I was graciously loaned a Pi 5 8GB version to trial. Many reviews have been written about I the Pi 5 as a new iteration of dual-screencapable SBC desktops, but as a sysadmin, I was more interested in using it in a server context. The low power aspect appeals greatly. The verdict? It’s pretty good. The new generation of Pi is unlike the Pis of the old. Unfortunately, that fact is reflected in the pricing. It is essentially the ‘Premium’ Pi experience. The price increases further when you start to feed in the cost of the peripherals – the essential heatsink and the power supply. The new official power supply can provide 20 watts – far more than previous generations. This is partly to feed the increased CPU power consumption and partly to be more stable when adding external devices via the USB 3 ports. There is no longer onboard sound or standard HDMI. This means buying one or two of the appropriate micro HDMI to full HDMI convertors if looking to use it as a desktop.
Other nice additions include (finally) a power button and the ability to add a real, honest-to-goodness hardware clock via the addition of an (at cost) battery.
From a sysadmin point of view, if you want it as a headless server, it is simple enough to configure when flashing a new micro USB using the official Raspberry Imager tool. The imager options allow for the configuration of IP and SSH ahead of time (it allows you to set the Wi-Fi details and SSH service autostart). These options are available after you have selected your device and it prompts: Would you like to apply OS customisation settings? Set this up and then apply the config. Once the Pi is booted up, you should be able to SSH straight into the server.