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RASPBRaspberry Pi 4 B
Les Pounder loves a surprise and a Raspberry Pi –so when the Pi 4
was released, he was over the moon!
S
urprise! Mid-year is
not a traditional
release date for a
Raspberry Pi. In
fact, this new version of the
Pi breaks a few traditions.
Firstly, it was released far
earlier than predicted due
to the BCM2711 System on
Chip (SoC) being ready for
production some nine to 12
months early. Secondly,
there’s the price: there is
now not just one price for a
Raspberry Pi Model B, but
three. At $59.95, the basic
model comes with 1GB of
R AM; for $77.95 there is a
2GB model; and for $94.95
there is a 4GB model. For
this review we have chosen
to look at the 1GB model as
we can directly compare it
to previous models of Pi.
No matter the version of
Pi 4, all come with a 1.5GHz
64-bit quad-core Arm
Cortex-A72 CPU (Arm v8,
BCM2711B0) and all of the
R AM is now LPDDR4, giving
us a much-needed boost in
performance. GPU duties
are handled by the new
VideoCore VI which
supports OpenGL ES3.0 and
provides another handyUSB drives to the Pi for
projects such as media
centres and fileservers. We
can also boot from USB
devices, so adding a cheap
SATA SSD via a USB
interface will massively
speed up your Pi and provide
very cheap and plentiful
storage for servers.
To power the Raspberry Pi
4 there is a USB-C connector
in place of the old micro-USB
port. TheUSB-C port
provides 5V at 3A (15W),
which at idle is
approximately 4W and 8W
when under load. Since
launch a minor flaw has been
discovered with the Pi’s
USB-C implementation, so it
can’t be powered by
e-marked USB-C cables–such
as those supplied with Apple
laptops–this will require a
board revision to fix.
While 15W may seem like
overkill, it provides plenty
of power for the Pi 4 and
plenty of spare power for
use by USB 3.0 hard drives.
The current draw at idle for
a Pi 4 is much greater than a
Pi 3B+ – 600mA versus
400mA – and so that means
a bigger battery is required.boost in performance.
If you are a keen maker/
hacker then fear not, as the
40-pin GPIO is present and
fully compatible with HAT
and pHAT boards. But in a
change to previous GPIO
configurations, the GPIO of
the Pi4 offers four each of
I2C, UART and SPI
interfaces, enabling more
compatible devices to be
connected – all by changing
the device tree overlay on
boot.
For network connectivity,
we are truly spoilt. While
the Pi 4 retains the
excellent 2.4GHz and 5GHz
Wi-Fi from the 3B+, we
finally have true gigabit
Ethernet on a Raspberry Pi
thanks to the BCM54213
Ethernet chip, which
provided a stonking
931Mbits/sec in our test –
around three times faster
than the 3B+. No more
Ethernet through USB!
Talking of USB, the Pi 4
has four USB ports – two of
which are USB 2.0 and the
others USB 3.0, which have
their own chip that connects
to the SoC via PCI-E! Yes, we
can now connect high-speedIn fact, from cold the Pi 4
consumes around 960mA
during the boot process.
If you plan to reuse an
older official Raspberry Pi
power supply (5V at 2.5A,
12.5W), you can purchase an
adapter to change micro-
USB to USB-C. Power can
also be provided directly to
the Pi via the GPIO, but this
will bypass any regulators,
so check your voltages
before connecting. If you
need Power over Ethernet
(PoE), you’ll be happy to
know that the PoE HAT is
compatible.
With all this new power
there has to be heat, and this
is where the Pi 4 differs to
previous boards. To be clear,
the Raspberry Pi 4 runs
really warm at idle: around
52 degrees C two minutes
after booting up. The temp
increased to 66 degrees
when under load during a
Sysbench CPU stress-test.
The board can reach temps
of up to 80C and so this
means that active cooling is
a must. We ran the same idle
and stress-test sequence on
the Pi with a Pimoroni Fan
Shim, and this dropped the$59.95FOR1GB(2GB$77.95,4GB$95.95|WWW.RASPBERRYPI.ORGBE
OR1GB(2GB$77. 95 4GB $95. 95 |WWW.RASPBERRYPI.ORGRRYPI