Raspberry Pi 5
ARM single board computer, cheapest to buy and to run, with the tightest limits.
Budget for the power supply, cooling, case and storage on top of the board price. Some applications need an ARM image, and video transcoding is weak.
Configuration used by the calculators: RAM 8 GB (our estimate), CPU 4 cores (our estimate), storage 256 GB (our estimate). A specification sheet describes a family, not the unit in front of you, so enter what your machine actually has.
Our estimated idle draw is 4 W at the wall and our estimated household average is 7 W. Neither is a measurement. A plug meter costs little and will beat any estimate on this site.
We publish no purchase price for this machine. Used prices move constantly and we have no archived price source we would stand behind, so the buy versus rent calculator asks you for the price you can actually get.
Source: Raspberry Pi 5 product brief, retrieved 2026-09-08, archived as document 34 on the sources page.
Check a stack against this machine · Look at used listings · Look at new mini PCs
| property | value | basis | evidence | document |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| cpu cores typical | 4 cores | our estimate | Our reasoning: The product brief in our archive does not restate the core count on the pages we quote; the Pi 5 uses a quad-core Arm Cortex-A76. Treat as unverified until we archive the datasheet. | No document, our reasoning only |
| expansion | PCIe 2.0 x1 for fast peripherals | vendor documented | Quoted from the archived document: PCIe 2.0 x1 interface for fast peripherals | Document 34, retrieved 2026-09-08 |
| max ram gb | 16 GB | vendor documented | Quoted from the archived document: LPDDR4X-4267 SDRAM (options for 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and 16GB) | Document 34, retrieved 2026-09-08 |
| nic | Gigabit Ethernet with PoE+ support | vendor documented | Quoted from the archived document: Gigabit Ethernet, with PoE+ support | Document 34, retrieved 2026-09-08 |
| power idle w | 4 W | our estimate | Our reasoning: The 5V/5A supply is a ceiling, not consumption. We estimate 4 W at the wall at idle with a fan and NVMe. This is not a measurement. | No document, our reasoning only |
| power input | 5V/5A USB-C with Power Delivery | vendor documented | Quoted from the archived document: 5V/5A DC power via USB-C, with Power Delivery support | Document 34, retrieved 2026-09-08 |
| power typical w | 7 W | our estimate | Our reasoning: We estimate 7 W as a household average with light services running. Measure your own board. | No document, our reasoning only |
| ram typical gb | 8 GB | our estimate | Derived from the archived document: LPDDR4X-4267 SDRAM (options for 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and 16GB). We plan the 8 GB board, the usual choice for running several services. | Document 34, retrieved 2026-09-08 |
| storage typical gb | 256 GB | our estimate | Our reasoning: microSD or an NVMe drive on a HAT. We plan 256 GB, which is a common NVMe choice. | No document, our reasoning only |
| video decode | 4Kp60 HEVC decoder, no hardware encoder | vendor documented | Quoted from the archived document: 4Kp60 HEVC decoder | Document 34, retrieved 2026-09-08 |