much more. YGWYPF

Some background. I running home automation software (home assistant) and node red on a pi. When I used the same pi3 for both, there was noticeable lag. I moved node red to its own pi3 and that was much better. Some lag still, but I also have alexa in the mix and I figure that alexa adds some latency too.

I figure I'll upgrade at least one of them to a pi4, and see how that goes.
Most of the time these pi's are doing very little, its just that's its nice to a fast response when you ask alexa to do something lol.

Based on this use case, yeah I don't really expect the pi4 to get very hot.
But I don't like my electronics to get hot, the 80C throttle temp is MUCH hotter than I would like to see, ideally I can keep temps under 50C.

BTW, flirc has pi4 cased on presale now.

@DRONE7
Thanks for the link, nice case too. I think I like the flirc better, especially at the presale price, but I'm sure either would work.

Randy
 
Last edited:
Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.