A first look at the Raspberry Pi Development Kit for CM5

Raspberry Pi has just launched the Compute Module 5 (CM5) and the company sent me a “Raspberry Pi Development Kit for CM5” for review and to play around with the new Broadcom BCM2712 system-on-module succeeding the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (CM4) introduced in 2020.

Today, I’ll have a first look at the development kit checking out the hardware, connecting accessories, booting it up to Raspberry Pi OS, and collecting some basic system information. I’ll do a more in-depth review in a few weeks.

Unboxing of the Raspberry Pi Development Kit for CM5

I received the kit in a package reading “Raspberry Pi Development Kit” and “For Raspberry Pi CM5”. That’s a good start…

Raspberry Pi Development Kit for CM5 package

The bottom side lists the package’s content which I will check out shortly, and a link to the documentation.

Raspberry Pi Development Kit Package Content

Let’s see what we have with the Raspberry Pi Development Kit: a Raspberry Pi IO Case, a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5, a Raspberry Pi Cooler (not designed for use with the IO case lid), a 27W USB-C power adapter, two HDMI cables, a USB-A to USB-C cable, and a Raspberry Pi Antenna Kit. I can’t see the Raspberry Pi CM5 IO board, but I hope it will be inside the IO case package…

Raspberry Pi IO Case CM5 Cooler Power Supply Antenna Cables

Let’s check out the Raspberry Pi CM5 first and compare it to the Raspberry Pi CM4 (Lite) since I don’t own a CM4 module.

Raspberry Pi CM5 vs Raspberry Pi CM4

There’s one more component on the top inside: the Raspberry Ri RP1 peripheral controller also found in the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC. The power chip is larger having replaced the Dialog DA9090 by a Renesas DA9091 PMIC with some merger and acquisition activity happening in the meantime. If we zoom in on the configuration resistors on the top right side of the CM5 module, we can see I have a CM5104032 model with 4GB RAM, 32GB flash, and a wireless module. We’ll also notice some unannounced options, so it looks like a cheaper Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 module with 1GB RAM and 8GB eMMC flash may eventually become available, as well as higher-end ones with up to 128GB eMMC flash.

RPICM5 vs RPICM4

The CM4 modules have their eMMC flash placed on top, but due to the RP1 chip on the CM5, the eMMC flash had to be moved to the bottom side of the module. We still have the two board-to-board (B2B) connectors in the same position and with the same layout.

Raspberry Pi Cooler For CM5

The Raspberry Pi Cooler comes with a screw set, and we can see an opening on the left for the antennas.

Thermal pads under CM5 cooler

The bottom side has three thermal pads to make sure the Raspberry Pi CM5 keeps cool under heavy loads.

Raspberry Pi IO Case rear panel
I’m glad to finally confirm my IO case did come with a Raspberry Pi CM5 IO board. More of the ports can be found on the rear panel with two HDMI ports, Power and Status LEDs, a gigabit Ethernet RJ45 jack, two USB 3.0 ports, a USB-C port for power, a microSD card for CM5 Lite only, an SSD activity LED, and an opening for the WIFi and Bluetooth antenna.

Raspberry Pi IO Case from panel MIPI connectors

The front panel has some ventilation holes, two openings for MIPI camera/display cables, and a power button.

Raspberry Pi Development Kit assembly and hardware setup

Let’s open the case by loosening the four screws (two on each side) holding the two parts together. A fan is connected to the lid for cooling. Let’s remove four more screws and disconnect the fan cable to take out the Raspberry Pi CM5 IO board.

Raspberry Pi Development kit Opened Compute Module 5 IO Board

The board comes with a CR2032 battery holder for the RTC battery, a 40-pin Raspberry Pi GPIO header with mounting holes for HAT expansion boards, a 4-pin PoE header, the board-to-board connectors for the CM5 module, and M.2 M-key socket for 2230, 2242, 2260, or 2280 NVMe SSD, and a 14-pin “Jumper” header to configure boot, EEPROM write-protect, USB OTG, etc… as well as connect a power push button.

Compute Module 5 IO Board

There aren’t any components on the bottom side.

Raspberry Pi CM5 IO board bottom side

Let’s now start the assembly by adding the SMA connector to the IO case.

Raspberry Pi IO Case SMA antenna connector installation

We can now put the Compute Module 5 IO board back inside the IO case, insert the Raspberry Pi CM5 module, connect the WiFi antenna to the module, and add an official 256GB Raspberry Pi NVMe SSD. Ideally, I would have added a CR2032 battery, but I don’t have any.

Raspberry Pi Development Kit for CM5 assembly

I also connected a Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3 to the CAM/DISP 0 connector passing the cable through the opening in the IO case. I planned to connect a Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 too, but I skipped it for now because it requires 5V from the 40-pin Raspberry Pi header and I want to first test the Raspberry Pi Developer Kit with the IO case fully closed. However, it will work fine if we keep the IO case open since we have access to the 5V/GND on the GPIO header that way.

I did not use the Raspberry Pi cooler for the same reason, since Raspberry Pi mentions it’s not designed to be used with the IO Case lid. That means we’ll just use the PWM fan for cooling.

First boot to Raspberry Pi OS and system information

Let’s close the lid add the external WiFi antenna, and try to boot the system up after connecting an HDMI monitor and RF dongles for a keyboard and a mouse.

Raspberry Pi Development Kit for CM5 Raspberry Pi OS

The system was up and running even though, I had not flashed Raspberry Pi OS to the eMMC flash. The explanation is simple: the Development Kit simply booted from the 256GB SSD preloaded with Raspberry Pi OS.


But inxi confirms we also have a 32GB eMMC flash (Samsung BJTD4R) and other system information:


The camera is not detected, I might have to double-check the connection, and I might have set some jumpers. I’ll check that in the second part of the review:


The idle temperature is a little high at 68.8°C because there’s no heatsink and we only rely on the fan. Let’s run sbc-bench.sh script to see if thermal throttling does occur:


Note the devkit is placed on my terrace outdoors with a 32°C ambient temperature. Here’s the CPU temperature from rpimonitor during the benchmark.

RPI Monitor CPU Temperature Raspberry Pi CM5

Looking at the log, The real CPU frequency dropped as low as 1.5 GHz during 7-zip:


The fan turned at full speed, but it was still not enough. I’ll repeat the test indoors, and then with the board outside the case using the official Cooler. I’ll also try to get a CM5 active cooler from EDATEC as shown below.

Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 active CPU cooler

The company did their own test at 25°C using sysbench, and the CPU temperature topped at around 60°C with the active cooler.

Rapsberry Pi CM5 active cooler CPU temperature frequency sysbench
A: Raspberry Pi IO board with CM5 without any heatsink at all, B: Raspberry IO board with CM5 and EDATEC CM5 active cooler.

They also tested the same setup at 60°C, and the Raspberry Pi CM5 (without a heatsink) only ran for about 16 minutes before dying. With the active cooler, the temperature stabilized at 74°C under those conditions.

I’ll do more testing in the second part of the review. I’d like to thank Raspberry Pi for sending the Development Kit for CM5 for review. It can be purchased for $130 plus taxes and shipping on authorized distributors.

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joe
joe
4 days ago

lsblk will show you the block volume size.

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