AI/LLMs and distros like Ubuntu stand to benefit

Raspberry Pi 5 with 16GB RAM Announced for £115/$120

by · omg! ubuntu · Join

Raspberry Pi has today announced the launch of a Raspberry Pi 5 with 16 GB RAM.

A engorged-memory model had been oft-rumoured since the launch of the raspberry Pi 5 in 2024 – and long-desired by fans of this particular single-board computer (SBC).

The launch of the new Raspberry Pi CM5 late last year offers up to 16 GB RAM whilst utilising the same underlying chipset as the Pi 5, all but confirming a bumper RAM revision for the full-size board was imminent.

Why didn’t they launch a 16 GB model right away? It’s only due to last year’s (minor) revision to the Broadcom BCM2712 application processor to use D0 stepping that memory capacities larger than 8 GB were supported.

I.e., the original Raspberry Pi 5 boards only supported a maximum of 8 GB RAM, but last year’s revised models double that support to 16 GB.

Otherwise, everything about the new Raspberry Pi 5 with 16 GB LPDDR4 RAM is the same as the 2 GB1, 4 GB and 8 GB models2: same CPU, GPU ports, I/O, power requirements.

The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB costs £115 ($120) – £40 ($40) more than the Raspberry Pi 5 8 GB.

Is Raspberry Pi 16GB worth it?

Raspberry Pi 5 was already versatile but with 16GB RAM, even more so

If you already own a Raspberry Pi 5 (as I do) you shouldn’t feel your board is now obsolete. In fact, if you have never hit an out-of-memory error on a smaller-memory model you’d unlikely even feel the benefit of 16 GB.

Most use-cases for a Pi involve running streamlined, stripped-down, and optimised software, software often designed for low-power computing devices. Gaming emulators, media centres, networking/privacy, and other jobs already run well.

If energy usage is important the memory increase here could marginally increase power draw – not egregiously, mind.

But those who use their Pi 5 as a desktop PC, running a full desktop OS will find the increased memory improves multi-tasking, reduces “swappiness”, and boosts responsiveness (especially if running a web browser with lots of tabs alongside other software).

“While Raspberry Pi OS has been tuned to have low base memory requirements, heavyweight distributions like Ubuntu benefit from additional memory capacity for desktop use cases,” as Raspberry Pi’s Eben Upton says.

However, the real lure in the Raspberry Pi 5 16GB upgrade is will be in AI inferencing, LLMs, VLMs, et al (using Raspberry Pi AI accelerator boards launched last year). Large language models are memory intensive3, so the more memory, the faster the output.

The raw performance is likely to be inline with the 8GB in regular synthetic benchmarking. Those tests won’t pick up on the benefits of 16GB RAM in real-world working, like being able to do more stuff at the same time. AI benchmarks will be interesting though.

Interested in buying one?

Raspberry Pi 5 16GB is available to buy as of today from approved Raspberry Pi resellers.

  1. The Raspberry Pi 5 2GB model only launched last year ↩︎
  2. Aforementioned chip revision aside that earlier 4/8GB models didn’t have, but later 2/4/8GB models do ↩︎
  3. Which is why Apple moved to 16GB RAM in its entry-level machines with the roll out of Apple Intelligence ↩︎