Raspberry Pi 5 now offers less memory and a lower price

The Raspberry Pi 5 was first released almost a year ago, today the Raspberry Pi Foundation is unveiling a new 2GB version of the popular one-board computer.

The lowest-cost Raspberry Pi 5 has so far been the 4GB variant, priced at $60. The new 2GB Pi comes in at only $50 and is built on a cost-optimised D0 stepping of the BCM2712 application processor.

Just offering a lower memory variant may not seem like a big deal, but there's some clever tech wizardry below the surface that makes it possible. The BCM2712C1 has a quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 application processor running at 2.4GHz, and the latest iteration of the VideoCore multimedia platform. But it also contains functionality for other markets than the Raspberry Pi which uses space and adds cost.

The D0 stepped version strips away this extra function, leaving only the parts the Pi needs. To the user it remains functionally the same with the fast quad-core processor, multimedia capabilities, and PCI Express bus.

Eben Upton, chief executive of Raspberry Pi Trading says, "…while our most demanding users -- who want to drive dual 4Kp60 displays, or open a hundred browser tabs, or compile complex software from source -- will probably stick with the existing higher memory-capacity variants of Raspberry Pi 5, many of you will find that this new, lower-cost variant works perfectly well for your use cases."

The tech specs remain the same:

• Broadcom BCM2712 2.4GHz quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 CPU, with cryptography extensions, 512KB per-core L2 caches and a 2MB shared L3 cache
• VideoCore VII GPU, supporting OpenGL ES 3.1, Vulkan 1.2
• Dual 4Kp60 HDMI® display output with HDR support
• 4Kp60 HEVC decoder
• LPDDR4X-4267 SDRAM (2GB, 4GB, and 8GB)
• Dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 5.0 / Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
• microSD card slot, with support for high-speed SDR104 mode
• 2 × USB 3.0 ports, supporting simultaneous 5Gbps operation
• 2 × USB 2.0 ports
• Gigabit Ethernet, with PoE+ support (requires separate PoE+ HAT)
• 2 × 4-lane MIPI camera/display transceivers
• PCIe 2.0 x1 interface for fast peripherals (requires separate M.2 HAT or other adapter)
• 5V/5A DC power via USB-C, with Power Delivery support
• Raspberry Pi standard 40-pin header
• Real-time clock (RTC), powered from external battery
• Power button

The 2GB Raspberry Pi is available to order now.