The Raspberry Pi family has been dominating the SBC market for well over a decade, and with the release of its fifth-gen board last year, it doesn’t seem like things will change anytime soon. After all, the Raspberry Pi 5 brings superior performance alongside a host of new additions, including a dedicated UART debug port, power button, and PCIe slot, among others.

That said, there are a couple of odd things about the latest addition to the Raspberry Pi family. Instead of calling them drawbacks, I’d say they’re more like weird quirks that you should be aware of before you invest your hard-earned money in the SBC.

5 No audio port this time around

So, you’ll have to look into alternative ways to use speakers

The removal of audio connections is something I’m not very fond of – neither in mobile phones, and certainly not in the Raspberry Pi 5. Sure, the dual HDMI connections on the board can technically play sound through your monitor. But seeing as how most of the Raspberry Pi SBCs besides the Zero lineup feature dedicated audio connections, you might be inclined to believe that’s the case with the company’s newest device. Unfortunately, you’ll have to rely on Bluetooth or use a USB-to-aux adapter for your headphones or speakers.

4 It uses a different power supply

You don’t necessarily need the official charger, though

Unlike its predecessor’s 5.1V 3A (15W) requirement, the Raspberry Pi Foundation recommends a 5.1V 5A (27W) power supply for the RPi 5. Whether you use budget phones or prefer their high-end counterparts, you might think that the Type-C chargers in your possession won’t be able to meet the weird 5A current specification of the Raspberry Pi 5.

Unless you’re overclocking your SBC or building complicated projects that require a lot of horsepower, your Raspberry Pi 5 will work just fine on your average Type-C charger. You might notice the low power warning on the Raspberry Pi OS flash from time to time, but it’s possible to build a handful of projects without buying a new power supply.

3 Camera modules require a different cable

I learned this the hard way

Another difference between the Raspberry Pi 5 and older boards lies in the camera and display connectors. Instead of featuring CSI and DSI ports, the latest Raspberry Pi features dual MIPI connectors, which support both display and cable modules.

However, the downside of this setup is that the pins and pitch-size have been modified from the standard 15-pin, 1mm pitch to 22-pins, 0.5mm pitch, effectively rendering the ribbon cables included with most camera modules useless. If you plan to build a time-lapse camera or test the official AI Kit on the RPi 5, you’ll have to buy an additional camera/display cable with the correct number of pins and pitch size.

2 PCIe accessories won't work without proper adapters

Be careful you don't turn your Raspberry Pi 5 into Frankenstein's monster

The PCI Express slot is one of the most essential aspects of modern computing, as it allows you to interface a handful of high-speed cards with your systems. Despite how outdated it is in 2024, the PCIe Gen 2 interface on the Raspberry Pi 5 supports quite a few devices.

That said, you shouldn’t expect the same plug-in-and-play experience from the PCIe slot on the SBC. Whereas the HAT-based devices like USB expansion cards and the official AI Kit can connect without requiring extra parts, you’ll need some type of adapter to connect your spare NICs and NVMe SSDs to the Raspberry Pi 5.

• GeeekPi N04 M.2 NVMe to PCIe Adapter

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• Kingston NV2 2280 NVMe SSD

  $74 at Amazon

1 The Active Cooler is pretty much mandatory

To stop the SBC from melting in the middle of your tinkering session

Contrary to what you might imagine, miniature SBCs can overheat without adequate cooling provisions. While it’s not as thermally challenged as its x86 rival, Radxa X4, the Raspberry Pi 5 has a tendency to hit the danger zones even under ordinary workloads.

When I reviewed it last November, the SBC would run above 60 °C without a cooler, and occasionally surged past the 75 °C mark when running a few Chromium tabs! This makes the Active Cooler borderline essential if you intend to self-host multiple services or emulate your favorite consoles on the SBC.

Nevertheless, it’s a fantastic device for tinkerers

Aside from these hardware quirks, it’s worth noting that a handful of packages have yet to be ported over to the Bookworm version of Raspberry Pi OS. For example, MotionEyeOS doesn’t have an IMG file for the RPi 5 that you can flash onto a microSD. As such, you’ll have to compile it with the help of Python3 if you want to build a surveillance system using the Raspberry Pi 5. The same holds for RetroPie, which can also throw multiple errors when you attempt to download emulation cores using the terminal interface.

Despite everything, there’s no denying that the Raspberry Pi 5 is a great tool for DIY enthusiasts. Thanks to a thriving community that puts out new and creative ideas on a daily basis, you won’t regret buying the Raspberry Pi 5 if you’re fond of building cool (and sometimes, slightly insane) projects.