Hacker News Reader

How's the heat on the 5s? I've been a bit disappointed at how hot RPi4 was getting (and how much power it's using) while essentially idling - with CPUs parked at 300Mhz it still runs at 50C+ while passive, which is... a lot.

Is 5 any better at power savings?

View on HN

You need active cooling if you want to extract all the performance out of it. The standard cooling kits sold by Raspberry Pi are neat and cheap though, so not a problem in my experience. They have two options: A case with a fan on top, and a small heatsink + fan combo. The fans run at variable speed, so generally pretty quiet.

I wonder if it’s due to Linux? Are there other operating systems designed for efficiency? I look at what smartwatch makers are able to do with a tiny battery and think there has to be a way.

Yeah, that's actually what I'm asking - phones and watches have SoCs that can idle at much lower power uses while RPi SoC seems a bit wasteful. Was that improved with RPi5?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com