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Official Raspberry Pi NVMe SSD Review

bret.dk

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Re: Official Raspberry Pi NVMe SSD Review

#41

Post by jamesu »

teruakohatu wrote: post #2

> At this price point, it’s easy enough to throw one in your basket when you’re already spending a decent chunk of change and be done with it, safe in the knowledge that you have a well-performing boot device. I do still think it’s a bit naff that the M.2 HAT+ doesn’t fit in the official case but I won’t re-open that can of worms. An rpi5 plus M.2 hat plus a branded ssd and you are well into the realm of Intel N100 S…

One issue I have with a lot of the N100 systems is there seems to be a lot of variants from different manufacturers, slightly different form factors, etc. The PI may be worse but at least you have a pretty good idea what you are actually getting most of the time.

Re: Official Raspberry Pi NVMe SSD Review

#42

Post by Aurornis »

cosmotic wrote: post #7
teruakohatu wrote: post #2

> At this price point, it’s easy enough to throw one in your basket when you’re already spending a decent chunk of change and be done with it, safe in the knowledge that you have a well-performing boot device. I do still think it’s a bit naff that the M.2 HAT+ doesn’t fit in the official case but I won’t re-open that can of worms. An rpi5 plus M.2 hat plus a branded ssd and you are well into the realm of Intel N100 S…

Power consumption is a good contender for reasons to stick with rpis. The rough, quick search numbers I'm seeing for idle power are ~6w for the N100 SCB and ~1 to 2w for the pi. Max performance is like ~15w to ~4w.

> Max performance is like ~15w to ~4w.

Peak power from the Raspberry Pi 5 is 12W, according to Raspberry Pi themselves: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/introducing-raspberry-pi-5/

The N100 SBCs have a much higher peak power and heat, but it's also fine to let them throttle down.

Really though, I think most hobbyists would be perfectly fine with a base model 2GB RAM Raspberry Pi and a cheap USB to NVME enclosure. It's not optimal, but it works and you're not spending money to hot-rod something that will never be all that fast anyway.

Re: Official Raspberry Pi NVMe SSD Review

#43

Post by skrtskrt »

teruakohatu wrote: post #2

> At this price point, it’s easy enough to throw one in your basket when you’re already spending a decent chunk of change and be done with it, safe in the knowledge that you have a well-performing boot device. I do still think it’s a bit naff that the M.2 HAT+ doesn’t fit in the official case but I won’t re-open that can of worms. An rpi5 plus M.2 hat plus a branded ssd and you are well into the realm of Intel N100 S…

it's a known quantity with known good support for various things and a large community.

People and particularly businesses want to buy something they know works, rather than trying to change and figure out new configuration nuances every time something with a slightly better looking spec sheet comes out.

Re: Official Raspberry Pi NVMe SSD Review

#44

Post by bitwize »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #26

Using my Raspberry Pi 4, I find that interestingly enough, even just using the SD card slot on 1 GB of RAM, device usability is perfectly good. As soon as I need to use a web browser, performance goes out the window, and you're nearly stranded in terms of usability. I think that easily qualifies as "desktop usage," and it leaves this desire for a low resource consumption web browser.

This is why I install netsurf on all my Pis. "But bitwize," you say, "netsurf doesn't support JavaScript!" To which I reply, "Oh no! Anyway..."

Re: Official Raspberry Pi NVMe SSD Review

#45

Post by bitwize »

Koshkin wrote: post #34
starik36 wrote: post #4

It would be cool to have a nex gen RPi (perhaps even the Zero edition) that does away with the micro SD slot and replaces it with a built in NMVe one. In addition, replace most of the other ports (microUSB, etc...) with a number of USB-C ports.

Well, not an NVMe maybe (yet), but at least a built-in eMMC slot.

eMMC is not a slot. It's a form of built-in storage. It conforms to the old MultiMediaCard interface... which was obsoleted by SD cards a LONG time ago. The eMMC variant is still used to cheaply bung in some usable flash storage into rinky-dink devices like thin clients, cellphones, and such. But for something like the Pi, if you want performance and reliability over SD cards you need a grown-up solution: NVMe or SATA SSD.

Re: Official Raspberry Pi NVMe SSD Review

#46

Post by icelancer »

teruakohatu wrote: post #2

> At this price point, it’s easy enough to throw one in your basket when you’re already spending a decent chunk of change and be done with it, safe in the knowledge that you have a well-performing boot device. I do still think it’s a bit naff that the M.2 HAT+ doesn’t fit in the official case but I won’t re-open that can of worms. An rpi5 plus M.2 hat plus a branded ssd and you are well into the realm of Intel N100 S…

We've replaced most of our RPi units with the Beelink SER MAX 5 or whatever at $300ish price point; just too good of a deal (and all of its hardware works with Linux, unlike some other MiniPCs).

But we still use RPi4/5s when we want the ecosystem of the RPi, particularly around the GPIO stuff. Typical things include environment monitoring such as lighting and air quality - super simple plug-in devices that easily interface with Raspbian and the GPIO system.

Power draw is much lower on the RPis which I think is relevant for some people; not really us. But that's a pretty valuable use case for those who are shipping battery-backed devices.

Re: Official Raspberry Pi NVMe SSD Review

#47

Post by icelancer »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #10
cosmotic wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power consumption is a good contender for reasons to stick with rpis. The rough, quick search numbers I'm seeing for idle power are ~6w for the N100 SCB and ~1 to 2w for the pi. Max performance is like ~15w to ~4w.

How often is that the case? Are you really saving so much more money with a 10W board vs a 15W system to offset the purchasing price?

It's purely about battery runtime in these cases.

Re: Official Raspberry Pi NVMe SSD Review

#48

Post by sunshine-o »

The problem of Raspberry Pi today is they need to be relevant as a cheap innovation platform in the AI space.

They would need to do with AI what they did 10 years ago in the IoT and self-hosting space.

I have no idea if their recently AI Camera or Hailo based AI HAT is. But my guess is they would need to offer something good enough for a fraction of the price of a Nvidia Jetson.

Re: Official Raspberry Pi NVMe SSD Review

#49

Post by Koshkin »

bitwize wrote: post #45
Koshkin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, not an NVMe maybe (yet), but at least a built-in eMMC slot.

eMMC is not a slot. It's a form of built-in storage. It conforms to the old MultiMediaCard interface... which was obsoleted by SD cards a LONG time ago. The eMMC variant is still used to cheaply bung in some usable flash storage into rinky-dink devices like thin clients, cellphones, and such. But for something like the Pi, if you want performance and reliability over SD cards you need a grown-up solution: NVMe or SAT…

OK, "socket". (ODROID-N2+, for example, uses eMMC as a faster, better alternative to an SD card.)

https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-n2-with-4gbyte-ram-2/

Re: Official Raspberry Pi NVMe SSD Review

#50

Post by teamonkey »

wkat4242 wrote: post #30
teruakohatu wrote: post #2

> At this price point, it’s easy enough to throw one in your basket when you’re already spending a decent chunk of change and be done with it, safe in the knowledge that you have a well-performing boot device. I do still think it’s a bit naff that the M.2 HAT+ doesn’t fit in the official case but I won’t re-open that can of worms. An rpi5 plus M.2 hat plus a branded ssd and you are well into the realm of Intel N100 S…

Totally true. If you want a small server just get a N100. The pi makes sense for something where you need power (eg more than esp32 or 2040) and gpio. Not as a small server. Those days are gone.

I’d argue they were never a particularly good option as a server, especially a file server, because of their poor IO. You’d often get better performance by installing Linux on a NAS. Ironically the Pi5 is the only one that is actually ok at being a file server. Pis are very good at being lots of other things though.
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