When Raspberry Pi released the Pi 500, as essentially an RPi 5 integrated into a chiclet keyboard, there were rumors based on the empty spots on the PCB that a better version would be released soon. This turned out to be the case, with [Jeff Geerling] now taking the new RPi 500+ to bits for some experimentation and keyboard modding.
The 500’s case was not designed to be opened, but if you did, you’d find that there was space allocated for a Power-Over-Ethernet section as well as an M.2 slot, albeit with all of the footprints unpopulated. Some hacking later and enterprising folk found that soldering the appropriate parts on the PCB does in fact enable a working M.2 slot. What the 500+ thus does is basically do that soldering work for you, while sadly not offering a PoE feature yet without some DIY soldering.
Perhaps the most obvious change is the keyboard, which now uses short-travel mechanical switches – with RGB – inside an enclosure that is now fortunately easy to open, as you may want to put in a different NVMe drive at some point. Or, if you’re someone like [Jeff] you want to use this slot to install an M.2 to Oculink adapter for some external GPU action.
After some struggling with eGPU devices an AMD RX 7900 XT was put into action, with the AMD GPU drivers posing no challenge after a kernel recompile. Other than the Oculink cable preventing the case from closing and also losing the M.2 NVMe SSD option, it was a pretty useful mod to get some real gaming and LLM action going.
With the additions of a presoldered M.2 slot and a nicer keyboard, as well as 16 GB RAM, you have to decide whether the $200 asking price is worth it over the $90 RPi 500. In the case of [Jeff] his kids will have to make do with the RPi 500 for the foreseeable future, and the RPi 400 still finds regular use around his studio.
I ordered one, as the Pi 500 is already a good compile + hardware test bed, and the only thing it lacked was NVMe and more ram. The only real struggle I’ll have is to decide whether the Argon40 One Up or the Pi 500+ will be more useful in this role.
No, please freakin’ no with the extra buttons on the right of the Return key. As a touch-typist I’m far too frequently hitting PgUp or PgDn instead of Return and scarily jumping up or down a page.
Do people simply not test those keyboards on touch-typists??!?!!?!?!?
It’s only us old fogies who can touch type these days.
The rest of the world only learned to use their thumbs while holding their phone.
And the award for condescending post of the week goes to…
I think you mean the award for the most “accurate observation” of the day….
Doesn’t make it any less true.
Not really
At least it has full-sized arrow keys. My bugbear with compact keyboards these days is half-height arrows, particularly when they put PgUp and PgDn on the top half. A real concentration breaker for the same reasons.
How wildly are your pinkies flying to overshoot the 2nd widest key on the keyboard??!?!!?!?!?
Well, it’s infrequent enough to be startled by it, which is the problem. But also, I’m more used to Mac keyboards that don’t have that column of keys at all. I’m not totally sure why I hit the return and backspace key accurately there (and also on my earlier Raspberry PI keyboard), but it is really annoying.
That looks to me like a normal, full-sized return key. If you’re overshooting it regularly, you may need to work on improving your touch typing.
I never seem to have a problem with my Mac and earlier Raspberry PI keyboard, which lacks that column of keys. It’s possible that I do occasionally hit the edge of the keyboard and also hit the key I want, so I don’t really notice on those keyboards.
Also a touch typist here, it sounds like you have one or two bad habits here that is more of a problem than the keyboard… Having an extra row of keys shouldn’t instantly produce more errors. Having a non-standard layout will, as any changes in the other keys would definitely be unexpected. One extra row of keys for someone with precision touch typing should only increase the time it would take to do things like “where is the page up key?” And then you’d have to look down. What’s happening here sounds like sloppy right pinky action. Might I suggest rotating the right wrist about + 5°, that might help it line up a little better? That or practice a little more on a keyboard with that extra row.
i got a laptop with this feature and i can confirm the problem you are having. but i mostly got used to it. i like it because i wanted page up / down.
for a keyboard meant to be used on a desktop, it doesn’t seem like such a great trade off…could just have a proper keyboard if it isn’t constrained by a laptop form factor
When I’m not using my MacBook (or work laptop), I’m used to a small Mac keyboard which doesn’t have a numeric keypad either.
I touch type and have never had an issue; though my return use is usually on the pinkie on the left side of the return key.
The one keyboard “innovation” I can’t use is split space bars, as my thumb always hits between lol
If it is such a problem for you, then you can reprogram those keys to either do nothing or to do the same as the key to their left.
Meanwhile, those folks who like having the extra keys can still enjoy them. Win-win!
I like keyboard computer…
Plugin the eGPU is fun but meaningless as using a simple dedicated rpi5 and wireless input would be wiser…
WTF is going on?
Why is this article missing the one essential link to the official announcement?!
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/the-ultimate-all-in-one-pc-raspberry-pi-500-plus-on-sale-now-at-200/
just to some I guess clickbait YT video?
That’s a Jeff Geerling video. He doesn’t really do clickbait. He also does a ton of work for the community as a whole, great guy.
Mmmm his channel seems 90% raspi clickbait? This thing is same price as second hand M1 air. No thanks
Seems like it would be a great Picotron. Now, if only it had a standard 60% layout and hot-swappable switches.
I do wonder, what would the POE use case be?
Oof I attempted to make a new comment…. not reply. Apologies.
That’s my main issue with Jeff Geerling. His obsession/worship of the RaspPi and its foundation really hinders his videos, especially ones where you’d expect some criticism.
So then your main concern is rather YouTube, than him.
If you want to have any success on that platform you have to have some.
However… when he says he got a GPU working with a Raspberry Pi, he really got it working. You can like even check out his GitHub for info on anything he does.
at that price and specs it’s starting to really stand out as being exceptionally more closed than a PC, and less performant and less expandable and probably (i’m guessing) with a worse cooling system
but for real at that price you can get a used nuc that doesn’t force you to use a kernel that was fused to a closed and broken firmware. if the firmware wasn’t so severely dysfunctional, or if its interfaces were stable, it wouldn’t be so easy to dismiss it.
raspberry pi is a closed source cancer eating at computing.
I have a 500+ on the way. They sold out quick! It will never replace my Ryzen based Linux Workstation(s) of course, but one is handy on the electronic work bench. BTW, I prefer for serious coding/writing, a natural keyboard. Anyway, rather than reaching for a keyboard, a USB boot drive, and a RPI-5, you have an single box instead. Who knows what else use I can find for the 500+. I already have a 400 and 500. Anyway, it never hurts to have another RPI floating around to use :) . Price isn’t that bad either — no complaints there.
One thing I keep in mind, is I can strip away the keyboard/enclosure and just use the motherboard. I always though, with the connectors all on one side, it would be useful for some project. Unfortunately I haven’t thought of one … yet!
To begin with $200/220 if you can find it.
Just too expensive for what it is.
Why is it that the RPI folks work harder and harder to isolate their core audience?
Riddiculy expensive.
Why on earth would somebody pay extra $110+GPU for a barely unusable pi based gaming setup when there are an all in one and totally playable $460 steam deck on the market?
Why on Earth not? Could it simply be because one can??? RPIs are fun little computers to play around with. Try this, try that. Wonder if I can…. Will it do this? Bet I can program that… Lets try… The world doesn’t revolve around gaming — thank goodness! And like potato chips, one RPI or Pico is never enough! Always another little project in the wings. It’s a hobby … after all.
For the love of God, micro HDMi
Why not a Mini-HMDi and a USB-C with TV out ?
Id even be ok with 2 usb-c video out ports
a pimped out overpriced pi.. why ??!!
why does it still have micro HDMI and no Headphone/AV-port?
not including power brick & using uncommon cables.. thats just mean..
At that price-point they should at least drop the GPIO port and throw in a Pico.
who would risk at frying 200/220$ computer by having exposed GPIO pins.
The Raspberry Pi is part of an ecosystem.
Consider 3 market segments for the Pi
A. Education
B. Makers
C. Coders
Makers want a board for $35 or less because a more expensive computer could devour the entire robot budget.
On the other hand coders want the hardware abstracted away because they don’t want to lose valuable coding time on hardware experiments. For coders $200 is a cheap Linux machine (one could try C experiments on it without risking losing valuable data or hardware). For learning a new computer language you don’t need much computing power to run “Hello World!” homework. Plus the Raspberry Pi is adequate as a client in a client server system (and at $100 to $300 a seat all-in including software it is cheap). The server could be a Beelink ME Mini ($200 plus up to 6 SSD) running Zima OS or TrueNAS community. As a client, Raspberry Pi could run a:
A. Command Line Interface terminal software
B. Web-browser (Chome or Firefox)
C. Jupyter Notebook
D. Thick application such as Libre Office or QGIS
E. IDE with option to edit on another system (VS Code)
F. Docker engine or Potainer (but not Docker Desktop}.
I would not recommend Pi for star of the art gaming, but it does have a retro gaming ecosystem. Likewise I would not recommend the Pi 500 for video editing (such as Kden Live which can be installed) but the Pi can serve as a client of Plex or Jellyfin video server (on the Beelink Mac Mini) with the keyboard as a giant remote control.