The Raspberry Pi CM5 is Weeks Away?

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If you’re regularly trawling electronics stores/websites, you may stumble across products you weren’t expecting to see. On Mouser today, we seem to have a bunch of Raspberry Pi CM5 accessories. Soon TM?

We don’t have the highest-quality photos of these just yet, but it’s enough to get the juices flowing. Not something I thought I’d be writing on a Saturday morning and honestly, a little regret is setting in but I’ve committed now so here we are. Anyway, let’s get to what we’ve found.

Raspberry Pi CM5 IO Board

First off we have the Raspberry Pi CM5 IO board. It looks extremely similar to the CM4 version (duh) but this time, we have an M.2 connection instead of a straight-up PCIe one. That’s complemented by what looks like USB-C for power (and data?), microSD, 2 USB-A 3, RJ45 Ethernet, 2 HDMI, CSI/DSI, GPIO, and an RTC battery holder. It also looks like it will support the Raspberry Pi 5’s PoE HAT+.

The price listed on Mouser for a single unit of these is $20 but with a minimum order of 48, and that excludes taxes. Expect individual units to be at least a few dollars more after taxes on release.

With the inclusion of the M.2 connector on the board, does that hint that we may be seeing similar on the upcoming Raspberry Pi 500 too?

Raspberry Pi CM5 Heatsink

A rather standard-looking Raspberry Pi CM5 passive heatsink was the next item on the list, with a listed price of around $5 USD, it looks like it will do the job well enough. I tested similar-looking units on the Raspberry Pi CM4 and it was more than enough.

Raspberry Pi CM5 IO Board Case

Last but not least from what was dropped is the Raspberry Pi 5 IO Board Case which looks to be a nice metal chassis with plenty of ventilation, and access for all of the front IO. We also seem to have access to a slot for a WiFi/BT antenna to come out, though I’m not sure if the case will come with the necessary bits for that or if you’ll need to source them elsewhere.

Interestingly, we have a fan cutout and what I’m assuming will be an included fan. This isn’t a massive surprise given that the BCM2712 SoC can make use of a fair chunk more power than its Pi 4 predecessor, and locking it in a metal box won’t do it too many favours.

$15 USD is the list price for individual units on this SKU, and if that includes the fan, it’s really not a bad deal.

Raspberry Pi CM5 (and accessories) Release Date?

Mouser lists the availability date on the above CM5 accessories as the 20th of November 2024, which is less than 1 month away. We don’t currently have any product listings for the CM5 itself, so I’m not sure if that’s going to drop on the same day (if these are even accurate, and not just placeholders) but I’d like to think it will, if not before.

Thoughts

Overall I think these look good. It confirms a few things that we already assumed about potential thermal needs (the CM4 didn’t have an official heatsink if I remember rightly) and the inclusion of an official case is also nice. The Raspberry Pi 5’s Bumper is one of my favourite additions to the Pi lineup this year, and having a case for the IO board will serve a similar purpose, whilst also helping to keep it cool.

Are there any surprises on your end? Do you like what you see?!

UPDATE: We Have Photos!

Thanks to Mastodon user, Kuro, who attended the Electronica fair in Munich last week, we have some photos of what looks to be an early sample of the Raspberry Pi 5 Compute Module and its IO Board!