RUclips playback on a Pi 5 is not a software issue, it's a hardware issue. The Pi 5 has no hardware decoders for VP9, nor AV1. You can force YT fall back to h264 with the browser plugin h264ify.
Yes he is right. I have tried this plugin on my raspberry and it worked fine. I think the official raspberry OS has it install all ready on the browser, im not sure.
Raspberry Pi 5 has H.265/HEVC decoding. It does not have H.264 decoding like the Raspberry Pi 4. It should be fast enough to do H.264 in software though. BTW, HEVC is the main codec for Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. RUclips hasn't adopted it for some reason.
AV1 is an open-source codec that is royalty free while HEVC costs money to use. I hope google never pays MPEG LA, horrible group imo, to license HEVC. Companies should move to AV1 instead since it is free has better quality at similar bitrates vs HEVC especially when doing higher resolutionsm Netflix has been delivering some HD and UHD stuff in AV1 for a while now. Amazon is a member of the AV1 group and the latest firestick has av1 decoding hardware so hopefully soon they use it.@harleyn3089
У мини ПК во всем преимущество!!! Я больше никогда не куплю SBC! Только мини ПК. С поддержкой АРМ всегда проблемы. ARMBIAN постоянно просят донаты. У мини ПК вообще ни каких проблем.
Yes. Also for learning about home servers it would be so beneficial for newbies to learn basics of Proxmox and at least initially build on top of it as it’s so easy to revert changes. Man I still wish I would’ve found it sooner as it would’ve saved literally days from my learning experiences.
Thanks for the video. I'm using an RPI Zero 2w to run Volumio, an RPI 3B+ to run LibreElec (Kodi) and an RPI 4 with 2 GB RAM to run Home Assistant. I'm using a Beelink N100 to dual boot Windows 11 Pro and Kubuntu 22.04 LTS. Life is good.
I bought a Beelink S12 Pro .. only supports 16GB, not, I inserted a 32GB memory module as some others also did this and it seems to work just fine. Been playing with Proxmox a couple of days now and seriously impressed. I had/have all PI's just not the 5. Price seems very hard to justify. Ok power consumption is a bit higher except for the fact that I just eliminated 2 running PI4's and I have plenty more power and memory left according to Proxmox. And the most important thing. It has a nice case, and more importantly, it all just seems to work. Great PI community except for the fact that for most things I had to spend hours or days to get stuff working sometimes. I like those N100 mini things.
@@Ohasumi The Beelink S12 Pro only has 1 memory slot . I believe this is a N100 limitation. ordered DDR4 32GB for a laptop. Took the supplied one out, replaced with the 32GB one and till now it is still working perfectly. Perfect for Proxmox when running different virtual servers.
I owned over 20 SBCs, different models from RaspberryPi/Khadas/OrangePi,Radxa they were fun at first, then I got tired of all the tinkering that had to be done just to get some basic stuff working on them. It was fun playing with clusters/swarms/containers but a few months back I bought a Beelink EQ12 with an N100 CPU + 16GB DDR5 that's flawlessly handling all my services ( NextCloud, Reverse Proxy, OMV, Jellyfin , Grafana etc ) and there's still plenty of room for more. I could never go back to a non x86 unit even if it is for free.
I recently sold my new pi 5, it was my first experience with raspberry pi Ssd won't work i had to edit config files etx I bought firebat ak2 with n100 8gb ram for 90€ new and it works sooo good 👍🏻
9:13 - I think that hits the nail on the head. I see the resistors for indicating 1/2 GB of RAM on the board... I have to wonder if they're sitting on a 1 or 2 GB Pi 5 model that could be sold for $40 or $45. That would make the low-end Pi 5 a great option and bring back some of the price advantage if you don't need lots of RAM for projects, but want some of the speed or CSI/DSI lane performance of the Pi 5.
Raspberry needs to earn money, memory chips are cheap today and 4/8 GB model don't reflect that for sure. If they release too cheap base model we will see some companies or individuals that resolder those and still be able to get some profit.
Yeah, based on the price differences between the Pi 4 4/8 GB and Pi 5 4/8 GB ($5), we can expect a $40 Pi 5 1GB and a $50 Pi 5 2GB. Then the Pi 5 would be a really good option if you want all the CPU power it has to offer, especially at such a low price point.
The Pi's are great, early adopter starting with the original Pi model A, I have over a dozen Pi's running up to the 4 8G, as the Pi 5 has steadily grown out of the 'acceptable pi price range'. I love my Pi's but I've started buying N100 boards for computing and using more ESP32 microcontrollers for projects.
This is pretty much the idea im going for. My original pi 3B+ i got is just too sluggish for my needs for a built in PC for my car, so ill be opting for an actual x86 based PC, and then using my esp32 boards as required. Still looking at options, but since ill be running Linux instead of windows ill get better mileage out of it anyways. Been looking into possibly getting a latte panda for it, but might get better specs for the same price elsewhere
Yeah, I just spent 89.99 on my Pi5 pm Amazon and have to wait almosst a phuckin month for them to send to me ordered it on the 13th of this month like wtf... THIS is my very first Rasberry build or any Single-board for that matter. I am attemtpting to make a Steam link pretty much. I am tech savy but mostly building not programing haha! My very first case/& build for the 8gb Pi5 I am using the Pironman 5 case sooo badass!!! I cant waiaait! Any advice?
You are so right: the use-case is all that matters, and Raspberries serve a pretty distinct job. I don’t want to watch videos (work great with ubiquitous TV sets, PCs, smartphones or tablets already and won’t get better). I don’t want a new virtualization server either (continues to work great on any PC). The *truly unique* task that other devices can‘t deliver is to provide an efficient always-on server to run all kinds of little services. The focus is on availability, not cutting edge performance. Pi 5 is more than powerful for this, and its tiny form factor plus its ultra-low power consumption makes it a better solution. For this use case, power consumption of any (just slightly more performant) Mini-PC adds hefty 250kWh/year to the bill, translating to roughly €100 in added annual energy cost (in Europe) - at the same time, *both* Raspberry and Mini-PC will probably idle most of the time anyway in these scenarios, so no convincing benefit for so much more cost. That’s why I feel comparing Raspberries to Mini-PC (and focusing on performance comparisons) might just miss the point altogether: After all, I wouldn’t compare a convertible and a pickup truck either, even when both might cost the same and are both „cars“: Raspberries are great for low power and hardware prototyping, Mini PCs are great for typical PC tasks in restrained environments. IMHO they aren’t interchangeable choices though. :-) That said, if *you* outgrew *Raspberry use cases* by using Linux OS as your regular PC, then switching to (any type of) PC seems wise. Just please don‘t compare them as if they served the same purpose.
The only reason I can think of for buying a Pi5 over a mini PC these days is if you have a use for all those GPIO pins; however, I rarely see anyone using them since Arduino and ESP32 are cheaper and better for that. The proprietary Broadcom video is also a limitation for video applications . I payed $45 for Pi4 several years back and I think that is the sweet spot for any Pi.
Let's admit we outgrew RPi. Most got them for cheap tinker projects, maybe a small fraction used GPIO, but they are too limited. Hey, they are still pretty cool, like your first car, but now you know what you need and RPi came too little too late.
I agree, but I think it's more accurate to say the Pi outgrew its previous use case. They're now too expensive (not to mention hard to find) for cheap tinker projects, and if you need it for a project with more oomf, too weak (performance-wise) to trade blows with others in the same price range. It lost its niche.
@@sniperoth I bought 4 8GB model 4 to use for clustering, tinkering, and HAOS use but I don’t think I’d buy anything except a 400 perhaps. Mini PC and proxmox now.
For me Raspberry foundation grows into villain. They start as cheap computers for kids to teach them programming but during covid they said "**** the kids!" we sell all our inventory to big companies as prototypining boards and shut kid's mouth with picos. Pi5 go even further. Instead adopting PD standard they are forcing people to buy new overpriced charger and with case, fan, heatsink, sd card this thing is absolute money milker.
I have slightly disagree. We never outgrew raspberry. If that’s the case, well I have to say you selected completely wrong device initially. It’s still way to go for electronics. It’s not the device to replace conventional computers. But Raspberry foundation has took really bizarre step in introducing rpi5 as viable home computer. Imo they just should focus more into rpi zeros and stuff like that. I kinda get they have to keep original rpi formfactor as learning platform, but making it home computer doesn’t make sense at all.
Did you try changing the power levels in the BIOS oft the N100? Those Beelink computers often limit power draw to 20 watts when they can easily handle 30. If you change it you get a lot more performance.
Great video tutorial. Thank you. The main reason for buying one of these PC/SBC is usage(power consumption, HW connections, solar panel powered device/outdoor, . . .), OS, software. You can imagine what you have with fast device but bad OS ? Or vice versa ?
I’m not a Windows user, but you failed to mention that the Beelink also comes with W11 Pro installed, at a current retail costs of $147.99 on Amazon. I just bought the Beelink ($169) to replace my aging desktop PC. I installed Ubuntu-Cinnamon 24.04. So far very pleased with its performance. I also added a 500gig ssd sata drive to mount the linux system on. So I have a dual boot capability through the bios boot option. Thanks for the comparison review.
Hey there Bill, I also have beelink eq12 mini pc with Intel n100. And I use windows on it but previously I have tried installing Ubuntu on it but I had problems with RUclips playback on it.( Huge Framedrops) But youtube playback on windows is perfect 4k and even 8k works smooth. Did you face any problem with RUclips on Linux? Thanks and regards.👍
That is another benefit of the N100 and obviously adds additional value. I overlooked it because it's not an option for the Pi 5 and my main focus was "what can you replace a Pi 5 with"
The Windows 11 Pro license that comes with it is an OEM bundled license so has almost zero real value since basically no one except companies and system builders are paying full price for OEM licenses these days. Having a windows license is maybe a $15-30 value depending on the time of year you are needing a key. Another fun fact is that you don't really even need a license key since you can still install and run Windows 10 and 11 without ever entering a digital license key and it will run just fine only preventing you from making personalization changes and for the most part I don't care about personalization on a box that is going to take on mini server duty. If you bought a retail copy of Windows 7 Ultimate back in the day and tied it to your microsoft account, you have a digital license to Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10, and 11 with currently no end in sight for continued use.
Regarding idle power consumption for the Beelink, you might check the BIOS setup to see if they provide a setting for enabling higher C-states on idle. That could knock off a few watts. I purchased some HP Elitedesk 800 G4 mini's with the 6-core I5-8600 CPU, and was surprised to see an idle power of only 4 watts (47 watts for full CPU load) with 64GB RAM and a 1 TB NVMe SSD. HP did a great job optimizing the firmware.
Great comparison. If I was looking for something like this I would choose the N100 over the Pi5. I have an 8GB Pi4 for dabbling with I/O and simple gaming.
I have proxmox running on N100 which is mostly used for arr stack apps and jellyfin. It handles 1 video transcode 4k HDR to SDR or multiple without HDR or lower resolution. Good enough for me.
The DDR5 version of the N100 is up to 30% faster! The only scenario's that the Pi5 makes sense is if a SD card is sufficient and especially if you dont need much memory.
I'd honestly get a ZimaBlade over the Beelink. I have the 2023 equivalent Beelink minipc, and within a year it began experiencing a fan issue, and now (18 months later) it won't even boot consistently (usually have to muck about with the cmos battery to get it going).
🇬🇧 November 2024 This has been my experience of Beelink too. Maybe they used to be good - but often get the Blue Screen of Death on ours (promptly binned).
I use an n100 with proxmox (homelab stuff) and an old pi for monitoring/prometheus things. I think the two of them get along well together lol. The PI io and the community are an added value for any project. Raspberry has this potential.
Got an N100 today with 16GB ram. Installed Manjaro KDE and it FLIES. Honestly shocked at how quick this thing is for most tasks and even some games. Via Proton in steam games like Grim Dawn was playable around 30 fps. Halls of Torment 60 fps, All 2d games I tried were 60 fps+. So many amazing roguelikes play perfect 60 fps on this thing, even Hades.
The N100 is roughly equivalent to the Skylake I5-6500T (also 4 cores, 4 threads) from 2015 in the Geekbench 6 benchmarks. You'll find that CPU in lots of business mini and SFF PC's dumped on Ebay - they ran Win10 fine and run Linux great. With the upcoming 2025 abandonment of Win10, even more cheap quality PC's will show up soon on Ebay. Good times for Linux users!
Great video. I'd actually like to see a benchmark comparison and review of several of these N100 Mini PC's from the different vendors. Beelinks Mini S12 vs. GMK's Nucbox G3 vs. Minisforum UN100P vs Rasberry Pi. I'd like to see who's the top performer.
I have the T8 Firebat with ddr5 16gb 4800Mhz. In bios you set it to 4800Mhz and increase TDP from 15w stock to 30w. It cost less than the Pi5 mentioned here..Its faster at browsing than my 14900k on 1000mbit cat6. It must be something with the browser optimizing for this mini pc making browsing lightning fast. If you blink you wont see a new page loaded. The bios is pretty advanced so you can adjust how fast the cpu will ramp up its frequency. It also accepted undervolting so I can run turbo speeds for longer. The included copper heatpipe onboard is so much better than any of those poorly made you see on the Pi, and its included rofl. The network coverage isnt superb out of the box, but if you loosen the 1 of the 2 internal sticker wifi antennas inside it can become really good. I mounted each one in vertical plane and horizontal plane inside the housing. Since its just a sticker antenna it was an easy mod. (instead of both beeing parallell on top, I put one vertical on the sidewall). The best thing is that it just works, no insane hassle that some of the Android or Linux gives you.. I had one problem caused by win update, it reinstalled the wrong network driver so I had to redownload the correct one from Realtek site. Other than that it has been working fine.
Like millions of others, I got into Raspberry Pi long ago (Pi2) via Emulation, and I had great fun until Pi 5 was released. Whilst still a fantastic SBC, after my own testing, it simply can't compete with x86 emulation anymore. I have jumped to the GMKtec G5 N97, which, Like the Pi, this Micro NUC is super tiny, and the N97 CPU/DDR5/1200mHZ graphics beat my N100 for speed and graphics for the same price. Now, once more, I'm having a blast with emulation again.
I think it is great that we have multiple low cost computing choices! That lets us choose the best tool for the job. I really like the Pi zero- yes it has a lot lower specs, however it has io pins it's even smaller, cheaper ($15) and lower power. For a lot of applications you don't really need SSD storage, a cheap micro SD card is good enough and that makes the pi system much cheaper. It is also nice to be able to swap out the micro SD card to try different OSes.
For GPIO: If you use ready2go projects (like building a PiStorm for an Amiga) definitly they are a plus. For theese projects you need the Pi anyways (and the correct version). But if you do your own projects as a beginner, it is quite simple to destroy GPIOs or the whole Pi. So using external hardware might be the better option. Esp. the PiPico is available extremly cheap and contains enough for most DIY experiments.
I would have happily chosen any n100 minipc over a raspberry Pi 5, but none of these minipc companies like beelink, morfine, minisforum are available in India, only the official intel nic, some asus and a local brand. AMD minipcs are non existent here. And the cheapest n100 was available almost the double of RPI, that too barebones model, so I had to add storage and memory. Hence I chose the RPI 5 for my tiny home server, and it also uses very less power idling compared to n100 so I can have it running all day long Also RPI can be powered by POE with power backup, not sure of mini PCs can be powered same way. I'll be getting something more powerful for my editing work.
from RPi4B daily driver desktop I went for the N5105 first then upgraded to this N100 (and will be upgrading further to N97, very soon) though I also bought RPi5B boards (4GB and 8GB)....but considering the cost to make it a daily driver desktop, the N100 proved far more attractive...
The results here are somewhat misleading as running the same benchmarks under July 2024 PiOS x64 stock clocks gen3 PCIe mode results were sysbench 41495, NVMe 48860, glmark2 1909. (video driver issues under ubuntu and no PCIe gen3 for Pi most likely cause for lower numbers)
I have 2 Peladn WI-4's, I have been running open media vault on one of them for over a year 24/7 and it's never missed a beat. The other one runs proxmox with 3 VM's (1 x MS Server 2022, Home Assistant and Pi-Hole) no problem, I would defo reccomend running these Mini PC's as they cost pennies per day.
You're right about the Pi5 price point. But the N100 also runs into the same problem - at that price / performance. If I was looking for a "desktop replacement" I can find an old laptop for a little more and repurpose it, gaining a built in display, keyboard and pointer. The Pi 4 remains the best value tinker box.
Thank you very much for the nice benchmark comparison of the RPi/N100 computers. It gives a nice knowledge of what to select regarding the performance needs of CPU, GPU etc.
For Linux, I prefer the two hand-me-down Vorke V1 (Celeron J3160), one hand-me-down Vorke V1 Plus (Celeron J3455), and one repurposed RK3188 TV box that I run cut-down Debian/Armbian on for low-measurement-noise benchmarking and as a min. requirements target for my creations. For embedded, I've been aiming for Pi Pico-based where possible because they start faster and you don't need a preflight checklist to turn on or off your retrocomputing projects without risk of corrupting the SD card. (eg. I own a USB4VC built around a hand-me-down Pi4 and, despite how much I spent on it, now that the ps2x2pico firmware is solid enough, I've ordered parts to solder together a few more of them using slightly modded YD-RP2040 boards (the ones that can be had cheaply-including-shipping in single-unit quantities from China) since I can harvest the Pi4 for use in something with no Pico-based alternative... and once I've got something that needs SCSI, I'll be going for the BlueSCSI V2, not the PiSCSI. The fancier WiFi-related features just aren't worth the tax Pi boards with full OSes impose in hassle, let alone money.)
The only advantage of Pi's nowadays is a really fast GPIO to run LED matrices. Yet you don't need an RPi5 for that and it's still not the best tool for the task.
Thanks for the video. Seems that your GL mark is low on Pi 5. I can get around 1500 on Pi5. Also, the PCIE gen3 by 4 NVME should be much faster on RK3588 and N100. The default gen 2 on Pi 5 is very slow. A little bit better if you set it to gen 3.
N100 have power adapter, with Raspberry Pi I can run it from USB power bank so for my point of view and my usage N100 is not better option unless you can run this from power bank as well? It is interesting how lots of comments on another video I saw was talking how much more sense N100 makes, but now when I see that there is power outlet needed then it easy to see that these are not "same thing but N100 is much better".
Bough a mini pc, n100, 32gb ram 1 tb ssd, 2x2.5 rj45. €200. Very usefull. Gonna buy another one to use as a usb audio to dante box. That way I can get a setup for 1500 with more utility than the cheapest dante mixer at 2300
I've been wanting to have an experience using raspberry pi but i'm afraid of wasting my money as I have no hands on experience with the pi computers...
The pi experience is as good now as it's ever been. It's a good time to get into it. From a certain point of view, a pi is just a linux computer, so getting into it is no harder than getting into linux itself (maybe a little easier because you can be sure the hardware is going to work well). Obviously there are a lot of niches for a pi, so that part depends on what you want to do/tinker with. Good luck :)
Bottleneck for me is POWER consumption. I need to run the device on a car battery. The mini PC consumes way to much when running on high load compare to PI5. Are there any mini PC with similar watt usage like PI 5?
For the performance point of view, Intel N100 would be much better than RPI 5. Not only GPU/Video decoder but also CPU. For the software ECO system, x86/x64 would be also much better than RPI5. The only two advantages of RPI5 would be power-saving and expansion port (GPIO/I2C).
Thanks for this. I have a pi in my current robot and was tossing up between a mini pc and pi 5 in my next robot. The power supply for the mini pc is approximately the same cost as the pi 5.
Had a raspberry pi 4b for gaming emulation and it struggled on the Nintendo and PlayStation game's so I upgraded to the N100 gaming console which should run a lot smoother 👍
I have a Dell R740 with twin xeons and 256gb of ram if I want to pay for running it (I don't, it's off) - an i5 optiplex with AMD gpu and an old i3 Nuc. For me, getting a Pi5 was about ARM64, I probably could have emulated it; but I like tinkering and I wanted to natively compile for other handheld devices I have that are ARM64. I'm also looking at developing solutions for automation that would be based on things like the Pi Zero 2 for work; so for a few use cases, it made sense for me. I understand that a large proponent of people interested in such hardware are probably focusing on emulation and retrogaming. You could make the argument that it would make better sense to buy an old SSF machine or a beelink, especially if it was your only computer.
Interesting comparison, thanks Michael. Also try comparing with the latest Intel Alder Lake N97, for example like the GMKtec NucBox G5 which can be picked up for little over $150 and ships with Windows 11 Pro. The NucBox G5 comes with 12GB ddr5, uses similar power (8W) and is smaller, cheaper and faster than a RPI5 build when you add case, PSU and ssd.
I’m not aware of any way to use it directly. Probably the easiest way would be to hook it up to a Pi (Pi Zero 2 is relatively cheap) and send the video to the PC.
I use my PI for AirPrint only. It’s doing fine for that. Moreover I like the possibility to install RPi OS on micro cd card and then run the PI headless.
Regarding the performance on video playback i have the same situation when using firefox, but when using chromium it goes really smooth. Pi is not intended for "Power", but instead "Flexibility". The low power consumption, the header, and the different connectors with also the os support is where it really shines and still is just unbeatable, not being the first option as a general use computer, but the ability to be used as one is great.
On the GPIO pins the UP Board has released the "UP 7000" SBC with a N100 (or N50) onboard, and a 40--Pin GPIO. It also has faster DDR5 RAM as well (in fact some N100 Mini PCs have DDR5 too). In the end though it really is all a big "depends" answer. For me HTPC, Emulation, and regular IoT stuff makes the N100 a go to for the price.
I prefer the N100 over Raspberry Pi 5 in most circumstances. I do keep a couple older Raspberry Pi 4B 8 GB ram models for existing applications and purposes I know they work just fine for. Intel will never get same power efficiency as ARM cpus, but Intel N100 is very good for low power consumption compared to its more power hungry brothers.
If your going to go with the n100 you're more likely better off with something like a HP 600 G4 Mini for a little over $100. 6 cores, dual channel DDR4 ram, nvme, 2.5 SSD, 2.5 or 10Gb Ethernet. Much better platform, even if older.
Unfortunatley second hand PC hardware is not as cheap internationally as it is in the USA, those are closer to $200 here in Australia. Defintiely a good option though based on specs.
@MichaelKlements that's really cool! Do you have more info about it? I'm thinking of making my NUC14 water cooled and trying to find similar projects, this one looks very good!
If you are viewing videos then I cannot see any valid use case for a Raspberry PI. I have an old Raspberry Pi4 running a Pihole, but I also have a Trigkey N100 mini as a small NAS. Raspberries are generally unsurpassed for many hardware tinkering projects, but they are over-priced and under-speced for roles as a NAS or processing oriented oriented projects.
RPi were good when they used to be cheap nowadays if you want something more powerful just get a mini PC tho I agree that older Pi models are still good for tinkering as the prices drop
Looking to build a new media/kodi htpc for mainly watching video files encoded in 1080p HEVC .265 10-bit from a local connected external USB 3.0 HDD(s) and NAS over wire LAN. Which would be better? Thanks.
The Pi shines as a component in larger projects and it still just barely ekes out a win as a cost-effective server. It's absolute dog water value as a desktop. They're also reasonably cost-effective for retro gaming at the moment, but that won't be the case when the intel N200 becomes more common.
It will be interesting if the Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU drives significant change across the industry. The Raspberry Pi 6 may end up with a far more powerful CPU? If you consider all the mainstream PC companies like Dell, ASUS, Lenovo etc are releasing notebooks based on ARM processors, and Apple is already ARM based....it should place greater demand for software compatibility across all architecture types.
i feel like the pi5 is really in a weird spot where if you want a low power, cheap, easy to cool sbc to tinker with, the pi4 is a much better option - and if you want a low cost desktop replacement you are better off going with one of the x86 alternatives. it's hard for me to imagine a use case where the pi5 is the optimal solution. at least today with current pricing and market. personally i could see picking the pi4 over the pi5 even if the prices were identical
20 watt difference at full tilt... that's x24 = 480 watthours per day; about 14.4 kWh per month. At 40c/kWh in my area, that's $5.75 per month or $69 per year in electricity. Hmm...
Nice video ! I had the opportunity to compare Raspberry Pi 5 and Odroid H4 Plus (with an N97 processor slightly more efficient than the N100). While the N97/N100 is much more efficient than the Pi5, the performance per watt in various benchmarks is better for the Pi5. All depends on whether you need higher performance (then N100) or much lower energy consumption (then RPi5).
Anything with video will be more power efficient on the N100, with the exception of h265 playback. The N100 has hardware acceleration for practically all current codecs. RUclips playback with the Pi 5 is done on the CPU, making it use more power.
@@LivingLinux I was confused with the N95 ... the N97 seems to have the same iGPU as the N100. But Odroid H4 plus seems to be so expensive that it comes into Ryzen territory and that's off course more powerfull. After the N100 revolution this year now the Ryzen revolution will follow with ARM systems getting more expensive they are loosing their former territory.
The Pi 5 price looks compelling until you realize it's not all of the parts that you need. The only use-case I see for a Pi these days personally is to run Klipper. I'm not even sure a standalone Pi is even worth it for that use-case, but I've had a Pi 4 in a closet for a long time, so that's what I'm using.
A Windows Mini PC will always use more Power and Electricity than a Raspberry Pi especially if it's running 24/7 and especially if you have two or more of them running 24/7 and they also have more that could go wrong with them plus Windows isn't supported as long as a Raspberry Pi. My Raspberry Pi 3B+ is still supported and that came out in 2017 and even the regular Raspberry Pi 3B is still supported and that came out in 2015. Microsoft came out with Windows 10 around that time and they are about to end support for Windows 10 around October 2025 while the older Raspberry Pi's are still supported. In my opinion the Raspberry Pi's are worth putting the extra money into even if you have to buy HAT's and accessories for them but if you do need more RAM then yeah just get a Windows Computer but if not a Raspberry Pi is just fine. Some people even use a Raspberry Pi as their main Computer I don't because I have a Lenovo Windows Laptop as my main Computer but you can basically do anything with a Raspberry Pi and there's only so much you can do with Windows when compared to a Raspberry Pi.
The Pi is not intended to compete with this, nor for such use cases. It can do some, but it's not made for this. And it's not intended to be this powerful and expensive. They strayed from their path in this regard... They should keep the price down using slower and cheaper components, fot market where CPU performance is not the issue...
RUclips playback on a Pi 5 is not a software issue, it's a hardware issue. The Pi 5 has no hardware decoders for VP9, nor AV1. You can force YT fall back to h264 with the browser plugin h264ify.
Yes he is right. I have tried this plugin on my raspberry and it worked fine. I think the official raspberry OS has it install all ready on the browser, im not sure.
Raspberry Pi 5 has H.265/HEVC decoding. It does not have H.264 decoding like the Raspberry Pi 4. It should be fast enough to do H.264 in software though.
BTW, HEVC is the main codec for Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. RUclips hasn't adopted it for some reason.
@@harleyn3089 pretty sure there are licensing costs for hevc.
Exactly, Intel GPU hardware decoding support on Linux is way way better. Most browsers support VAAPI but not V4L2 which most ARM processors are based.
AV1 is an open-source codec that is royalty free while HEVC costs money to use. I hope google never pays MPEG LA, horrible group imo, to license HEVC. Companies should move to AV1 instead since it is free has better quality at similar bitrates vs HEVC especially when doing higher resolutionsm Netflix has been delivering some HD and UHD stuff in AV1 for a while now. Amazon is a member of the AV1 group and the latest firestick has av1 decoding hardware so hopefully soon they use it.@harleyn3089
The real advantage of the N100 is compatibility. Some server software doesn't support Arm. Especially if you want to use OpnSense or PfSense.
У мини ПК во всем преимущество!!! Я больше никогда не куплю SBC! Только мини ПК.
С поддержкой АРМ всегда проблемы. ARMBIAN постоянно просят донаты.
У мини ПК вообще ни каких проблем.
Yes. Also for learning about home servers it would be so beneficial for newbies to learn basics of Proxmox and at least initially build on top of it as it’s so easy to revert changes. Man I still wish I would’ve found it sooner as it would’ve saved literally days from my learning experiences.
@@konstaMalkinAre you joking?
Are you seriously complaining about free software asking for help?
Thanks for the video. I'm using an RPI Zero 2w to run Volumio, an RPI 3B+ to run LibreElec (Kodi) and an RPI 4 with 2 GB RAM to run Home Assistant. I'm using a Beelink N100 to dual boot Windows 11 Pro and Kubuntu 22.04 LTS. Life is good.
I bought a Beelink S12 Pro .. only supports 16GB, not, I inserted a 32GB memory module as some others also did this and it seems to work just fine. Been playing with Proxmox a couple of days now and seriously impressed.
I had/have all PI's just not the 5. Price seems very hard to justify. Ok power consumption is a bit higher except for the fact that I just eliminated 2 running PI4's and I have plenty more power and memory left according to Proxmox. And the most important thing. It has a nice case, and more importantly, it all just seems to work. Great PI community except for the fact that for most things I had to spend hours or days to get stuff working sometimes. I like those N100 mini things.
May i ask what bus do u use for ram
I think max ram support are depend on it bus
@@Ohasumi The Beelink S12 Pro only has 1 memory slot . I believe this is a N100 limitation. ordered DDR4 32GB for a laptop. Took the supplied one out, replaced with the 32GB one and till now it is still working perfectly. Perfect for Proxmox when running different virtual servers.
I owned over 20 SBCs, different models from RaspberryPi/Khadas/OrangePi,Radxa they were fun at first, then I got tired of all the tinkering that had to be done just to get some basic stuff working on them. It was fun playing with clusters/swarms/containers but a few months back I bought a Beelink EQ12 with an N100 CPU + 16GB DDR5 that's flawlessly handling all my services ( NextCloud, Reverse Proxy, OMV, Jellyfin , Grafana etc ) and there's still plenty of room for more. I could never go back to a non x86 unit even if it is for free.
I recently sold my new pi 5, it was my first experience with raspberry pi
Ssd won't work i had to edit config files etx
I bought firebat ak2 with n100 8gb ram for 90€ new and it works sooo good 👍🏻
9:13 - I think that hits the nail on the head. I see the resistors for indicating 1/2 GB of RAM on the board... I have to wonder if they're sitting on a 1 or 2 GB Pi 5 model that could be sold for $40 or $45. That would make the low-end Pi 5 a great option and bring back some of the price advantage if you don't need lots of RAM for projects, but want some of the speed or CSI/DSI lane performance of the Pi 5.
I agree, if they could get a 2GB Pi 5 out for $10 more than the Pi 4, that would be a good value proposition.
Raspberry needs to earn money, memory chips are cheap today and 4/8 GB model don't reflect that for sure. If they release too cheap base model we will see some companies or individuals that resolder those and still be able to get some profit.
@@MichaelKlements i’m not sure cheap is coming back to the pi world once it’s floated on the stock market - investors always want more profit.
Yeah, based on the price differences between the Pi 4 4/8 GB and Pi 5 4/8 GB ($5), we can expect a $40 Pi 5 1GB and a $50 Pi 5 2GB. Then the Pi 5 would be a really good option if you want all the CPU power it has to offer, especially at such a low price point.
@@MichaelKlements 👀It happened, we have a 2gb rpi 5- what do you think?
The Pi's are great, early adopter starting with the original Pi model A, I have over a dozen Pi's running up to the 4 8G, as the Pi 5 has steadily grown out of the 'acceptable pi price range'. I love my Pi's but I've started buying N100 boards for computing and using more ESP32 microcontrollers for projects.
This is pretty much the idea im going for. My original pi 3B+ i got is just too sluggish for my needs for a built in PC for my car, so ill be opting for an actual x86 based PC, and then using my esp32 boards as required. Still looking at options, but since ill be running Linux instead of windows ill get better mileage out of it anyways. Been looking into possibly getting a latte panda for it, but might get better specs for the same price elsewhere
Yeah, I just spent 89.99 on my Pi5 pm Amazon and have to wait almosst a phuckin month for them to send to me ordered it on the 13th of this month like wtf... THIS is my very first Rasberry build or any Single-board for that matter. I am attemtpting to make a Steam link pretty much. I am tech savy but mostly building not programing haha!
My very first case/& build for the 8gb Pi5 I am using the Pironman 5 case sooo badass!!! I cant waiaait! Any advice?
N100 is very good. Asrock N100M owner, poor pcie support in Linux kernel 6.69. Do not recommend N100M. Recommend N100.
You are so right: the use-case is all that matters, and Raspberries serve a pretty distinct job. I don’t want to watch videos (work great with ubiquitous TV sets, PCs, smartphones or tablets already and won’t get better). I don’t want a new virtualization server either (continues to work great on any PC). The *truly unique* task that other devices can‘t deliver is to provide an efficient always-on server to run all kinds of little services. The focus is on availability, not cutting edge performance. Pi 5 is more than powerful for this, and its tiny form factor plus its ultra-low power consumption makes it a better solution. For this use case, power consumption of any (just slightly more performant) Mini-PC adds hefty 250kWh/year to the bill, translating to roughly €100 in added annual energy cost (in Europe) - at the same time, *both* Raspberry and Mini-PC will probably idle most of the time anyway in these scenarios, so no convincing benefit for so much more cost. That’s why I feel comparing Raspberries to Mini-PC (and focusing on performance comparisons) might just miss the point altogether: After all, I wouldn’t compare a convertible and a pickup truck either, even when both might cost the same and are both „cars“: Raspberries are great for low power and hardware prototyping, Mini PCs are great for typical PC tasks in restrained environments. IMHO they aren’t interchangeable choices though. :-) That said, if *you* outgrew *Raspberry use cases* by using Linux OS as your regular PC, then switching to (any type of) PC seems wise. Just please don‘t compare them as if they served the same purpose.
The only reason I can think of for buying a Pi5 over a mini PC these days is if you have a use for all those GPIO pins; however, I rarely see anyone using them since Arduino and ESP32 are cheaper and better for that. The proprietary Broadcom video is also a limitation for video applications . I payed $45 for Pi4 several years back and I think that is the sweet spot for any Pi.
Agree, and if you really want the Pi's GPIO pins then a base Pi 4 at $35 is better value
Let's admit we outgrew RPi. Most got them for cheap tinker projects, maybe a small fraction used GPIO, but they are too limited. Hey, they are still pretty cool, like your first car, but now you know what you need and RPi came too little too late.
I agree, but I think it's more accurate to say the Pi outgrew its previous use case. They're now too expensive (not to mention hard to find) for cheap tinker projects, and if you need it for a project with more oomf, too weak (performance-wise) to trade blows with others in the same price range. It lost its niche.
@@sniperoth I bought 4 8GB model 4 to use for clustering, tinkering, and HAOS use but I don’t think I’d buy anything except a 400 perhaps. Mini PC and proxmox now.
I think a lot of people forgot the Pi was supposed to be a very powerful Arduino alternative, but people mistook them for mini computers instead.
For me Raspberry foundation grows into villain. They start as cheap computers for kids to teach them programming but during covid they said "**** the kids!" we sell all our inventory to big companies as prototypining boards and shut kid's mouth with picos. Pi5 go even further. Instead adopting PD standard they are forcing people to buy new overpriced charger and with case, fan, heatsink, sd card this thing is absolute money milker.
I have slightly disagree. We never outgrew raspberry. If that’s the case, well I have to say you selected completely wrong device initially. It’s still way to go for electronics. It’s not the device to replace conventional computers. But Raspberry foundation has took really bizarre step in introducing rpi5 as viable home computer. Imo they just should focus more into rpi zeros and stuff like that. I kinda get they have to keep original rpi formfactor as learning platform, but making it home computer doesn’t make sense at all.
I decided to buy both after watching your video. Thank you.
Did you try changing the power levels in the BIOS oft the N100? Those Beelink computers often limit power draw to 20 watts when they can easily handle 30. If you change it you get a lot more performance.
Great video tutorial. Thank you. The main reason for buying one of these PC/SBC is usage(power consumption, HW connections, solar panel powered device/outdoor, . . .), OS, software. You can imagine what you have with fast device but bad OS ? Or vice versa ?
I’m not a Windows user, but you failed to mention that the Beelink also comes with W11 Pro installed, at a current retail costs of $147.99 on Amazon. I just bought the Beelink ($169) to replace my aging desktop PC. I installed Ubuntu-Cinnamon 24.04. So far very pleased with its performance. I also added a 500gig ssd sata drive to mount the linux system on. So I have a dual boot capability through the bios boot option. Thanks for the comparison review.
Hey there Bill,
I also have beelink eq12 mini pc with Intel n100.
And I use windows on it but previously I have tried installing Ubuntu on it but I had problems with RUclips playback on it.( Huge Framedrops)
But youtube playback on windows is perfect 4k and even 8k works smooth.
Did you face any problem with RUclips on Linux?
Thanks and regards.👍
@@vinsan98 I didn’t test it. I typically use the RUclips app on my tablet.
That is another benefit of the N100 and obviously adds additional value. I overlooked it because it's not an option for the Pi 5 and my main focus was "what can you replace a Pi 5 with"
The Windows 11 Pro license that comes with it is an OEM bundled license so has almost zero real value since basically no one except companies and system builders are paying full price for OEM licenses these days. Having a windows license is maybe a $15-30 value depending on the time of year you are needing a key. Another fun fact is that you don't really even need a license key since you can still install and run Windows 10 and 11 without ever entering a digital license key and it will run just fine only preventing you from making personalization changes and for the most part I don't care about personalization on a box that is going to take on mini server duty. If you bought a retail copy of Windows 7 Ultimate back in the day and tied it to your microsoft account, you have a digital license to Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10, and 11 with currently no end in sight for continued use.
Wow did not expect the CPU score to be so close. I would have thought higher CPU and a more mature CPU arch would have given Intel a bigger win.
x86 went past "mature" and into "derelict, begging for death" in late 2000th.
Regarding idle power consumption for the Beelink, you might check the BIOS setup to see if they provide a setting for enabling higher C-states on idle. That could knock off a few watts. I purchased some HP Elitedesk 800 G4 mini's with the 6-core I5-8600 CPU, and was surprised to see an idle power of only 4 watts (47 watts for full CPU load) with 64GB RAM and a 1 TB NVMe SSD. HP did a great job optimizing the firmware.
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll look into that!
@@MichaelKlements did you have a chance to look into that? Did you manage to make the idle consumption lower?
Great comparison. If I was looking for something like this I would choose the N100 over the Pi5. I have an 8GB Pi4 for dabbling with I/O and simple gaming.
That was exactly my thought, I was interested in a Pi 5, but it's far better to get a mini PC for a few dollars more.
I have proxmox running on N100 which is mostly used for arr stack apps and jellyfin. It handles 1 video transcode 4k HDR to SDR or multiple without HDR or lower resolution. Good enough for me.
Cool! Thank you for your comparison. Useful in helping me decide on the N100
The DDR5 version of the N100 is up to 30% faster! The only scenario's that the Pi5 makes sense is if a SD card is sufficient and especially if you dont need much memory.
I'd honestly get a ZimaBlade over the Beelink. I have the 2023 equivalent Beelink minipc, and within a year it began experiencing a fan issue, and now (18 months later) it won't even boot consistently (usually have to muck about with the cmos battery to get it going).
🇬🇧 November 2024
This has been my experience of Beelink too. Maybe they used to be good - but often get the Blue Screen of Death on ours (promptly binned).
I use an n100 with proxmox (homelab stuff) and an old pi for monitoring/prometheus things. I think the two of them get along well together lol.
The PI io and the community are an added value for any project. Raspberry has this potential.
Got an N100 today with 16GB ram. Installed Manjaro KDE and it FLIES.
Honestly shocked at how quick this thing is for most tasks and even some games.
Via Proton in steam games like Grim Dawn was playable around 30 fps.
Halls of Torment 60 fps, All 2d games I tried were 60 fps+. So many amazing roguelikes play perfect 60 fps on this thing, even Hades.
The N100 is roughly equivalent to the Skylake I5-6500T (also 4 cores, 4 threads) from 2015 in the Geekbench 6 benchmarks. You'll find that CPU in lots of business mini and SFF PC's dumped on Ebay - they ran Win10 fine and run Linux great. With the upcoming 2025 abandonment of Win10, even more cheap quality PC's will show up soon on Ebay. Good times for Linux users!
Great video. I'd actually like to see a benchmark comparison and review of several of these N100 Mini PC's from the different vendors. Beelinks Mini S12 vs. GMK's Nucbox G3 vs. Minisforum UN100P vs Rasberry Pi. I'd like to see who's the top performer.
An N100 shootout, I'll have a look at putting something like this together.
I have the T8 Firebat with ddr5 16gb 4800Mhz. In bios you set it to 4800Mhz and increase TDP from 15w stock to 30w. It cost less than the Pi5 mentioned here..Its faster at browsing than my 14900k on 1000mbit cat6. It must be something with the browser optimizing for this mini pc making browsing lightning fast. If you blink you wont see a new page loaded. The bios is pretty advanced so you can adjust how fast the cpu will ramp up its frequency. It also accepted undervolting so I can run turbo speeds for longer. The included copper heatpipe onboard is so much better than any of those poorly made you see on the Pi, and its included rofl. The network coverage isnt superb out of the box, but if you loosen the 1 of the 2 internal sticker wifi antennas inside it can become really good. I mounted each one in vertical plane and horizontal plane inside the housing. Since its just a sticker antenna it was an easy mod. (instead of both beeing parallell on top, I put one vertical on the sidewall). The best thing is that it just works, no insane hassle that some of the Android or Linux gives you.. I had one problem caused by win update, it reinstalled the wrong network driver so I had to redownload the correct one from Realtek site. Other than that it has been working fine.
Like millions of others, I got into Raspberry Pi long ago (Pi2) via Emulation, and I had great fun until Pi 5 was released. Whilst still a fantastic SBC, after my own testing, it simply can't compete with x86 emulation anymore. I have jumped to the GMKtec G5 N97, which, Like the Pi, this Micro NUC is super tiny, and the N97 CPU/DDR5/1200mHZ graphics beat my N100 for speed and graphics for the same price. Now, once more, I'm having a blast with emulation again.
I think it is great that we have multiple low cost computing choices! That lets us choose the best tool for the job. I really like the Pi zero- yes it has a lot lower specs, however it has io pins it's even smaller, cheaper ($15) and lower power. For a lot of applications you don't really need SSD storage, a cheap micro SD card is good enough and that makes the pi system much cheaper. It is also nice to be able to swap out the micro SD card to try different OSes.
The Pi Zero 2W has made the Zero series much more versatile. I've used a couple of these for projects where a full sized Pi 4 or 5 would be overkill.
For GPIO: If you use ready2go projects (like building a PiStorm for an Amiga) definitly they are a plus. For theese projects you need the Pi anyways (and the correct version). But if you do your own projects as a beginner, it is quite simple to destroy GPIOs or the whole Pi. So using external hardware might be the better option. Esp. the PiPico is available extremly cheap and contains enough for most DIY experiments.
Just what I was looking for. The added bonus of the n100 is you can load windows and you have a ton more software.
I would have happily chosen any n100 minipc over a raspberry Pi 5, but none of these minipc companies like beelink, morfine, minisforum are available in India, only the official intel nic, some asus and a local brand. AMD minipcs are non existent here. And the cheapest n100 was available almost the double of RPI, that too barebones model, so I had to add storage and memory.
Hence I chose the RPI 5 for my tiny home server, and it also uses very less power idling compared to n100 so I can have it running all day long
Also RPI can be powered by POE with power backup, not sure of mini PCs can be powered same way.
I'll be getting something more powerful for my editing work.
from RPi4B daily driver desktop I went for the N5105 first then upgraded to this N100 (and will be upgrading further to N97, very soon)
though I also bought RPi5B boards (4GB and 8GB)....but considering the cost to make it a daily driver desktop, the N100 proved far more attractive...
The results here are somewhat misleading as running the same benchmarks under July 2024 PiOS x64 stock clocks gen3 PCIe mode results were sysbench 41495, NVMe 48860, glmark2 1909. (video driver issues under ubuntu and no PCIe gen3 for Pi most likely cause for lower numbers)
Would love to see a comparison with orange pi5 and n100
I have 2 Peladn WI-4's, I have been running open media vault on one of them for over a year 24/7 and it's never missed a beat. The other one runs proxmox with 3 VM's (1 x MS Server 2022, Home Assistant and Pi-Hole) no problem,
I would defo reccomend running these Mini PC's as they cost pennies per day.
You're right about the Pi5 price point. But the N100 also runs into the same problem - at that price / performance. If I was looking for a "desktop replacement" I can find an old laptop for a little more and repurpose it, gaining a built in display, keyboard and pointer. The Pi 4 remains the best value tinker box.
Thank you very much for the nice benchmark comparison of the RPi/N100 computers. It gives a nice knowledge of what to select regarding the performance needs of CPU, GPU etc.
Wouldn't you have to buy the power cable and case for the Pi in addition? It seem a clear cut choice to me.
The Raspberry pi is also useful for saving on power cost if you want to run it 24/7. It does add up over time!
For Linux, I prefer the two hand-me-down Vorke V1 (Celeron J3160), one hand-me-down Vorke V1 Plus (Celeron J3455), and one repurposed RK3188 TV box that I run cut-down Debian/Armbian on for low-measurement-noise benchmarking and as a min. requirements target for my creations. For embedded, I've been aiming for Pi Pico-based where possible because they start faster and you don't need a preflight checklist to turn on or off your retrocomputing projects without risk of corrupting the SD card.
(eg. I own a USB4VC built around a hand-me-down Pi4 and, despite how much I spent on it, now that the ps2x2pico firmware is solid enough, I've ordered parts to solder together a few more of them using slightly modded YD-RP2040 boards (the ones that can be had cheaply-including-shipping in single-unit quantities from China) since I can harvest the Pi4 for use in something with no Pico-based alternative... and once I've got something that needs SCSI, I'll be going for the BlueSCSI V2, not the PiSCSI. The fancier WiFi-related features just aren't worth the tax Pi boards with full OSes impose in hassle, let alone money.)
Since Raspberry Pi Foundation have decided to go the way of overpriced and underwhelming desktop PCs, the N100 alternative is very welcome!
Not sure what you're finding over priced? They essentially the same price they have been for a while for a given ram configuration.
@@wojtek-33 the rpi is overpriced.
@@KisameSempai Isn't everything nowadays...
The comparison is quite well made, thank you.
If you somehow power limit the N100 to the level of RP5, how would the figure change?
The only advantage of Pi's nowadays is a really fast GPIO to run LED matrices. Yet you don't need an RPi5 for that and it's still not the best tool for the task.
Thanks for the video.
Seems that your GL mark is low on Pi 5. I can get around 1500 on Pi5.
Also, the PCIE gen3 by 4 NVME should be much faster on RK3588 and N100.
The default gen 2 on Pi 5 is very slow. A little bit better if you set it to gen 3.
N100 have power adapter, with Raspberry Pi I can run it from USB power bank so for my point of view and my usage N100 is not better option unless you can run this from power bank as well?
It is interesting how lots of comments on another video I saw was talking how much more sense N100 makes, but now when I see that there is power outlet needed then it easy to see that these are not "same thing but N100 is much better".
We can guess from the 1080p playback, but 4K video also works well on the N100 (typically).
Yes I had no issue with 4K video playback on the N100 as well
Bough a mini pc, n100, 32gb ram 1 tb ssd, 2x2.5 rj45. €200. Very usefull. Gonna buy another one to use as a usb audio to dante box. That way I can get a setup for 1500 with more utility than the cheapest dante mixer at 2300
Which one do you recommend to go for If I want to run a VPN on them with 24*7 uptime capabilities?
I've been wanting to have an experience using raspberry pi but i'm afraid of wasting my money as I have no hands on experience with the pi computers...
If you're just looking at experimenting with a Pi then a base Pi 4 is the best value for money at $35.
@@MichaelKlements oh, ok. thanks... question, can Pi4 work with arduino and vice versa?
The pi experience is as good now as it's ever been. It's a good time to get into it. From a certain point of view, a pi is just a linux computer, so getting into it is no harder than getting into linux itself (maybe a little easier because you can be sure the hardware is going to work well). Obviously there are a lot of niches for a pi, so that part depends on what you want to do/tinker with. Good luck :)
Any idea how the power draw compares when ignoring the gpu's? Planning to get an N100 as a headless server.
Excellent comparative review. Thank you.
Bottleneck for me is POWER consumption. I need to run the device on a car battery. The mini PC consumes way to much when running on high load compare to PI5. Are there any mini PC with similar watt usage like PI 5?
I'm not aware of any x86 based systems that use as little as the Pi 5. The computer that comes closest is probably a Lattepanda
Take a look at the Odroid H4 series. They've got the N97 idling at closer to your Pi 5 power consumption and also break out some I/O.
Thanks for the suggestion, Ill take a look at it
For the performance point of view, Intel N100 would be much better than RPI 5. Not only GPU/Video decoder but also CPU. For the software ECO system, x86/x64 would be also much better than RPI5. The only two advantages of RPI5 would be power-saving and expansion port (GPIO/I2C).
Thanks for this. I have a pi in my current robot and was tossing up between a mini pc and pi 5 in my next robot. The power supply for the mini pc is approximately the same cost as the pi 5.
For a Robot I'd probably still go with the Pi 5, or maybe one of the RK3588 based SBCs.
Had a raspberry pi 4b for gaming emulation and it struggled on the Nintendo and PlayStation game's so I upgraded to the N100 gaming console which should run a lot smoother 👍
I have a Dell R740 with twin xeons and 256gb of ram if I want to pay for running it (I don't, it's off) - an i5 optiplex with AMD gpu and an old i3 Nuc. For me, getting a Pi5 was about ARM64, I probably could have emulated it; but I like tinkering and I wanted to natively compile for other handheld devices I have that are ARM64. I'm also looking at developing solutions for automation that would be based on things like the Pi Zero 2 for work; so for a few use cases, it made sense for me.
I understand that a large proponent of people interested in such hardware are probably focusing on emulation and retrogaming. You could make the argument that it would make better sense to buy an old SSF machine or a beelink, especially if it was your only computer.
Interesting comparison, thanks Michael. Also try comparing with the latest Intel Alder Lake N97, for example like the GMKtec NucBox G5 which can be picked up for little over $150 and ships with Windows 11 Pro. The NucBox G5 comes with 12GB ddr5, uses similar power (8W) and is smaller, cheaper and faster than a RPI5 build when you add case, PSU and ssd.
The NucBox G5 looks like a great alternative too, I'll definitely look into trying it out.
Nice video - do you know if there's also a way to connect eg. a Raspbery Pi High Quality Camera to the PC?
I’m not aware of any way to use it directly. Probably the easiest way would be to hook it up to a Pi (Pi Zero 2 is relatively cheap) and send the video to the PC.
Not too sure about your nvme speeds. It seems much lower (half ?) what other testers have shown. Are you running it in pci 3 mode ?
Great share! Thanks! What do you think of the ZimaBlade 7700?
The ZimaBlade 7700 is also a great budget friendly option and the PCIe port allows you to really customise it to suit your application.
I just wonder why Raspberry did not use more advanced cortex a78 instead of the older a76?
I use my PI for AirPrint only. It’s doing fine for that. Moreover I like the possibility to install RPi OS on micro cd card and then run the PI headless.
sounds like the N95/97/100 line is the end of the line for Pi things?
I think they're definitely going to be taking a large chunk of the Pi's market share
What about playing X265 at 4k natively vs via Plex (no transcoding) I like the power output of both.
The N100 PC is the better choice for streaming
Which kind of PC of this size, is the next higher class? Eventually with DisplayPort/s ?
Probably an N200 based mini PC. Lot's of mini PCs support display port over USB C
@@MichaelKlements Thank you.
I prefer RPi4 or N100.
Nice comparison .. Thank You for sharing .. Cheers :)
Regarding the performance on video playback i have the same situation when using firefox, but when using chromium it goes really smooth.
Pi is not intended for "Power", but instead "Flexibility". The low power consumption, the header, and the different connectors with also the os support is where it really shines and still is just unbeatable, not being the first option as a general use computer, but the ability to be used as one is great.
On the GPIO pins the UP Board has released the "UP 7000" SBC with a N100 (or N50) onboard, and a 40--Pin GPIO. It also has faster DDR5 RAM as well (in fact some N100 Mini PCs have DDR5 too). In the end though it really is all a big "depends" answer. For me HTPC, Emulation, and regular IoT stuff makes the N100 a go to for the price.
Can I use this N100 for office work? Microsoft 365 and browser based tasks?
Yes, it'll run MS 365 and handles basic browsing pretty well
I prefer the N100 over Raspberry Pi 5 in most circumstances. I do keep a couple older Raspberry Pi 4B 8 GB ram models for existing applications and purposes I know they work just fine for. Intel will never get same power efficiency as ARM cpus, but Intel N100 is very good for low power consumption compared to its more power hungry brothers.
If your going to go with the n100 you're more likely better off with something like a HP 600 G4 Mini for a little over $100. 6 cores, dual channel DDR4 ram, nvme, 2.5 SSD, 2.5 or 10Gb Ethernet. Much better platform, even if older.
Unfortunatley second hand PC hardware is not as cheap internationally as it is in the USA, those are closer to $200 here in Australia. Defintiely a good option though based on specs.
a good, balanced review. well done.
what are the commands did you use to do the benchmarks?
please post the commands
The commands are provided in my blog post linked in the vidoe description
I need me a GPIO header or my project feels like it is limited to a server.
Thanks! Great work! was looking for this.
Thank you Alexander!
also, where did you get this in SA bru?
I live in Australia, so got them locally but you can get the Pi from pishop.co.za and the N100 Pc from Amazon.co.za
What id that water cooling thing in the beginning of the video?
It's my DIY solution to water cool a Pi 5
@MichaelKlements that's really cool! Do you have more info about it? I'm thinking of making my NUC14 water cooled and trying to find similar projects, this one looks very good!
I built portable IRL live streaming setup using Quick Sync hardware video encoder in N100.
If you are viewing videos then I cannot see any valid use case for a Raspberry PI.
I have an old Raspberry Pi4 running a Pihole, but I also have a Trigkey N100 mini as a small NAS.
Raspberries are generally unsurpassed for many hardware tinkering projects, but they are over-priced and under-speced for roles as a NAS or processing oriented oriented projects.
N100 with 8-16gb is a better deal if you do not need the gpio
The S12 Pro can be upgraded to 32GB ram
Upgradablility is another advantage of the S12 and most N100 PCs
RPi were good when they used to be cheap nowadays if you want something more powerful just get a mini PC tho I agree that older Pi models are still good for tinkering as the prices drop
Looking to build a new media/kodi htpc for mainly watching video files encoded in 1080p HEVC .265 10-bit from a local connected external USB 3.0 HDD(s) and NAS over wire LAN. Which would be better? Thanks.
Definitely go with the N100 PC for this
@@MichaelKlements Thanks for the suggestion. I went with a GMKtec G5 instead.
And this also can run raspberry pi os. Raspberry Pi OS has x86 version
I was hoping for SATA ports on the N100 to build a NAS with 3.5" HDD
There are N100 compatible motherboards available with additional SATA ports.
The Pi shines as a component in larger projects and it still just barely ekes out a win as a cost-effective server. It's absolute dog water value as a desktop.
They're also reasonably cost-effective for retro gaming at the moment, but that won't be the case when the intel N200 becomes more common.
It will be interesting if the Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU drives significant change across the industry. The Raspberry Pi 6 may end up with a far more powerful CPU? If you consider all the mainstream PC companies like Dell, ASUS, Lenovo etc are releasing notebooks based on ARM processors, and Apple is already ARM based....it should place greater demand for software compatibility across all architecture types.
Raspberry will stay with Broadcom, maybe another company will release SBC with the last snapdragon but low probability.
i feel like the pi5 is really in a weird spot where if you want a low power, cheap, easy to cool sbc to tinker with, the pi4 is a much better option - and if you want a low cost desktop replacement you are better off going with one of the x86 alternatives. it's hard for me to imagine a use case where the pi5 is the optimal solution. at least today with current pricing and market.
personally i could see picking the pi4 over the pi5 even if the prices were identical
I agree, there are very few screnarios I can see where a Pi 5 is a better choice over the Pi 4 given the significant price difference.
20 watt difference at full tilt... that's x24 = 480 watthours per day; about 14.4 kWh per month. At 40c/kWh in my area, that's $5.75 per month or $69 per year in electricity. Hmm...
Nice video !
I had the opportunity to compare Raspberry Pi 5 and Odroid H4 Plus (with an N97 processor slightly more efficient than the N100).
While the N97/N100 is much more efficient than the Pi5, the performance per watt in various benchmarks is better for the Pi5.
All depends on whether you need higher performance (then N100) or much lower energy consumption (then RPi5).
Anything with video will be more power efficient on the N100, with the exception of h265 playback. The N100 has hardware acceleration for practically all current codecs. RUclips playback with the Pi 5 is done on the CPU, making it use more power.
@@LivingLinux I was confused with the N95 ... the N97 seems to have the same iGPU as the N100. But Odroid H4 plus seems to be so expensive that it comes into Ryzen territory and that's off course more powerfull. After the N100 revolution this year now the Ryzen revolution will follow with ARM systems getting more expensive they are loosing their former territory.
Ubuntu disks has it own disk testing option
The Pi 5 price looks compelling until you realize it's not all of the parts that you need. The only use-case I see for a Pi these days personally is to run Klipper. I'm not even sure a standalone Pi is even worth it for that use-case, but I've had a Pi 4 in a closet for a long time, so that's what I'm using.
Using something like a $30 Le Potato is better value for Klipper too though, unless you have one lying around.
A Windows Mini PC will always use more Power and Electricity than a Raspberry Pi especially if it's running 24/7 and especially if you have two or more of them running 24/7 and they also have more that could go wrong with them plus Windows isn't supported as long as a Raspberry Pi. My Raspberry Pi 3B+ is still supported and that came out in 2017 and even the regular Raspberry Pi 3B is still supported and that came out in 2015. Microsoft came out with Windows 10 around that time and they are about to end support for Windows 10 around October 2025 while the older Raspberry Pi's are still supported. In my opinion the Raspberry Pi's are worth putting the extra money into even if you have to buy HAT's and accessories for them but if you do need more RAM then yeah just get a Windows Computer but if not a Raspberry Pi is just fine. Some people even use a Raspberry Pi as their main Computer I don't because I have a Lenovo Windows Laptop as my main Computer but you can basically do anything with a Raspberry Pi and there's only so much you can do with Windows when compared to a Raspberry Pi.
If you don't need GPIO, why bother?
The Pi is not intended to compete with this, nor for such use cases. It can do some, but it's not made for this.
And it's not intended to be this powerful and expensive.
They strayed from their path in this regard... They should keep the price down using slower and cheaper components, fot market where CPU performance is not the issue...
I really feel like both computers are decent really. It all depends on your use case.