
Raspberry Pi 4 Review - FoxMulder23
https://www.electromaker.io/blog/article/raspberry-pi-4-review-hands-on-with-the-raspberry-pi-4-a-true-raspberry-pi-desktop
======
Waterluvian
I hate the profiteering feeling of the Canadian resalers. I want a Pi plus a
case and the heat sinks that I think are mandatory. To get that they want to
sell me crap I don't need like yet another SD card and power supply. Suddenly
the price hits $100CAD and the sexiness of the low price is gone.

~~~
monocasa
I don't think that the heat sinks are mandatory.

~~~
cydonian_monk
While I don't know about the Pi4, I've found that heatsinks are absolutely
required for my uses of the Pi3s. In every situation where I've used a 3 I've
had problems with them thermal-throttling down to a basically useless clock
speed or just straight-up overheating and blowing. And I'm not overclocking. I
don't feel safe using them in embedded applications without _at least_ a
heatsink on the main CPU. My workbench Pi also has a small 5V fan on it.

Are the 4s different somehow? Or has every 3 I've purchased (somewhere around
a dozen) been defective? (I don't have this issue with the Zeros.)

~~~
jrockway
My experience is that the Pi 4 gets very hot. You touch it anywhere (USB port,
Ethernet port) and it hurts.

I got a 40mm 5V Noctua fan for it and 3D printed a case that takes it. The
thing now runs very cold. Idle CPU temperatures were about 60 degrees before,
now loaded temperatures are around 40. Airflow is a big deal. (I am not using
any heat sinks.)

~~~
nsriv
Any chance you'd be willing to put up the files for the case somewhere? I have
a 40mm fan and a Pi on the way that I'd like to put together.

~~~
jrockway
It's this one:
[https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3723481](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3723481)

I printed it honeycomb infill and no top/bottom layers (and also rotated it so
it printed with the top and bottom on the bed, instead of upright; having to
change that might be an artifact of the slicer I used, though; Simplify3D)

~~~
munmaek
Is it possible to order without a facebook account? I'd like one but I don't
use facebook.

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FloatArtifact
Yet another review without benchmarks comparing the The raspberry pi 4 to
other SBC's on the market.

Comparing a product to its previous generation provides some information but
does next to nothing to inform how product stands within the rest of the
market.

~~~
davesmith1983
If you want to find out what these do I would head over to Youtube and look
for a channel called "ETA Prime". He benches almost all of these boards for
Emulation.

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karlp
So is the Rpi 4 susceptible to Spectre? There is no information about it even
though the chipset is apparently

~~~
ChuckNorris89
Like your PC and smartphone it is vulnerable in theory without software
mitigations but have there been any documented practical Spectre attacks in
the wild?

AFAIK Spectre implementations have been limited to security researchers in
universities ATM.

So I'll ask, is it worth worrying about this for you? In terms of
vulnerabilities there are lower hanging fruits.

~~~
steve_musk
>Like your PC and smartphone

This isn’t necessarily true for your smartphone, because some ARM CPUs don’t
do the speculative execution that Spectre/Meltdown exploit. For example, CPU
in the raspberry pi 3 didn’t have these vulnerabilities which I assume is why
the parent was asking this question.

~~~
ChuckNorris89
Most modern smartphones have Arm based chips with speculative execution which
are vulnerable without software patches.

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xd1936
Ordered mine from Element14 at 5:30am Eastern the morning it was announced,
and my order status has constantly said "Shipping " \+ two days out from
whatever date I check. Still hasn't shipped! The demand for this thing must be
incredible.

~~~
dexterdog
I'm pretty sure the 4GB boards have not been shipping yet. Most places only
have the 2GB right now and not even the 1.

~~~
vardump
Well, I've had two 4 GB boards for almost 2 weeks. They were also available on
the launch day, but sold out very fast.

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novaRom
Before you rush buying Pi4, check this more extensive technical review from
MickMack: [https://youtu.be/AHIld3cjmTM](https://youtu.be/AHIld3cjmTM)

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ehonda
Dont buy the official case. They will run hot.

Get one off amazon that has a fan. - "Acrylic case for raspberry pi 4"

edit - well it might not matter actually, I'd rather not spread false concern.

~~~
artemiszenk
The official case is fine. The Raspberry Pi 4 is thermally stable. It may run
a little hotter but far below the throttle limit under normal loads and no
longer uses incremental thermal throttling like the Pi 3.

~~~
SanchoPanda
This is commonly repeated but it really depends on what is meant by "normal
use" and caused me a lot of headache when I thought my board was defective. If
you mean watch youtube videos on one display at regular quality, the pi4 hits
80+ degrees c, at which point the metal is burning hot to the touch and starts
throttling.

Desktop / gui use requires either hanging the board so there is air passing on
all sides or a cooling solution.

~~~
justin66
Didn't the thermal situation radically improve after the first firmware
update?

~~~
vardump
Didn't see any improvement. I think the fix was about the USB chip
temperatures only. I'm planning to get heatsinks on the hottest chips + fan.

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realbarack
I'm working on developing a programming course for teenage students from a
range of socioeconomic backgrounds, some of whom will not have access to their
own laptops. I was thinking the Pi could be a great option here (of course it
requires separate display/keyboard, so I'm still weighing the value prop
here). Does anyone have experience with something like this?

~~~
adrianN
Pis can be connected to TVs if no proper screen is available and even older
models should be good enough for a programming course.

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_nickwhite
Seems the site went down, here is Google's cached text-only version:

*edit - wayback link below is a much better cached copy. thanks manchoz.

~~~
manchoz
Wayback Machine:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190716140109/https://www.elect...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190716140109/https://www.electromaker.io/blog/article/raspberry-
pi-4-review-hands-on-with-the-raspberry-pi-4-a-true-raspberry-pi-desktop)

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tomcam
Really looked forward to reading this. The gray on slightly lighter gray color
scheme makes it difficult. iPad Safari doesn’t seem to have a read mode if
there’s no rss feed. Ow.

~~~
Fnoord
Dark Reader makes it readable. Though I am unsure this/such extension exists
for iPad Safari.

------
mentos
I do light baking in Unreal Engine 4 using a program called 'Swarm'
[https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-
US/Engine/Rendering/Lightin...](https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-
US/Engine/Rendering/LightingAndShadows/Lightmass/UnrealSwarmOverview/index.html)

Swarm only uses CPU power so you cannot take advantage of GPUs to bake
lighting.

I wonder if I could get 100 RPi4's to run Windows + Swarm and create a render
farm for $3500...?

~~~
beckler
Probably cost much more than that once you figure in the power and networking
equipment.

If I had the expertise, I would make large clusters with a bunch of the RPi
CM3+.

~~~
avian
Even with CM3+ I don't think the numbers add up. The 8GB CM3+ is $30, so after
buying a hundred you're left with just additional $5 per board for power,
interconnect and cooling (just like R.Pi 3, the compute module without
additional cooling gets thermally throttled really quick).

Since you can't run CM3 standalone, you'll be making custom hardware. Even if
you don't count your development time, my gut feeling says that $5 is not
enough to cover even just BOM costs for such a project.

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jccalhoun
who thought grey text on a white background was a good idea?

~~~
gargravarr
Apple?

------
dpq
The site appears to been hugged to death by HN. The rate of such incidents
makes me wonder whether there are good reasons for so many websites not to use
CloudFlare or if it's the result of plain old incompetence of the respective
webmasters.

~~~
oarsinsync
Centralising all web sites by proxying them all through Cloduflare doesn't
seem like a great idea either.

~~~
dpq
Does this problem have a solution that you would approve of (aside from
switching the CDN from CloudFlare to some competitor)?

~~~
oarsinsync
I think adjustment of expectations that all sites (including personal
websites) need to achieve five 9's of reliability / availability is the way
I'd go. Sometimes websites go offline. It's okay, there are plenty more, and
they'll be back later anyway.

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mikece
I am still annoyed that there's not a proper audio-in capability on the RPi4.
I've been wanting to use a stack of Raspberry Pi units when building a
podcasting studio featuring a recording setup for linking several remote
participants, but lacking proper audio hardware support for audio-in, it's a
no-go (USB audio adapters and "hats" are either too flaky or so expensive as
to make it not that much of a deal to go this route). I really hope a future
Raspberry Pi addresses this shortcoming.

~~~
pvinis
Genuine question. Aren't most mics now USB anyway? At least any mic that is
better that a 5 euro one?

~~~
leguminous
Most professional mics have XLR connectors. Condenser mics require phantom
power as well (unless they are battery-powered) which a "normal" 3.5mm audio
jack will not provide.

~~~
justin66
The poster can't possibly expect the RPi people to include an XLR input.

~~~
munmaek
Agreed, I'm not sure what they want out of the rpi.

If it's only 1-2 (xlr) mics, I would use a Scarlet 2i2 audio interface if
possible and connect via its usb out. Although I have no idea how well it
works with raspbian / ARM operating systems. There may be another type of
interface that works with the rpi.

Either way, this is rather niche and goes beyond the rpi is intended for. You
can still achieve rather good sound on a budget with a usb microphone
depending on the room setup, etc.

~~~
rhinoceraptor
It's strange how since the Raspberry Pi is so capable now, people expect them
to build in all kinds of professional features into a $35 educational computer
(PXE boot, pro audio, etc.).

~~~
gsich
The Pi can network boot.

~~~
rhinoceraptor
I think maybe the 4 dropped that feature or maybe they're adding it via
firmware? I remember reading a story about a company hosting dedicated servers
on Raspberry Pis and complaining how they couldn't network boot on the 4,
which is just ridiculous.

~~~
magicalhippo
It's not implemented at launch, but the boot loader code is no longer in ROM
so can be changed, and they said they will bring network booting later this
year.

[https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/booteeprom.md)

"Support for these additional bootmodes will be added in the future via
optional bootloader updates. The current schedule is to release PXE boot
first, then USB boot."

