I already have a post on the new Raspberry Pi 5 with all the changes and specifications, but having fired up one to become my new Bitcoin node with a 2 TB SSD drive, I’ve been impressed with how much better and faster it is. It processed the full Bitcoin blockchain in just a couple days once I set it up to directly connect and use my existing node (faster local network data transfer), and the blockchain was 612 GB of data. And after adding Electrs Electrum server for my Bitcoin wallets and the Bitcoin Explorer web application (Github), their performance is also noticeably improved over the Raspberry Pi 4. Consequently, I originally ran a Raspberry Pi 2 as a Bitcoin node before the Raspberry Pi 3 came out and replaced it. So I’ve ran every iteration of the Raspberry Pi as a Bitcoin node with the exception of the Raspberry Pi 3B+, but then it’s basically just an overclocked Pi 3. So how the platform has progressed is astounding.
And the new active cooler is also impressive, but we’ll see how the fan holds up over time. A lot of these cheap sleeve fans on other cooler designs need to be lubed every few months. Consequently, with this cooler all you need to do is put some rubber feet on the bottom of the board as you don’t really need a case, and leaving it exposed is better for cooling. And even though the board is being utilized processing the Bitcoin blockchain, I’ve yet to hear it spin up to it’s highest speed which you do hear when you first boot up the system. Also, I’ve noticed it doesn’t really ramp much until you start to get into the upper 60’s C nearing the throttling temperature, and this was only observed when compiling Electrs in Rust maximizing all four CPUs which completed in an impressive time as well.
So It’s amazing what you can do with these little SBCs that don’t use that much power allowing you to leave them up 24/7. This Raspberry Pi 5 would make a great little home server and Docker setup including Syncthing file server. I currently have a Raspberry Pi 4 doing this function pretty well, but the Pi 5 is approaching the performance of my old Dell 12 CPU, 24 thread Xeon based server as you run virtualized servers with segregated hardware resources. This is definitely the version of the Raspberry Pi to buy for any project needing some extra processing power.