Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC • Hacker News Board

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#21

Post by regularfry » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 8:42 AM UTC

terramex wrote: post #15

regularfry wrote: post #9

I'm intrigued by the "faster, cooler" comment. Anyone know what that refers to? It looks like there aren't any vents on the visible surfaces, so I'm guessing there's been a hardware rev to make thermal throttling less of a problem? If so, that might imply a pi 4 board release some time soon, which would be nice.

It's a new design of boad (not a Pi4 in a case) and has a large heat spreader inside, and the C0 2711 chip which has better clock gating so blocks can be turned off the save power. This means we can run at 1800 by default. It runs very cool. https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1752436#p...

Just watched the teardown video from there. Man, that's a lovely design.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#22

Post by rootsudo » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 8:43 AM UTC

I love it, I really do.

The logitech keyboards w/ the touchpad built in suck.

This just looks adorable.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#23

Post by rhys_the_davies » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 8:44 AM UTC

Got myself a pre-release version to test with Ubuntu. The higher clock speed at 1.8GHz makes such a nice difference, https://ubuntu.com/blog/raspberry-pi-400-with-ubuntu-support

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#24

Post by qwerty456127 » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 8:45 AM UTC

I would buy immediately if it also had a display and a battery to make a laptop (and a cooler so I wouldn't have to worry when I start a long compilation routine on it). Looks great otherwise.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#25

Post by weinzierl » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 8:46 AM UTC

bbayer wrote: post #6

It reminds me the joyful moments while I plugged my Commodore 64 to TV set.

That was my very first thought too. Joyful moments indeed.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#26

Post by avian » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 8:48 AM UTC

geerlingguy wrote: post #13

I was lucky to get a pre-release version to test, and I decided to tear it down before I started trying it out. I posted this blog post with detailed pictures of the insides, and some more details and performance benchmarks: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-400-tear... There are also a couple videos linked in the post, if you're more visually-inclined. Fun fact: the Pi 400 (and Compute Module 4) bo…

One comment regarding your "performance comparison" graph. Is the "dd" result read or write? I wondered the same thing with your Compute Module 4 post.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#27

Post by regularfry » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 8:49 AM UTC

h3h3 wrote: post #18

regularfry wrote: post #9

I'm intrigued by the "faster, cooler" comment. Anyone know what that refers to? It looks like there aren't any vents on the visible surfaces, so I'm guessing there's been a hardware rev to make thermal throttling less of a problem? If so, that might imply a pi 4 board release some time soon, which would be nice.

It’s a custom pcb in keyboard format with vents at the back and huge metal heat sink/anti flex plate.

Yeah, so I watched a teardown from one of the sibling comments. Looks like there are vents underneath, but no fan (which would have ruined it for me). Turns out it's got both a huge heat spreader and a newer version of the Broadcom SOC. That's really interesting, because it means they've got the bugs ironed out to be able to do a better pi 4 board which isn't so finicky about its enclosures. And that means I could potentially upgrade the pi 3 that's currently sat in my dusty workshop without caring about fans getting clogged. (yes, I know there are passively-cooled pi 4 cases about. They don't quite do it for me.)

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#28

Post by MarcScott » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 8:50 AM UTC

alphaomegacode wrote: post #2

Truly amazing how the Raspberry Pi team keeps innovating. As far as I know, they're not a billion dollar company yet they keep innovating by making better Pi's and continuously upgrading the builder/user experience. Congratulations to Upton and team!

You're right. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is an educational charity. We're funded, in the main, by the sales of Raspberry Pi hardware.

That the hardware and software engineers at Raspberry Pi Trading can keep innovating and producing such amazing products, astounds me.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#29

Post by tunnuz » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 8:51 AM UTC

I anyone using the Pi to run very old computer games? Because this could be the perfect gaming console for the nostalgic.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#30

Post by weinzierl » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 8:53 AM UTC

petre wrote: post #5

zatertip wrote: post #3

This is such a great idea. Plug it into a tv and you have a PC. Plug in an SSD with movies and you have a media center, no extra assembly required!

Yup, FFW 38 years into the future and the Commodore 64 is reborn, only with a ~22 times lower price.

> [...] with a ~22 times lower price

...and roughly 1800 times the clock speed. One millions times the colors that the C64 display[1]. It even comes with User Port (in spirit)[2].

[1] Yes, the number of colors a home computer could display was a major selling point back then. My C64 only hat 16, my friends CPC had 32, including the rad "Bright White" which enabled stunning effects. Man, I envied that.

[2] Exposed GPIO header is super awesome and quite similar to the C64 User Port. Even more awesome was the Commodore's Expansion Port which basically exposed its bus. It think something like this would not be practically possible with today's GHz clock speeds but still this was super awesome and allowed (and required) you to even dig deeper into the internal workings of your machine.