Raspberry Pi 5 vs Intel N100 Mini PC - Which Is Right For You

on a couple of my videos since the launch of the pi 5 last year I've seen people say that for the price of a pi5 or some of the RK 3588 sbcs I've shown you should just get an Intel n100 based Mini PC citing better video encoding and decoding performance better OS support more memory and storage options and additional PCI lenses as advantages over the power five So today we're going to compare the two and see whether an n100 Mini PC is a better option and what the limit ation of each of them are for those of you who don't know what an n100 PC is it's a PC often in a Mini PC form factor that is built around Intel's older Lake n family and in this case the n100 CPU for a long time raspberry pies have been substantially cheaper than any newly available Intel Hardware but pies have since crept up in price and this series of processors are now cheap and efficient enough to close that Gap to the point where they're now becoming quite comparable for testing I'm going to be using these two setups the pi 5 is an 8 gig variant and I'm going to be running it with the p Moroni nvme base and a Lexar 500 gig mvme SSD the pi5 with an official active cooler and power supply along with the nvme base and a storage Drive comes to a total of $160 the n100 PC I've chosen is the mini S12 Pro this was on special when I bought it so it was one of the cheapest options available on Amazon at the time coming in at $159 there were two cheaper options for $154 and $155 but I didn't recognize either of the brands and I've used beeing products before without any issues so I was happy to pay the extra $5 so pricing between the two is really similar once you've added the required components to the p and with the n100 we're getting double the RAM and an enclosure in terms of basic specifications the power 5 has a broadcom CCM 2712 s SOC this has a 4 core arm a76 processor running it up to 2.4 GHz it's also got a video core 7 GPU the n100 PC has a four core aler Lake n processor running only Intel ecores at up to 3.4 GHz it's also got integrated UHD Graphics both of these computers have ddr4 Ram the P 5 has 8 gigs and the n100 PC has 16 gigs but notably the pi FS is running at 4,267 megatrans fers per second and the n100 PC is add a slower 3,200 megatrans fers per second in terms of storage both have a 500 gig mvme SSD they have similar connectivity options both having gigabit Ethernet 2 HDMI ports and four USB ports although two on the P are USB 2.0 instead of all four being USB 3.0 like on the n100 PC they both have an m.2 port for an nvme drive but the n100 also has a Zeta port for a 2 and 1/2 in drive and the pies a couple of other interfaces like dual four-lane camera and display transceivers and a 40 pin GP header although we'll discuss this in a bit more detail later the power 5 has a single PCI Lane that can run at gen 3 speeds the n100 PC has a bolt in m.2 Port which makes use of two PCI Lanes also running at gen 3 speeds so we expect the storage speed on the n100 PC to be quite a lot faster than on the pi perhaps the most significant difference between the two is that the n100 is an Intel x86 based system while the pi 5 is an Arm based system so you've got far more options for compatible operating systems on the n100 PC to make testing Fair we'll be running auntu on both since auntu desktop 24.4 is available as an officially supported OS through Raspberry p imager and is available for the 100 Mini PC as well to compare the performance of the two we're going to run a series of tests first I'll show you video play back at 1080p then we'll run a sysbench CPU Benchmark then test the nvme storage speed then run a GL Mark 2 Benchmark to test graphics performance and lastly we'll look at power consumption these should give us a pretty good idea of the capabilities and limitations of each system let's start with video playback at 1080p the par five struggled with this more than I expected it started badly and dropped a significant number of frames at the beginning even once playback settled it still continues to drop frames from experience the pi five handles video playback in P which is based on Debian without any issues so this is most likely a software issue the n100 PC had no problem playing back 1080p video playback was smooth right from the start and was unaffected running in the window or in full screen so both can handle 1080p video playback but the n100 PC is clearly much better at it next let's run a CIS bench CPU benchmark I ran three tests on each and then averaged the scores the pi five managed an average score of 4,350 knot the n100 PC managed an average score of 44058 so the n100 PC was about 9% faster than the pi 5 this is not as significant as expected given the much higher clock speeds on the N1 100's cores but there is a small CPU performance Gap between the two to test the nvme storage speed I used James Chambers P Benchmark script this script favors better random R ride performance so is a good representation of how an operating system would make use of the drive over three tests the power five managed an average score of 32089 with average sequential read speeds of 423 mbes per second and average sequential R speeds of 241 mbes per second the n100 PC managed an average score of 44,8 33 so significantly higher than the pi5 with an almost 40% Improvement average sequential reads were around 673 mbes per second and average RS 495 mbes per second the n100 has a much more powerful GPU so I expect it to do a lot better than the pi in our GL Mark I GPU Benchmark the pi 5 managed a score of 307 the n100 PC managed a score of 270 so the n100 is over 6 and 1 half times faster than the pi five in GL Mark I which is obviously a substantial difference lastly let's look at power consumption this is where I have high hopes for the pie to stand out at OD this pie setup uses around 3 to 4 watts and this goes up to 5 to 7 Watts underload the n100 PC uses quite a lot more power using 8 watts while outle on the desktop and up to 27 Watts underload while neither of these figures are particularly high it's worth noting that the n100 uses nearly four times the power of the pi5 this probably makes little difference on Mains but for battery powered projects that are required to run for many hours or even a few days the difference can lead to substantial Savings in power supply hardware and batteries this is not all that surprising armed computers are known to be more power efficient which is one of the reasons why they're so pop popular for mobile devices so the n100 PC beats the pie in almost every performance Benchmark and comes in at a similar cost but one of the main reasons that people list for getting a p over an n100 PC is the GP pins and this is without question much easier on the P the GPO pins are literally available right on the board and there's a wealth of software and tutorials available to use them but you're also not out of options for the n100 PC microcontrollers like an Arduino Pro Mini or even one of these purpose built Ada fruit USB to GPO breakout boards make it equally possible to connect tiny OLED displays read in information from sensors or just work through an introductory Flashing LED tutorial on a PC all with relative ease this is not as integrated as it is on the p and comes at an additional cost but for a few dollars it might be worth it if you're just getting started tinkering with electronics so if you plan on using the computer for automation or robotics projects with a Reliance on G GP Ops then the P five is the better option but for experimenting with Home Server projects running anything reliant on the GPU or getting started with Docker or kubernetes then the n100 PC is a great alternative I think Raspberry Pi have missed the mark a little with the pricing of the pi five if you're just looking for a cheap computer to get into tinkering with electronics projects then you're probably better off going with the base version of the p 4 this still has plenty of CPU power to run projects locally and you'll have access to a similar set of IO to the pi 5 but without the additional cost after all a big part of the initial attraction to the Raspberry Pi was the $35 base price let me know which you prefer and what your use case is in the comment section below thanks for watching please remember to like this video If you enjoyed it and subscribe for more Tech in electronics projects tutorials and reviews

Channel: Michael Klements

Views: 26,622

Keywords: Raspberry Pi 5, Intel N100, Mini PC, Best mini PC, Raspberry Pi 5 performance, Raspberry Pi comparison, Raspberry Pi 5 specs, Raspberry Pi 5 features, Raspberry Pi 5 benchmarks, Raspberry Pi vs Intel, Raspberry Pi 5 price, Mini PC comparison, Raspberry Pi 5 vs Intel N100 comparison, Intel N100 performance, Intel N100 benchmarks, Intel N100 features, Intel N100 price, Intel N100 specs, Sysbench, GLmark2, Pi Benchmarks, James Chambers, Youtube Playback, Alder Lake

Id: dljAxpjyRVc

Length: 10min 0sec (600 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 27 2024